"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
AFTER THE LAST TRIP, THE AMTRAK TRAIN WAS WEIRDLY CALM. It was a two day trip, and nothing happened. We weren't attacked. Nothing came barreling out of the forests or hills or rivers we went through. No evil grandmas tried to beat us with weaponized purses.
It was disturbing.
Let me make myself clear, I don't usually go onto trains expecting to get attacked. But we hadn't even been able to sit at a bus stop for a few hours without being sniffed out. Now you expect me to believe that we're sitting here without being spotted? Unlikely. I was convinced that there were monsters waiting just outside, only kept from us by the fact they couldn't figure out how to get on the train.
Even if there weren't monsters, we still wouldn't be safe. Percy and I had made the front pages of almost every newspaper I could name.
The Trenton Register News showed a photo taken as we got off the Greyhound bus. We weren't exactly cutting a heroic figure. Percy's face was the clearest, and he looked seconds from biting someone's face off. The sling shot attached to my belt was clear – I guess a kid carrying around a sling shot wasn't too weird for peoples' minds – but Riptide was a strange blur. It could have been a baseball bat or lacrosse stick, or any other long metallic object.
The picture was captioned:
Twelve-year-olds Percy and Attie Jackson, wanted for question in the Long Island disappearance of their mother two weeks ago (two weeks? That made my head hurt), is shown here fleeing from the bus where they accosted several elder female passengers (unfair!). The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after the Jacksons fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the children may be traveling with two teenage accomplices (Accomplices? Do they think we blew up the bus or something? Did no one else see the giant lightning strike?) Their stepfather, Gabe Ugliano (Ew), has offered a cash reward for information leading to their capture.
"Don't worry," Annabeth told us. "Mortal police could never find us."
I didn't believe her.
I was afraid to leave my seat. Annabeth sat between me and the aisle, as if she might block me from being spotted. How Percy was able to pace up and down the compartment was beyond me – It was his face everyone would remember. Much of the time, I would stare out the window, trying to distract myself.
It's weird. Before two weeks ago, I hardly ever noticed weird things. Maybe it was because I always blamed myself or Percy. Sure, weird stuff happened to and around us, but it was because we were bad kids, right? We messed something up. Our imagination ran wild.
Now that I knew the truth, everything stood out like a sore thumb.
One time, a family of centaurs galloped across a wheat-field as we road past. A little boy centaur, looking like a second-grader on a pony, waved to Percy. No one else noticed.
