yes. I am alive.

I hope everyone didn't forget about this story, haha. The first scene's been in my documents since May... so, um, whoops? Thanks to Insane PJO LOver, Miss Anonymous hp, Yankees27, and Mandi2341 for your amazing reviews :)

Recently, Mom started working longer hours at the candy store, which meant she couldn't pick me up after school. Which meant I had to ride the bus home. Which meant when I got home, Mom wasn't there, but Smelly Gabe was.

I don't think I've mentioned for a while how much I hate that guy.

Every time I got home and Mom wasn't there (which happened a lot now), Gabe stopped me before I could go to my room and demanded money. A lot of times I didn't even have any, but when I told him that he didn't believe me. He kept telling me to fork it over, and it took Eddie, our apartment building super, a long time to convince him that I really didn't have any.

When I actually did have money, Gabe knew it right away, and he wouldn't take no for an answer. There are two things Gabe can sniff out better than anyone else in the world: money and my mom's bean dip.

Today, I didn't have any money, but as usual, I got stopped.

"Cash?" Gabe asked expectantly.

"I don't have any," I said.

I started to walk away, but Gabe growled, "You little liar, get back here."

"He probably doesn't have any," Eddie said. He sounded bored.

"He's got some. Why would his mom send him to school with no cash?"

"I didn't need any today!" I said. It was stupid, how I had to go through the same thing every day, but Gabe just didn't get that I wasn't an automatic money machine.

"Then get me a beer. There's some in the fridge." I thought that was totally unfair, and beer was gross, and I really just wanted to go to my room, but if I didn't do what he said, he'd punch my lights out. Or harass me for money some more.

So I went and got the beer and slammed it down on the table. "I hope you choke on it." That has sort of become my after-school tradition when Gabe was being an idiot: I wished that something bad would happen to him. When I gave him money, I usually told him I hoped he lost. One time, he made me bring him his tie because he needed to get dressed for work, and I told him I hoped someone strangled him with it in his sleep. I'm kinda proud of that one.

"Yeah, sure," Gabe said as he popped the can open and took a drink. "Now you go away, I've got a game to finish."

One of his buddies threw a couple poker chips into the middle of the table and grinned. "It's your move, Ugliano."

Smelly Gabe took one look at the table, and I heard him curse under his breath. I let a small smirk slip onto my face as I walked to my room. He would've pounded me if he'd seen it, but luckily for me, he didn't see.

When my teacher at school said we were going on a field trip, I should have frozen up in terror and remembered all the other field trips I went on where bad stuff happened to me. I should have raised my hand and said I wouldn't be able to go because I had a dentist appointment that day, even though I didn't. I should have at least done something different than what I did do.

I looked at the paper the teacher handed out, and I got interested in it. It was blue, and it had pictures of sharks on it, and in big letters that took me forever to read, it said: "Behind-the-Scenes Tour of the Marine World Shark Pool!"

I'm not sure why, but I really wanted to go on this field trip. Couldn't my bad luck hold off for just a little while?

"If you are going to go on the field trip," the teacher said, "your parent or guardian needs to sign the bottom of this paper and you need to turn it in by May 1. That's a week before the trip."

I didn't hear what the teacher said after that. I was too busy staring at the pictures of the sharks.

I think Mom was kind of relieved that I actually wanted to go on this field trip, because she signed the paper right away when I gave it to her.

"I'm really gonna try to not cause any trouble this time," I said in a very serious voice as I took the signed paper back. "Well, I try all the time, but I'm gonna try even more this time."

Mom ruffled my hair and smiled. "I believe it, Percy." Usually, I didn't like it when she did that, but I didn't care much that time. I really wanted to make Mom proud by getting through the entire trip without getting expelled. I wanted to make Dad proud, too, when I thought about it, even though he'd never know what I was doing.

"Good!" I said with a smile, hopping off the chair I'd been sitting on and putting the field trip paper in my backpack, all ready to be turned in tomorrow.

I went to my room, feeling a lot better than I had earlier in the week. That was mostly because it was one of the rare days when Smelly Gabe was actually at work and not around to give me a hard time, but the thought of the shark pool helped, too.

The day of the trip, when I woke up, it was dark and cloudy. There were raindrops on the window. I wasn't super excited about the yucky weather, but at least today was the day that I would be going to the Marine World Shark Pool, so I thought it could've been worse.

I had to ride the bus to school, like usual, and I actually managed to get a seat next to a window, so I leaned against it and watched the raindrops slide down the glass while I thought about how today was going to be a good day.

Another sign that this was going to be the best field trip ever was that the teacher didn't split us up into groups like I was used to. The whole class would be walking together through the tour, so we didn't need to be in groups.

