"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.
THIS IS WHERE WE GET TO THE FUN PART. Depending on we you're reading this, you've probably heard this story before. Except it's not the version you'll remember – and don't just mean the whole "gods are real and tried to end the world" part. Between the mist and the news, this was probably the story you heard:
Ares took the place of a "crazy kidnapper" who had taken my brother and I, along with two other adolescents, in New York. He'd held us hostage on a cross-country odyssey of terror.
Percy and I? We weren't international criminals. All the chaos we had called was are attempts to get away from our horrible captor. The commotion of the Greyhound wasn't us harassing some old ladies, but a failed attempt to escape. The mist even got the witnesses to believe they had seen Ares on the bus, even though he was probably no where close. He'd also been the one to blow up the St. Louis Arch – after all, what kid could have done that?
Suddenly, that waitress came back to help us. Ares had already scared her, I'm sure, but now she was certain she had seen us being threatened by him.
Finally, those brave Jackson kids had stolen some weapons (Percy's sword became a gun, but they couldn't seem to figure out what to do with my slingshot) from their captor in Los Angeles and battled him for their freedom. Five police cars had been destroyed as the captor fled, but there were no fatalities. The children were safely in police custody.
("True heroes", they called us. I was cracking up at this point.)
"All we want," Percy said, choking back tears. "is to see our loving stepfather again. Every time we saw him on TV, call us delinquent punks, we knew...somehow...we would be okay."
I nodded and sniffled dramatically. "Such a kind man. So kind, I suppose, he'd like to reward all of you, the people of this wonderful city of Los Angeles, for your help."
"A free major appliance from his store," Percy declared. "Here's his number."
What can I say? We were having some fun.
Our performance moved the crowd so much that they passed around the hat and raised money for four tickets on the next plane to New York.
I knew there was no other choice. That maybe Zeus would take pity on us given the circumstances. Or maybe he'd just not want to destroy his own weapon in the wreck. None of these thoughts made me feel better, though, and I ended up sitting in the middle isle with a look of terror. Every spot of turbulence had me writing my mental will. It was only when we landed at La Guardia that I felt safe, and even then I wasn't entirely convinced Zeus wouldn't just smite us there out of spite.
