The Lightning Thief

“The letters float off the page when you read, right? That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom. That’s your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they’d keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that’s because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal’s.”

“That’s the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens.”

“You mean sometimes it doesn’t?”

Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. “The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and don’t always...Well, sometimes they don’t care about us, Percy. They ignore us.”

“Remind me again—why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

[...] “Look...we’re just not supposed to get along, okay? Our parents are rivals.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “How many reasons do you want? One time my mom caught Poseidon with his girlfriend in Athena’s temple, which is hugely disrespectful. Another time, Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron saint for the city of Athens. Your dad created some stupid saltwater spring for his gift. My mom created the olive tree. The people saw that her gift was better, so they named the city after her.”

“I appeared on my father’s doorstep, in a golden cradle [...] You’d think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he’d take some digital photos or something. But he always talked about my arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to him. When I was five he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a ‘regular’ mortal wife, and had two ‘regular’ mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn’t exist.”

“Can’t we work together a little?” I pleaded. “I mean, didn’t Athena and Poseidon ever cooperate?”

Annabeth had to think about it. “I guess...the chariot,” she said tentatively. “My mom invented it, but Poseidon created horses out of the crests of waves. So they had to work together to make it complete.”

“Then we can cooperate, too. Right?”

“So if the gods fight,” I said, “will things line up the way they did with the Trojan War? Will it be Athena versus Poseidon?”

She put her head against the backpack Ares had given us, and closed her eyes. “I don’t know what my mom will do. I just know I’ll fight next to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my friend, Seaweed Brain. Any more stupid questions?”

I looked at them both, and felt really grateful. Only a few minutes before, I’d almost gotten them stretched to death on deluxe water beds, and now they were trying to be brave for my sake, trying to make me feel better.

I thought maybe Annabeth and I both had the right idea. Even here in the Underworld, everybody—even monsters—needed a little attention once in a while.

Immediately I knew that’s where I wanted to go when I died.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Annabeth said, like she was reading my thoughts. That’s the place for heroes.”

But I thought of how few people there were in Elysium, how tiny it was compared to the Fields of Asphodel or even the Fields of Punishment. So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.

“More security ghouls,” he moaned. “Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!”

[...]

“Problems everywhere, and I’ve got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving.”

I felt like my heart was being ripped in two. They had both been with me through so much. [...] I had spent thousands of miles worried that I’d be betrayed by a friend, but these friends would never do that. They had done nothing but save me, over and over, and now they wanted to sacrifice their lives for my mom.

“Hades will be mad at both Zeus and Poseidon, because he doesn’t know who took this. Pretty soon, we got a nice little three-way slugfest going on.”

“But they’re your family!” Annabeth protested.

Ares shrugged. “Best kind of war. Always the bloodiest. Nothing like watching your relatives fight, I always say.”

My senses were working overtime. I now understood what Annabeth had said about ADHD keeping you alive in battle. I was wide awake, noticing every little detail.

I moved back into cabin three, but it didn’t feel so lonely anymore. I had my friends to train with during the day. At night, I lay awake and listened to the sea, knowing my father was out there. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure about me yet, maybe he hadn’t even wanted me born, but he was watching. And so far, he was proud of what I’d done.