Time flew by, and soon several months had passed.
New York continued, as always, with people living their lives normally.
And this applied to a certain half-blood.
It was the night before the final exams...
Lying in his bed, Percy twisted and turned; he was having a nightmare.
In his dream, he was on a deserted street in some small seaside town, in the middle of the night. There was a storm. The wind and rain lashed at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up.
A block away, beyond a row of hibiscus bushes, the sea was turbulent.
His dreamlike awareness concluded it was Florida.
Even though he had never been to Florida.
His ears picked up the sound of hooves splashing on the pavement. He turned and saw his friend, Grover, running for his life, holding his human shoes in his hands, as he usually did when he needed to move quickly. He sped past the small souvenir shops and surfboard rentals. The wind bent the palm trees nearly to the ground.
Grover was terrified of something coming after him. He must have just come from the beach. Wet sand clung in clumps to his fur. He had escaped from somewhere. He was trying to get away from something.
A bone-rattling roar cut through the storm. Behind Grover, across the block, a shadowy figure appeared. It knocked down a streetlight with a violent blow. The lamp exploded into a million sparks.
Grover stumbled, whimpering in fear. He muttered to himself:
"I need to escape. I need to warn them!"
Percy couldn't see what was chasing him, but he heard something grumbling and cursing. The ground shook as it approached. Grover turned a corner and faltered. He had entered a dead-end courtyard filled with shops. There was no time to turn back.
The nearest door had been blown open by the storm.
The sign above the dark shop window read "St. Augustine Bridal Boutique..."
Grover dashed inside, diving behind a rack full of wedding dresses.
The monster's shadow passed in front of the store. Percy, lucidly following this nightmare, caught the scent of the creature—a nauseating mix of wet sheep's wool, rotten meat, and that peculiar sour body odor that only monsters have, like a skunk that only ate Mexican food.
Grover trembled behind the wedding dresses. The monster's shadow moved on.
Silence, except for the rain. Grover took a deep breath. Maybe the creature had left.
Then there was a flash of lightning. The entire storefront exploded, and a monstrous voice roared: "MEEEEEE!!!"
At that moment, Percy woke up and sat up in bed, upright and trembling.
There was no storm. No monster.
The morning sun streamed through his bedroom window.
He thought he saw a shadow moving quickly across the glass, a human shape. But then he heard a knock on his bedroom door—his mother called out.
"Percy, you're going to be late."
And the shadow in the window disappeared.
Percy assumed it was his imagination and promptly ignored it. After all, a window on the fifth floor, with an old and rickety fire escape outside... There couldn't be anyone there, right?
"Come on, dear..." His mother called again. "It's the last day of school. You must be excited! It's almost over!"
"I'm coming..."
After saying that, Percy pulled his ballpoint pen from under his pillow. He looked at it—it was his trusty sword, Anaklusmos...
The thought of uncapping it crossed his mind, but something stopped him. He hadn't used Riptide in a long time. Besides, his mother had made him promise not to use lethal weapons in her house after he clumsily swung one and hit the china cabinet.
Percy placed the pen on the bedside table and got out of bed, dressing as quickly as he could. Trying not to think about the nightmare, he made a three-fingered claw over his heart and pulled outward—a gesture Grover had once taught him to ward off evil.
The dream couldn't have been real.
He already had too many problems to deal with.
Like the disappearance of his best friend, for instance, which had been his biggest worry for the past few months.
After getting dressed, he quickly went to have breakfast. His mom made blue waffles with blue eggs for breakfast. That was her funny way of celebrating special occasions with blue food. He guessed it was her way of saying anything was possible.
Percy ate at the kitchen table while his mom washed dishes. She was wearing her work uniform—a starry blue skirt and a red-and-white striped blouse she wore to sell candy at Sweet America. Her long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail.
The waffles were delicious, but he didn't devour them as usual. His mom glanced at him and frowned.
"Percy, are you okay?"
"Yeah... I'm fine..." Percy managed to say in the most casual tone he could muster.
But she could tell something was bothering him—a skill she had since he could remember. She dried her hands and sat down in front of him.
"School or..."
She didn't need to finish. Percy knew what she was asking.
"Ikki... Any news yet? Shophia hasn't contacted you?" Percy finally admitted his real worry of the past months.
Since the day he went looking for his friend and found the house empty, and then heard no news in the months that followed, he had been worried, scared something had happened, and feeling the ache of missing him.
His mother sighed and said:
"Nothing yet... But don't worry, you know how strong Ikki is, right? You told me yourself he has the power of a god even as a half-blood."
