Okay, so I didn't want to be a half-blood. No one does.

But if you reading this because you think you might be one, than just don't read this book at all. This could get you killed because of your scent. But please, stop reading and try to pretend you never read this.

It could save your life, it could make it better. I don't know, I'm not you.

But if you're a normal kid, and you think this is just a fiction book, good for you. Read on, and see what happens in my life. What happens in every half-bloods life.

If you feel rousing up inside of you-stop immediately. You could be one of us. And when you know, you're not safe anymore because they can now sense you. They'll come for you, hunt you down like a pack of wolves.

Now you can't say that I never warned you.

My name is Persia Jackson, Persi for short. I'm 12 years old.

I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in New York.

People have asked me if I think that I'm a troubled kid. Normally, I would say something like, 'what's it gotta do with you,' and then storm off. But privately I do.

I could start at any point in my short and miserable life to prove my statement, but things started to go really bad last May, when my sixth-grade class took a field trip to Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan.

Yeah, I know it's a bad idea to take twenty-eight mental-case kids and only two teachers to look after them, but it wasn't my idea. They were taking us to see the Ancient Greek and Roman artifacts.

Don't call me a nerd or anything, but I was pretty interested. My mom used to tell me bedtime stories of Ancient Greek heroes accomplishments.

Most Yancy field trips are boring- bit I had pretty high hopes since it was a topic I wouldn't get put to sleep on and I had my Latin teacher, Mr. Brunner.

Who's Mr. Brunner, you say? Well, he was this middle-aged man who was in a wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and always used to wear a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelt like coffee. You wouldn't think so, but he's pretty cool.

He told us stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He had some awesome armour and weapons so he obviously had my attention.

I hoped that this trip would be okay, that I wouldn't get in trouble.

And, god, was I wrong.

You see, bad things happen to me on field trips.

At my fifth-grade school, we went to the Saratoga battlefield. I kinda had a little accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I thought it wasn't loaded, and it was.

I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but I got expelled anyway.

And before that, at my fourth grade school, we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I was leaning against the catwalk and somehow hit a lever so my class had an unplanned swim. And before that… Well, I could tell you but that would take forever.

So, obviously, I was determined to be good.

It was kind of hard to when I had to put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly red-headed kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend, Grover, in the back of his head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich. I don't know how he felt, he was the one who was going to clean his hair.

I'm sorry to say this but Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny.

He cried when he got frustrated. He must have been held back a couple of grades because he was the only sixth-grader to have the start of a wispy beard on his chin.

On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, as if every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you.

Boy, you should see him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy was throwing bits of her sandwich that kept on sticking in his curly brown hair. She knew I couldn't do anything to her since I was on probation.

The headmaster had threatened me with an in school suspension, if anything bad, embarrassing, weird or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

It's not that I try to be bad, I just get agitated easily.

"I can't wait till we get back," I cracked my knuckles, "I will finally be able to kill her.' I mumbled.

Grover tried, and failed, to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter." He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch,

"Oh, that's it." I started to get up, but Grover ruined my fun by pulling me back down.

"You're already on probation." He reminded me. "You know who will be blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, showing us the way through the big echoey galleries, past the marble statues and glass cases full of thousands of years old black-and-orange pottery.

I wonder how all the artifacts survived, thousands of years later.

He stopped us around a four-meter-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides.

I was trying to listen to what he was saying since it was one subject which I liked but everybody around me were talking. Every time I told them to shut up, the other chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this small maths teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to drive a Harley Davidson right into your locker, and wouldn't even care about it.

She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last maths teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and thought I was demon spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, 'Now, honey,' really sweet so than I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, she made me scrub the girl bathroom toilets, with my toothbrush. I told Grover I didn't think that Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me seriously and said, 'You're totally right.'

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Ancient Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele so I turned around a said, 'Will you shut up?'

And, of course, it came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Miss Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

I swear you could've fried an egg, my face was that hot.

I said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele.

"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving and felt a flush of relief since it was a carving I knew so much about.

"That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because…"

"Kronos was the king Titan and he was told of a prophecy that his kids, the gods, would overthrow him. So he ate them, right? His wife, Rhea, didn't like it so when she gave birth to their sixth child, Zeus, she hid him and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. Later, when Zeus was grown up, he was Kronos' cupbearer and gave him a potion which made him be sick, and throw up his brothers and sisters-"

"Ewww!" said one of the girls behind me.

"- and then there was a huge fight, which lasted years, between the gods and the Titans'," I continued," and the gods won."

I could hear a snicker or two from my class.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.' "

"And why, Miss Jackson," Mr. Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face an even brighter red then her hair.

At least Nancy got in trouble, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I thought about Mr. Brunner's question and bit my lip.

I shrugged, "I don't know, sir."

"I see," Mr. Brunner looked disappointed.

"Well, half credit Miss Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of wine and mustard. Which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach."

"The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the deepest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, could you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off. The girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like complete idiots.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Miss Jackson."

I had a feeling that was coming.

I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned towards Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go- intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and seen everything.

"You must learn to answer my question," Mr. Brunner told me.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he said," is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will only accept the best from you, Persi Jackson."

I started to get a little annoyed, he pushed me so hard.