Okay, so it wasn't that great that I had to ride on the bus again, right after I'd gotten off the bus to get to school, but that was a small bad thing, and it hardly compared to all the good things. I didn't get a window seat this time, but I sat next to Calvin, who liked to draw, and he didn't really bother me.

It was still raining when the bus came to a stop outside Marine World. The bus jerked a little bit when it stopped, and Calvin said, "I dropped my pencil. Can you get it?"

I looked around on the floor, then I saw it, rolling around next to someone's shoes. I reached down, picked it up, and handed it to him.

"Ugh, it's all wet," Calvin said, wrinkling his nose and holding it with two fingers. "What happened to it?"

"It probably got into the water from someone's shoes," I said, trying to be helpful, but Calvin just shrugged and put the pencil in his pocket.

"You'll follow me up to the door," the teacher was saying from the front of the bus, "and once we're inside, stick with the rest of the group. Don't wander off!"

The entire fourth-grade class stood up and walked down the tiny little aisle in the middle of the bus. It wasn't really walking, though, it was more like shuffling, since there were so many of us all squished together and all trying to get out at the same time.

It was a good thing I wasn't clause-phobic. I used to think that meant being afraid of Santa Claus, but then I found out it meant being scared of little places instead. When I thought about it, there were lots of things I used to think meant different things than they actually mean.

When we were all finally out of the bus, we followed our teacher inside, where a tall, smiling tour guide was waiting for us.

"Welcome!" he said happily. "Are you ready for your one-of-a-kind, behind-the-scenes, adventure of a lifetime?"

Most of the people in my class nodded or mumbled "yeah." I was too busy looking beyond the tour guide, searching with my eyes for the shark pool - or any other pool, really. It was weird; it was like I could sense that there was lots of water close by, and I really wanted to see it. Maybe swim in it, but I didn't think that was allowed, so seeing it would be fine too.

"My name is Phil, and I will be your guide for today's tour," the guide said. "We're not going down that way." He pointed in the direction that everyone else was walking down. "You get the special door." He led us over to a set of double doors and opened them, propping them open with those wedge thingies that people put in doors.

After the doors, we walked down a long hallway, which was kind of boring, even though Phil tried to keep us from getting bored by telling us facts about sharks.

"Here at Marine World, we put a lot of work into giving our sharks living environments that are very similar to their natural habitats. There are more than four hundred and sixty-five species of sharks living in our oceans, but of course, we don't have all kinds here!"

We reached the end of the hallway and there was another set of double doors. Phil opened those, too, and we started to walk up a very long set of stairs, Phil still talking about sharks.

"Sharks have skeletons made of cartilage, which is more flexible and lighter than bones. Like most other fish, they breathe through gills. All sharks have multiple rows of teeth. They lose teeth far more often than we do, but that's okay, because new teeth always grow in to replace the ones they lose!"

I was impressed that Phil could talk non-stop while walking up all these stairs. I was getting kind of tired, and I guessed that he did this tour a lot.

"Most sharks eat fish, crustaceans, mollusks, plankton, krill, or even other sharks. They have a very strong sense of smell, as well. Contrary to popular belief, sharks do not normally attack humans, but you should not ever try to provoke a shark or go into shark-infested waters with an open wound."

Finally, we arrived at the top of the stairs, and Phil opened some more doors. These doors, however, led onto a narrow bridge looking over something - something that I hoped was the shark tank.

"Here we are!" Phil said. "This catwalk goes directly over the shark tank. Be very careful not to touch anything, as there are important controls that should not be messed with by anyone except Marine World personnel."

Well, we were there. I couldn't help myself from smiling as I went with my class out onto the catwalk. Some of the girls were looking over the edge nervously, and I heard one of them say to Isabelle, "This is a really tiny railing, do you think we can fall?"

"We won't fall," Isabelle said. "Well, not unless you fall over. But you'd have to be stupid to do that. Or if you messed with the controls. But you'd have to be stupid to do that, too."

Calvin had taken out his notebook and pencil and was looking over the edge, drawing. I glanced at his paper and saw that he was sketching one of the sharks.

"If you'll look down there," Phil said, leaning over the railing slightly and pointing at a large shark swimming around towards the top of the water, "you'll see a Hammerhead shark."

Most people crowded around Phil to see the Hammerhead shark, but I went a little ways down, apart from everyone else, to a spot next to a few levers. I leaned against the railing, looking down into the water. There were plenty of sharks swimming around, and I thought they were really cool.

I felt strangely relaxed, looking down into the water. There was something about this place that I just liked, although as I kept looking into the water, different thoughts started to crawl into my head. Impatient, frustrated, urgent thoughts.

We're trapped, I thought, but I didn't think I was thinking it. Will you help? I've never seen the ocean.

