The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)

by Rick Riordan

But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must’ve been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin.

You should’ve seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Grover tried to calm me down. “It’s okay. I like peanut butter.”

“Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan’s stomach.

“What you learn from me,” he said, “is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.”

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I’ve missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I hadn’t forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d started to believe him.

“Sir, I…I can’t fail in my duties again.” Grover’s voice was choked with emotion. “You know what that would mean.” “You haven’t failed, Grover,” Mr. Brunner said kindly. “I should have seen her for what she was. Now let’s just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—”

“No, no,” Mr. Brunner said. “Oh, confound it all. What I’m trying to say…you’re not normal, Percy. That’s nothing to be—” “Thanks,” I blurted. “Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me.” “Percy—”

“Don’t say it aloud!” he yelped. “That’s my, um…summer address.” My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I’d never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy. “Okay,” I said glumly. “So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion.”

Between the two of us, we made my mom’s life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along…well, when I came home is a good example.

“Thank you, Percy,” my mom said. “Once we get to Montauk, we’ll talk more about…whatever you’ve forgotten to tell me, okay?” For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I’d seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air. But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.

As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.

“Because you don’t want me around?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out. My mom’s eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. “Oh, Percy, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away.”

“I’ve tried to keep you as close to me as I could,” my mom said. “They told me that was a mistake. But there’s only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just…I just can’t stand to do it.”

Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn’t running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked. Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.

“Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn’t faking being your friend,” he added hastily. “I am your friend.”

“Oh, nobody much,” Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. “Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions.”

The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school–age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover’s were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.

Perseus Jackson”—

Why is that hilarious to me

“Percy,” Chiron said, “you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?”

“If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?” My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn’t going to let him. I said, “I wouldn’t like it. But I don’t believe in gods.”

“Well now, there’s Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there’s the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It’s still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do.” “You mean the Greek gods are here? Like…in America?”

“Who are you?” he mused. “Well, that’s the question we all want answered, isn’t it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s’mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate.”

We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.

“I’m afraid that was Grover’s second chance, Percy. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He’s still so small for his age.…” “How old is he?” “Oh, twenty-eight.” “What! And he’s in sixth grade?” “Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years.” “That’s horrible.”

Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot. Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty? I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.

“I honestly don’t know about should be. The truth is, I can’t be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish…and I gave up much. But I’m still here, so I can only assume I’m still needed.”

“Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven.” “Regular or undetermined?” somebody asked. I didn’t know what to say, but Annabeth said, “Undetermined.” Everybody groaned.

“Monsters don’t die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don’t die.” “Oh, thanks. That clears it up.”

“Taken together, it’s almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom.

As for the attention problems, that’s because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal’s. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don’t want you seeing them for what they are.”

She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn’t get to the top fast enough.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe he’ll send a sign. That’s the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens.” “You mean sometimes it doesn’t?” Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. “The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don’t always…Well, sometimes they don’t care about us, Percy. They ignore us.”

But for some of us, it’s too dangerous to leave. We’re year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they’ll ignore us until we’re old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you’d know them. Some don’t even realize they’re demigods. But very, very few are like that.”

“I’ve got to get a quest,” Annabeth muttered to herself. “I’m not too young. If they would just tell me the problem…”

It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn’t have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke. When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention. Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. “Yes, I suppose I’d better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels.”

When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly. That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood. I wish I’d known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.

Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling I’d always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her back.…

“He just said you had big plans, you know…and that you needed credit for completing a keeper’s assignment. So did you get it?” Grover looked down at the naiads. “Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I hadn’t failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then maybe he’d consider the job complete.”

“Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis,” he said. “She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The

“No. One of them, number two, is Hera’s,” he said. “That’s another honorary thing. She’s the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn’t go around having affairs with mortals. That’s her husband’s job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos.”

“About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn’t sire any more heroes. Their children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of

Hades on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx.”

So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died, Zeus took pity on her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That’s why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill.”

“Grover,” I said, “have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?” “Sometimes,” he said. “Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini.”

“I didn’t…Oh, listen, don’t think like that. If you were—you know—you’d never ever be allowed a quest, and I’d never get my license. You’re probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don’t worry, okay?”

By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident. “Your father,” Annabeth murmured. “This is really not good.” “It is determined,” Chiron announced. All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn’t look happy about it. “My father?” I asked, completely bewildered. “Poseidon,” said Chiron. “Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.”