Percy clenched his fists. He knew that, but it didn't stop him from worrying. He felt something had happened—something terrible. Could it be related to Artemis? But why would his mother have disappeared too? Either way, something was wrong.
After that, he just ate in silence and left the house to head to class. Because of his friend's absence, he couldn't feel any excitement about going to Camp Half-Blood...
When he left, he glanced at the brownstone building across the street. For just a second, he saw a dark shape in the morning light—a human silhouette against the brick wall, a shadow that didn't belong to anyone.
Then it shimmered and vanished.
He shrugged and went on with what had become his normal routine in recent months.
Heading toward Meriwether Prep, like any other teenager his age.
It would just be wrong to call it normal. You see, it was an "experimental" school in the heart of Manhattan, which meant they sat on beanbags instead of desks, didn't get grades, and the teachers wore jeans and rock band T-shirts to work.
But for him, that wasn't important. After all, he had ADHD and was dyslexic, like most half-bloods, so he'd never done well in regular schools, even before they expelled him.
The only bad thing about Meriwether was that the teachers always saw the best in everything, and the kids weren't always... well, promising.
For example, at the moment, his first class of the day was English. Every middle schooler had read that book Lord of the Flies, where a bunch of kids get stranded on an island and go crazy. So, for the final exam, the teachers let them spend an hour unsupervised in the courtyard to see what would happen.
And guess what happened?
A full-on "wedgie" war between seventh and eighth graders, two gravel fights, and a no-fouls basketball game.
The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most of these activities.
Sloan wasn't big or strong, but he acted like he was. He had pit bull eyes and disheveled black hair, and he always wore expensive but wrinkled clothes, as if he wanted everyone to see how much he didn't care about his family's money.
He also had a chipped front tooth from the time he took his dad's Porsche for a spin and crashed into a "Slow - Children Playing" sign. You could tell what kind of person he was just from the rumors about that incident, which spread around the school.
Anyway, Sloan was giving everyone wedgies until he made the mistake of trying to yank Tyson's underwear.
Tyson was the only homeless kid at Meriwether Prep. As far as Percy and his mom could figure out, he'd been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so different.
Well, he was six-foot-six, had the physique of the Abominable Snowman, but cried a lot and was afraid of almost everything, including his own reflection. His face was lumpy and misshapen, and you couldn't even tell what color his eyes were because even he couldn't see anything beyond his crooked teeth.
His voice was deep, but he spoke in a funny way, like a much younger boy—I guess because he had never gone to school before Meriwether. He wore ragged jeans, size-52 filthy sneakers, and a tattered plaid flannel shirt. He smelled like New York alleyways because that's where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box near 72nd Street.
Meriwether had adopted him as part of a community service project, so all the students could feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, most of them couldn't stand Tyson. After figuring out that, despite his incredible strength and scary appearance, he was big and goofy, they took pleasure in tormenting him.
Percy was practically his only friend—which meant his only friend at the moment, especially since the one he thought of as a brother had disappeared.
His mom had already complained to the school a million times because they weren't doing enough to help him. She called social services, but apparently nothing happened. Social workers claimed Tyson didn't exist. They swore they visited the alley Percy had described but couldn't find him.
Which was hard to understand how that was possible. After all, the kid was a giant living in a refrigerator box.
Anyway, Matt Sloan sneaked up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and Tyson panicked. He shoved Sloan a little too hard. Sloan flew five meters and got tangled in the little kids' tire swing.
"You freak!" Sloan screamed, his eyes full of hate and mockery. He shouted, "Why don't you go back to your cardboard box?"
Tyson started sobbing. He sat on the jungle gym with so much force that he bent the bar and buried his head in his hands.
"Take that back, Sloan!" Percy shouted with a serious expression.
Sloan sneered in his direction.
"What's it to you, Jackson? You could have friends if you didn't keep sticking up for that freak."
All he got in response was Percy clenching his fists and a deep glare. After training with his best friend in the last days of camp last year, he had learned to stay calm and not let his emotions take over his rationality.
"He's not a freak. He's just..."
He tried to think of the right thing to say to the bullies, but Sloan didn't listen. He and his gang of ugly thugs were too busy laughing.
Then Percy noticed something. Was it his imagination, or did Sloan have more goons with him than usual? He was used to seeing him with two or three, but that day he had, like, a dozen more, and Percy was sure he had never seen them before...
Something's wrong with this...
"Just wait until gym class, Jackson," Sloan yelled with a grin. "You're already dead meat."
A few moments after he said that, the first period ended. The English teacher, Mr. De Milo, came out to survey the carnage. He declared that they had understood Lord of the Flies perfectly. Everyone passed his class, and they were never going to become violent people.
