𝕍𝕖𝕟𝕚 𝕍𝕚𝕕𝕚 𝕍𝕚𝕔𝕚¹ | ᴘᴇʀᴄʏ ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ

2. Annabeth gets busted for stalker behaviour

𓇼 Percy's day started normal, or at least as normal as it could have.

You see, he attends this 'progressive' school in downtown Manhattan called Meriwether Prep, which means that he gets to sit on beanbag chairs instead of at desks, and they don't get grades and the teachers wear jeans and rock concert T-shirts to work.

Which was amazing for him.

Percy had both ADHD and dyslexia, like most half-bloods, so he'd never done that well in regular schools even before they kicked him out. The only bad thing about Meriwether was that the teachers always looked on the bright side of things, and the kids weren't always...well, bright.

Take Percy's first class today: English, for example. The whole high school had read this book called Lord of the Flies, where all these kids get marooned on an island and go psycho.

So for their final exam, the teachers sent them, into the yard to spend an hour with no adult supervision to see what would happen. What happened was a massive wedgie contest between the ninth and tenth graders, two cat-fights fights and a full-tackle basketball game. The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most of those activities.

Sloan wasn't big or strong, but he acted like he was.

He had eyes like a pit bull and shaggy black hair, and he was always dressed in expensive but sloppy clothes. He was rich but trying to act like he didn't care about it and if Percy hadn't known his friend Lorelei, he might have been convinced. One of his front teeth was chipped because well, he was stupid.

Anyway, Sloan was giving everybody wedgies until he made the mistake of trying it on Percy's friend, Tyson.

Tyson was the only homeless kid at Meriwether College Prep.

Percy and his mum figured that he'd been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so... different. 

He was two metres tall and built like a rugby player, but he cried a lot and was scared of just about everything, including his reflection. His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. Percy had no idea what colour his eyes were. His voice was deep, but he talked funny, like a much younger kid – he guessed because he'd never gone to school before coming to Meriwether.

He wore tattered jeans, grimy size-twenty sneakers and a plaid flannel shirt with holes in it. He smelled like a New York City alleyway because that's where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box off 72nd Street.

Meriwether Prep had adopted him as a community service project so all the students could feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, most of them couldn't stand Tyson.

Once they discovered he was a big softie, despite his massive strength and his scary looks, they made themselves feel good by picking on him. Percy was pretty much his only friend, which meant he was Percy's only friend.

His mum had complained to the school a million times that they weren't doing enough to help him. She'd called social services, but nothing ever seemed to happen. The social workers claimed Tyson didn't exist.

They swore up and down that they'd visited the alley we described and couldn't find him, but how you miss a giant kid living in a refrigerator box, Percy doesn't know.

Anyway, Matt Sloan snuck up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and Tyson panicked. He swatted Sloan away a little too hard. Sloan flew five metres and got tangled in the little kids' tyre swing.

"You freak!" Sloan yelled. "Why don't you go back to your cardboard box!"

Tyson started sobbing. He sat down on the jungle gym so hard he bent the bar, and buried his head in his hands.