Yeah, it is kinda cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted: 'What ho!' and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who ever lived, their mother and what god they worshipped.

Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I have never made above a C- in my life.

No- let me take that back. He expects me to be better. I couldn't just learn all those name and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, I could see a huge storm brewing, with clouds blacker then I have ever seen in the city. I figured that it might be global warming since the weather across New York State has been weird since Christmas.

There had been massive snow storms, flooding, and wildfires from lightning strikes. To be honest- I bet there would soon be a hurricane blowing in.

No one was noticing. Some of the boys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from some lady's purse and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We figured that maybe if we did that, nobody would know that we were from that school- the school for idiots who couldn't make it anywhere else.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nope," I said, "Not from Mr. Brunner. I just wish he could stop going at me. I mean- I'm not a genius."

Grover didn't say anything for a while.

Then, when I thought he was going to pull his first girly moment- like I keep on asking him- to help me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

I wasn't very hungry so I gave it to him.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little way uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home.

She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too.

She'd send me right back to Yancy and remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to get kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel.

A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me. Apparently she got bored of stealing from the tourists. She dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap while her followers stood behind her, giggling.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if someone spray painted her face with liquid Cheetos. Also found in a Dictionary under the word ugly.

I tried to stay calm- I really did. I counted to ten in all the languages I know. I tried to imagine something back happening to Nancy, but today it didn't seem to work.

A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her but the next thing I knew, Nancy was trying to sit up and soaking wet in the fountain screaming, "Persi pushed me!"

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed her-"

I had no idea what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds checked that poor little Nancy was okay, promising to buy her a new shirt at the museum's gift shop, etc, Mrs. Dodds turned on me.

There was a triumphant gleam in her eye, as if I've done something she's been waiting for all semester.

"Now, honey-"

"I know," I grumbled, "Time to get scrubbing toilets, again."

I don't think that was the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe that he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But-"

"You- will- stay- here."

Grover looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, Grover. You tried."

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. I heard it works like a treat. I turned around to face Mrs. Dodds but she wasn't there. She was at the entrance of the museum, folded her arms, and tapping her feet impatiently.

I started walking up the steps, my brain whirling. My councilor told me since I have ADHD that means I have moments when my brain shuts off for a moment. She calls it misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure.

I went after Mrs. Dodds.

Half-way up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale and his eyes were darting between me and Mr. Brunner, as if he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on but Mr. Brunner was too absorbed into his novel then to concentrate on whatever Grover wanted.

I looked back up.

Mrs. Dodds was walking into the museum entrance. I ran to catch up with her.

Okay, I thought. So she wants me to buy Nancy a shirt at the gift shop?

Apparently that wasn't the plan.

We went deeper into the museum until we got to the Greek and Roman section.

It was empty.

She walked further ahead but stopped when she got next to a statue of Hades.

She turned and folded her arms, growling.

I chuckled nervously, thinking Mrs. Dodds was joking around. She never does that, a paranoid part of my brain said.

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.

I did the safe thing. "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you think that you could get away with it?" Her eyes… They look murderous.

She can't hurt me, she can't hurt me, I chanted nervously in my head.

"I'll- I'll try harder ma'am." I whispered.

The whole building shook. Lightning was lighting up the sky.

"We are not fools, Persi Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out."

"Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I had no idea what she was talking about.

All I could think about was that the teachers found out about the illegal stash of candy I've been selling to the boys. Or maybe it was that they realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the internet without reading the book and they are going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me actually read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't…"

"Your time is up," she hissed. The strangest thing happened.

Her eyes began to glow like barbeque coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings.

She wasn't human.

She was a shriveled old hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me into ribbons.

Then things got even weirder.

Mr. Brunner, who had been sitting outside the museum a minute ago, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Persi!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talon slash the air next to my ear. I grabbed the ballpoint pen out of the air but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore.

It was a sword.

To be even more precise, it was the bronze sword Mr. Brunner used on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spun towards me, with an evil look in her eyes.

My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad, I almost dropped the sword.

Mrs. Dodds swooped down and screeched, "Die, honey!"

Terror ran through my being. I did the only thing that came naturally.

I swung the sword.

The blade hit her shoulder and passed easily through her body as if she was made out of water.

Mrs. Dodds turned to dust with a Hiss. She left a chill of evil hanging in the air.

I was alone with a ballpoint pen in my hand. My hands were trembling.

Did my lunch contain magic mushrooms or something?

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I shivered and ran back to the entrance. It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain with a museum map over his head.

Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her followers.

When she saw me she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

I gaped at her. "Who?"

"Our teacher, duh!"

I blinked, we had no teacher called Mrs. Kerr.

I asked Nancy what she was talking about. She rolled her eyes and wandered off.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first so I know he was lying.

"Not funny, Grover! Now seriously, where is she?"

"I don't know who you're talking about."

Thunder boomed, above us.

I saw Mr. Brunner in his motorized café so I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted.

"Ah, Persi. That would be my pen so please bring your own writing utensils in the future, Miss. Jackson."

I handed it over, I forgot all about the pen.

"Sir, where's Mrs. Dodds?" I asked him.

He stared at me blankly, "Who?"

"You know, the other chaperone."

Mr. Brunner frowned and sat forwards looking concerned.

"Persi, there are no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?"