Annabeth Chase and The Lightning Thief

Chaper 1: I Accidentally Vaporize My Math Teacher

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood

If you're reading this because you think you might be one as well here's my advice: Close this book right now! Believe whatever story your mom or dad have fed you about how you were born, and try to have a normal life

Being a half-blood is very dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time. It gets you killed in painful, gruesome, and utterly nasty ways.

If you're a normal kid or person, reading this because you think it's all fiction, fantastic. Read on. I envy you for having the ability to think none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You just might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and trust me they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Annabeth chase.

I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago. I was a student at Yancy Academy boarding school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Am I a troubled kid?

Well, I guess you could say that

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove that, but things really started going down hill last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan—twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a big yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at Ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know what you're thinking—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Burner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard. He also had a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and even let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong!

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga Battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that......know what, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was a very 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. On top of all this, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He always walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy Bobifit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.