Matt Sloan nodded seriously and then flashed a chipped-tooth grin at Percy, who was thinking that this was the first time he actually liked a teacher.
Anyway, with the first period over and Tyson still sobbing, Percy had to promise to buy him an extra peanut butter sandwich at lunch to get him to stop.
"Am... am I a freak?"
Tyson asked between sobs.
Percy wished Ikki were here; he would know what to say. In the end, all Percy could do was reassure him, gritting his teeth.
"No. Matt Sloan is the freak."
Tyson sniffled.
"You're a good friend. I'll miss you next year if... if I can't..."
His voice trembled slightly.
Percy realized he didn't know if he'd be invited back for the community project next year. In his mind, Percy wondered if the principal would even bother to discuss it with him.
In the end, he managed to say, "Don't worry, big guy. It'll work out."
He really wasn't like his best friend when it came to words of wisdom or comfort.
Tyson gave him such a grateful look that Percy felt like a big liar. How could he promise a kid like him that anything would work out? Well, he could only sigh in his mind.
It had to work out.
After the English teacher left, the science teacher came in for her part of the finals. Mrs. Tesla told them they'd have to mix chemicals until they made something explode.
Tyson was Percy's lab partner. His hands were too big for the small vials they had to use. He accidentally knocked a tray of chemicals off the counter and created an orange mushroom cloud in the trash can. After Mrs. Tesla evacuated the lab and called the hazardous waste removal squad, she praised Tyson and Percy for being natural chemists.
That old lady was crazy...
But it didn't change the fact that they were probably the first in history to ace their test in under thirty seconds.
Then came two more exams, and the morning flew by.
Percy was glad the morning went by quickly because it stopped him from overthinking his problems. He couldn't stand the idea of his best friend disappearing without a trace and not sending any word. He hated thinking that something might have happened to him.
And also, he couldn't shake the memory of the nightmare. He had a terrible feeling that Grover was in danger.
In social studies, when they were drawing maps of latitude and longitude, Percy opened his notebook and looked at the picture inside—it was his friend Annabeth, who was on vacation in Washington and had sent him a postcard asking why she couldn't get in touch with Ikki. He couldn't bring himself to say his best friend had vanished into thin air, so he just made up that he had gone on vacation with his mother.
In the photo, Annabeth was wearing jeans and an indigo jacket over the orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, the standard uniform. Her blonde hair was tied back with a bandana. She stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial, arms crossed, looking extremely pleased with herself, as if she had personally designed the place.
Well, Percy had recently learned that Annabeth wanted to be an architect when she grew up, which is why she was always visiting famous monuments and places like that. She was weird like that. She had even emailed him the photo during spring break.
Looking at the photo, Percy wished Annabeth were around. She'd know how to interpret his recent nightmares, and most importantly... She could help him search for his missing best friend.
He had never admitted it to her, but she was smarter than him, even if she was a bit annoying sometimes.
Percy was about to close his notebook, but Matt Sloan snatched the photo from the spiral.
Sloan checked the photo, his eyes widening.
"Oh no, Jackson. Who's this? She's not your..."
Percy narrowed his eyes and spoke coldly.
"Give it back!"
But the stupid bully didn't listen. Sloan passed the photo to his ugly cronies, who snickered and began tearing it up to make spitballs. They were new students who must have been visiting because they were all wearing those ridiculous "HI! MY NAME IS:" stickers handed out at reception.
They also seemed to have a strange sense of humor because all the stickers were filled out with weird names like "Bone-Sucker," "Brain-Eater," and "Skull-Crusher." No actual human beings had names like that.
"These guys are transferring here next year," Sloan bragged, as if that was supposed to intimidate him. "I bet they can afford this school, unlike your retard friend."
"He's not a retard..."
Percy took a deep breath to calm himself. He had to hold back with all his strength not to punch Sloan in the face.
"You're a loser, Jackson. Good thing I'm going to put you out of your misery next period."
The bullies' lackeys chewed up the photo Annabeth had sent him. Percy wanted to turn them into dust, but he remembered Chiron's strict orders never to take out his anger on regular mortals, no matter how detestable they were. He had to save his fights for monsters.
Still, part of him thought that if Sloan only knew who he really was...
The bell rang.
As Tyson and Percy were leaving class, a girl's voice whispered, "Percy!..."
He scanned the area near the lockers, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to him.
Unlike his best friend, Percy wasn't very popular with girls. There was no way a girl at Meriwether would ever call his name.
Before he had time to figure out whether he was imagining things, a crowd of boys rushed toward the gym, dragging him along with them. It was time for P.E. The coach had promised them an anything-goes dodgeball game.