Rewrite of 1st Percy Jackson book

I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER

Cammie: Look, we didn't ask to be half-bloods.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my brother—Percy—is going to give you some advice. Percy?

Percy: Oh, right, my turn. My advice: close this book right now and never, ever, pick it up again. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about you birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. Way no one wants to die.

Cammie: If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, good. Continue reading as though all of this isn't real. I envy you for that.

Percy: But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they realize it too, and come for you.

Cammie: as cool as it sounds to be one of us—and it is sometimes, I'll admit it—it's not worth the risk.

Percy: Don't say we didn't warn you.

Cammie: You want to start it off, Bro?

My name is Percy Jackson. Short for Perseus. My sister—twin sister—is named Cameron Jackson. Cammie for short.

We're twelve years old. Until a few months ago, we were boarding students at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Are we troubled?

Yeah, I guess you could say that. Cam prefers to think of artistically destructive.

I could start at any point in our short, quite miserable life to prove it, but things got really bad last May, when our 6th grade class went on a field trip to Manhattan—don't know what they were thinking, sending 28 'troubled' kids with only two teachers for supervision—one of them being in a wheelchair—to the Metropolitan Museum of art to look at a bunch of Greek and Roman stuff.

Sounds boring, right? Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had high hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class, and when people where being obnoxious, looked the other way while Cammie threw cut up pieces of an unfortunate pink eraser at them. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped that this trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once me and Cammie wouldn't leave with the promise of in school suspension.

Boy was I wrong.

See, bad things happen to us on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, there was this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus (in all fairness, Cam was the one who aimed it), but of course we still got expelled. And before that, at our fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, Cammie leaned up against the wall… and kind of hit the lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that… well, you get the idea.

On this trip, Cammie and me were determined to be good; even if that meant we hat to tie our hands behind our backs and shove something in our mouths to keep us quite. We had the supplies in our backpacks, plus more. Just in case.

But it's hard to behave when Nancy Bobofit kept throwing peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich at our buddy Grover.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and 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, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

"I'm going to kill her," I muttered.

"Ooo," Cammie cooed evilly. "I'll help. How do you suppose we execute this plan? We could make it look like an accident. Ooo! Ooo! I still have that brick, you know, the one from when we were in fourth grade, and the school's kitchen blew up? Remember, I stole one of the bricks? We could use that to hit her over the head. Or death by peanut butter! It's twistedly ironic, like you see in all those crime shows. We'll just poison it or something, and wait for her to eat it and then bam! No more Nancy Bobofit."

I looked at her, and cocked my head to the side. "You've thought about this before, haven't you?"

She nodded proudly.

"As, um… nice as that is guys," Grover said, a bit uncomfortable with Cammie's plans. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

Cammie looked at him strangely. "In your hair?"

He shrugged as another piece hit him, blushing. You see, Grover used to have this huge—and I mean huge—crush on Cammie. He's gotten over it, now they were close, but he still got red in the face when she talked to him directly. And Cammie was, of course, clueless.

"That's it," I hissed. "Cam, back me up." She got up out of her seat, hopping over Grover who sat between us.

He grabbed Cam's arm, pulling her down. "No guys. Don't you remember? You're still on probation."

"Oh right," Cam mussed, tapping her chin.

"Still, punching her would at least tide me over till we're off probation," I muttered.

Looking back on it, I really should have gone and decked her. That way we'd be suspended (seeing how the school seemed to think the two of us worked in pairs), and what happened next would never have occurred.

Mr. Brunner led the tour.

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

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years. I watched as every piece of pottery, and marble made Cammie's eyes shine. While Cam could be a bit nonchalant, and intimidating at times, she was obsessed with some of the things we learned in class with Mr. Brunner. While she might not be able to read the stuff he taught us, you could just see that she was hooked on every story he told us.

Mr. Brunner gathered us around a thirteen-foot-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 about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia—Cam personally thinks she's from mars—who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into you locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown. Poor Ms. Gibens. She didn't stand a chance in this school. Most teachers don't. I've had three different science teacher this year. The school is currently looking for a new one.