I blinked, leaning a little further over the edge. It was almost like the sharks were talking to me! But that was impossible; sharks couldn't talk. I was probably imagining it. Mom always said I had a good imagination. Yeah, I'll help, I thought, trying to continue the adventure in my head.

Oh, thank you, master. How will you get us out? I had managed to stump myself. I really had no idea how I would ever get all those sharks out of the tank. (It's not like I would, anyway. It was all just in my head. I was imagining a story. Maybe I'd tell Mom about it later!)

"Hey," said someone, and I thought it was still my imagination, but then I realized it wasn't in my head. It was someone real, who was standing right next to me. I stood up straight and looked over to see Isabelle.

"What?" I was still kind of mad at her, although we hadn't talked since the incident at lunch a few weeks ago.

"I wanna look there. Phil said we could spread out and look wherever we wanted, and I wanna look there." She pointed right where I was standing.

"But I'm looking here," I said. "You can look somewhere else. Or here, once I leave."

"You're so annoying," she said. "Why can't I look right there?"

"Because I am!" I said.

She crossed her arms. "But you've been looking there for, like, an hour. It's my turn."

I let go of the railing, turning to face her. "No, it's not!"

"You're impossible!" Isabelle, frowning, reached out and gave me a shove. I hadn't been expecting that, and I stumbled backwards. I didn't want to hit the floor, so I stretched out an arm to break my fall, but my arm didn't hit the floor. It smacked against one of the levers that I'd forgotten about, which hurt, but I grabbed onto it so I could get my balance yet. But the lever gave under my weight and went down, and suddenly, the floor was slipping.

At first, I didn't know why, but then I saw that the catwalk had broken apart in the middle and the two sides were slanting downwards. I watched, horrified but frozen, and I realized that I had done this.

There was a splash as people started falling into the shark tank.

"Who pulled the lever?" I heard Phil yell. He was on the opposite side of the catwalk, looking as terrified as I was. There was no way I was admitting to accidentally pulling the lever, but I had bigger problems at the moment. The catwalk was still slanting downwards, and I was starting to slip. I tried to brace myself, but since the tread on my shoes was worn thin from use, I just slipped downwards, and then I toppled head-over-heels into the shark pool.

At first, I didn't know which way was up and which way was down. I was just floating around, and I had been holding my breath out of instinct. When I started to feel dizzy, I remembered what Mom had told me about getting out of water, and I breathed out just a little bit and watched the direction of the bubbles. I tried to go that direction, because I knew it was up, and for some reason, my arms and legs didn't feel heavy and tired.

Soon, I reached the top, and I took a few gulps of breath. The rest of my class was popping up on the surface of the water, soaking wet, and one boy was crying.

"I... I... I gotta paper cut!" he sobbed. "I got it this morning, and it was bleeding, and I didn't have time to put on a Band-Aid! The sharks are gonna get me!"

"Will everyone please stay calm!" my teacher yelled. If I wasn't so scared of getting in trouble, I would have thought it was funny to see her, completely soaked, yelling at us in the middle of the shark pool. Phil was bobbing in the water several feet away, yelling into his radio, but I think it was probably broken.

We weren't in the water for much longer before some Marine World workers came and made the catwalk right again. Then, they helped us up using some platform thing that went down and hovered right over the water.

"This is what we use to feed the sharks, normally," one of the workers said. "All right, now, we can start loading people on - five or six at a time, this isn't the sturdiest of platforms-"

As groups of people were lifted out of the water, they were taken back to the place where we'd come in and met Phil. I was in a group with Calvin, and while the platform was slowly taking us up to the catwalk, he said in surprise, "Percy! You're dry!"

"What?" I looked down at myself, and it was only then that I realized that my clothes weren't wet at all. Neither was my body. I reached up and ran my hand through my hair, and found out that that, too, was dry. I didn't know why, so I just shrugged. "I had waterproof clothes." That was a stupid excuse, I was wearing jeans. "And I just... I dry really quick." I snapped. "Like that."

"Cool," Calvin said, looking impressed. He was still holding his notebook, but it was wet and dripping, and you probably couldn't see any of his drawings anymore.

My group got up to the catwalk and went back down the stairs and through the hallway back to the entrance. Once my whole class, my teacher, and Phil were all there, Phil looked at us all and said, very seriously, "Who pulled that lever?"

I looked down at my shoes. I sure wasn't going to admit, because if I did, I'd get in trouble, and that would basically be breaking my promise to Mom about not not causing trouble. (Well, I'd already broken the promise, but I didn't want her to know.)

"Someone did it," Phil said impatiently. "We will stay here until someone confesses."

"It was him!" Isabelle shrieked, pointing at me. My head shot up. "It was Percy! He pulled the lever. I told him not to!"

In my head, I said one of Smelly Gabe's favorite swear words.

It looked like Mom was going to find out about me causing trouble after all.