The Untold Story of Annabeth Chase

PART 1- Chapter 1

I DO NOT OWN PERCY JACKSON. All rights go to Rick Riordan and Disney Hyperion. ;)

The Untold Story of Annabeth Chase

PART 1

The spiders came again last night.

I could hear them coming, crawling under my door and in my window.

They came closer, scuttling up the legs of my bed and onto my mattress.

I hid under the covers, hoping it would keep them away. It didn't.

It only made it impossible to escape as the spiders began to crawl up my legs.

I tried to untangle myself from the blankets, but it was no use. I was suffocating. I had trapped myself.

I wasn't going to scream. There was no way I was going to give my stepmother the satisfaction of telling me it was just a dream, that she needed her beauty sleep and that I had to go back to bed.

The spiders were still coming. They crawled under my shirt and tickled my bare stomach. They searched around in my hair and ran between my fingers. I felt them start to crawl into my mouth, inching down my throat. Pretty soon they would make it into my lungs, filling them up so I wouldn't be able to breathe.

I couldn't help it. I screamed. I screamed for my stepmother. I screamed for my half-brothers, Bobby and Matthew. I screamed for my father, even though he was on a business trip hundreds of miles away and couldn't possibly help me, I screamed. No one came.

I suppose you expect me to wake up now, right? To run into my father's room, tell him I'd had a nightmare, crawl into his bed and go back to sleep. But that's not what happened. Because it wasn't a dream.

My name is Annabeth Chase. And this is my life.

That was the second night in a row the spiders came. As soon as I woke up this morning, I ran into my stepmother's room. But, just like the night before, as soon as I got there, the bites had faded. I stood there, yelling and crying, in my ruined pyjamas and some very fake-looking spider webs.

My stepmother said what she always said, that there were no spiders, and that I needed to stop with this silly prank. That she had two little boys to take care of and that I had to be the responsible one. She didn't seem to notice that I was a third-grader with ADHD and dyslexia.

The spiders had come before, but my father had always been there. This time, my father was out of town. I was alone with the evil stepmother and the two little step-monsters.

Deep down, I understood why my stepmother didn't believe me. It was because she didn't know who I really am. She couldn't possibly understand why the spiders hate me, or why they seem to follow me everywhere. She never questioned the fact that I had never met my mother, never even seen a picture. If she thought it was odd that I had dyslexia and attention deficit problems but I was still the top of my class, she didn't say so. She didn't understand how I spoke Ancient Greek or why I was such a good fighter, and there was no way I was going to tell her.

But I can tell you.

My name is Annabeth Chase.

I am seven years old.

And I am the daughter of Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Confused? I would be too. But I'll explain everything if you're patient enough to listen to my story.