From her fist day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured me and Cam were the spawn of the devil. It figures she would like her. Evil people attract. Mrs. Dodds would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

Once Cammie told Nancy to shut up in class, and hand to sit in the math classroom erasing answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, and when she came back and told us she didn't think she was human, Grover had a serious look on his face and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Nancy snickered about the naked guy on the stele, and I decided I'd had enough. Spinning on her, I said, "Will you shut up?"

Okay, that came out a bit lauder then I hoped. Everyone started laughing. Mr. Brunner paused.

"Do you have a comment, Mr. Jackson?" He asked.

Cammie and Grover were still snickering. Cam was kind of glaring at Nancy, who looked like she had won some kind of battle. How she could be amused and angry at the same time was beyond me, but she managed it.

Facing Mr. Brunner, I answered his question. "No, Sir."

"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?" he asked pointing to one of the pictures on the stele. It was a good think I recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," he said, still not satisfied. "And why would he do this?"

"Well he was king god, and—"

"God?"

"Titan," Cammie reminded me quietly.

"Let him fix his own mistakes, Ms. Jackson," he said, raising his hand to stop her.

"Titan," I corrected myself. "and he didn't trust his kids so he ate them, but his wife hid baby Zeus, and when he was all grown up he tricked his dad into barfing out all his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" some girl yelled.

"—and then there was a big fight between god and titan and the gods won."

"Hurray!" Cammie yelled, waving her hands in the air like she had just won the lottery. Everyone started laughing.

Behind me, Nancy whispered to her 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," Mr. Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover and Cam sang in perfect unison.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter than her hair.

At least she got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only teacher to ever catch Nancy saying something wrong. Got to love those radar ears of his.

I thought about his question but came up with nothing. I looked to Cammie for help. She shrugged. "I don't know, Sir."

"I see," he said, looking utterly disappointed in me. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, 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 in to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside."

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

Grover, Cam and me following behind everyone, ready to scarf down some food, when Mr. Brunner said, "Jacksons?"

"Darn should have seen that coming," Cammie hissed.

I elbowed her, and told Grover to keep going. "Yes sir?"

His eyes held mine, refusing to let me go—intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You two must learn the answer to my question," he said.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it. Especially what I teach you."

"Oh."

"I don't understand why I'm here," Cammie said. "You didn't ask me to answer your question. I might have known the answer."

"Than what's the answer, Miss Jackson?"

"I said might," she mumbled.

"What you learn from me," he said, going on, "Is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you two."

Cammie swallowed hard—a tell-tail sign that she was trying to keep her mouth shut. I was angry too. This guy pushed us so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected us to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that we had dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, and that we had never made anything above a C in our life. No—he didn't expect us to be as good; he expected us to be better. And we just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

"We'll try harder, sir," I mumbled.

"Go out and eat your lunch," Mr. Brunner said, looking with sad eyes at the stele, as though he had been at this girl's funeral.

"At least he isn't treating us like all those other teachers," Cammie said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"At least he treats us like we can actually learn something. That just because we have dyslexia and stuff that we can still be better then everyone else."

"But we can't," I said.

She wiggled her pointer finger. "Not with an attitude like that we can."

Laughing, I shoved her. "Whatever. It just gets on my nerves."

"Oh trust me, it gets on mine to, but as your favorite sister, I must be the voice of reason in situations like this. I must see all the dark spots and turn them into light!"

"Of course," I nodded mockingly. "You are the giver of light!"

She nodded, smiling.

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

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker then I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lighting strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grove, Cam and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we didn't that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention," Grover asked as we sat down.

"Mr. Brunner?" I scoffed.

"and Detention?" Cam laughed, finishing the sentence. "Never! Just a lecture."

I sighed. "Just wish he'd lay off sometimes."

"We're not geniuses," Cammie scoffed, momentarily quitting her job as the light giver.

Grover was quite. Usually, at times like this, when Cammie didn't feel like being the voice of reason, Grover stood up, and gave us some deep philosophical comment to make us feel better, but he said, "Can I have your apple?"

I wasn't very hungry, so I tossed him my apple.

"Why you so silent, brother," Cam asked in the strange voice she always used to make me laugh.

"I have a bad feeling, Sis," I uttered, ignoring her attempt, looking around.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so badly to go see her. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, reminding me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd given me.

"Thinking about mom?" Cammie asked, a sad look in her eyes. She was staring out at the road too.

"Yeah. You too?"

She nodded. "You think she'd hate me if I left this school and never came back?"

"I don't think mom could ever hate you, Cam." I looked down at her. She was only a little smaller than me, but I was up one step, making me taller. "Are you planning on running away?"

Grover turned to us, a startled look on his face. He knew better than to barge in on times were me and Cam we having deep conversations like this, but I could tell he wanted to.

"Maybe," she shrugged. "I would if you came with." She leaned forward, looking at Grover. "You too buddy."

"Me? running away?" Grover stuttered. "I don't know."

Cammie sighed.

I slid down a step, and put an arm around her. "I'd go with ya."

She smiled, hugging me. "I know. You can't live without me." She sighed again. "I won't though. I don't want to disappoint mom."

Giving her a small squeeze, I let her go.

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.

In the corner of my eye, I saw Cammie steel the apple from Grover, seemingly over the whole running away thing, taking his peanut butter jar, using her spoon to spread peanut butter all over the apple, staring off the Nancy as she came closer.

Nancy and her mob of friends stopped right in front of us, smiling cruelly. Then, she dumped her lunch all over Grover. "Opps," she giggled.

I don't remember touching her. I don't remember Cammie touching her ether. And I know for a fact that Grover didn't push Nancy into the fountain.

"They pushed me!" Nancy screamed.

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

"Who pushed you?" she asked, staring intently at me and Cammie.

"Them!" Nancy yelled, pointing at us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

"They didn't even touch her," one girl said to herself, mesmerized.

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on us. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, Honey—"

Cammie groaned. "Yeah, yeah, we get it. A month erasing workbooks. Yada, yada, yada."

Really Cam? Really?

"Come with me," she said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped, looking afraid for his life. "It was me. I pushed her."

Mrs. Dodds glared at him so hard, I'm sure is she glared any harder, lasers would shoot out of her eyes, leaving Grover with a hole in his head.

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

"But—"

"You—will—stay—here."

Grover looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, man," I told him. "We'll be fine. Thanks for trying."

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

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Cammie gave her something better. Looking down at the peanut butter covered apple in her hand, she shrugged as if saying "I can't get into more trouble then I already am", and then proceeded to throw in at Nancy, hitting her head. The peanut butter stuck for all of a second before falling to the ground. The look of utter disbelief was hilarious.

Stifling a laugh, I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure.

I looked to Cam. She nodded at me. It happened to her too.

I went after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, butting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

"He worries too much," Cammie sighed. "What does he think she's going to do? Eat us?"

I shrugged. "He's a worry-wart. What did you expect?"

"Confidence in us to defend ourselves from children-eating witches," she snickered.

"Don't let the children-eating witch hear you say that," I whispered.

I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was not inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

"How much do you think a t-shirt costs here?" Cammie asked, pulling one dollar bills from her pocket, assuming we were going to have to buy Nancy a new shirt at the gift shop.

"Ten."

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Cammie stopped suddenly, worry on her face. Is she bi-polar or what?

"You know that bad feeling you were having earlier," Cammie asked, leaning in to whisper in my ear.

"Yeah?"

"I just got it too."

Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it…

"You've been giving us problems, Honey," she said, turning on us. "That's going to change."

Thinking that maybe saying that we didn't do anything wasn't the best idea, I took the safe road, and said, "Yes, Ma'am."

Mrs. Dodds started making that weird noise again, and it was really starting to scare me. But it was terrifying Cammie.

Cam grabbed my hand, moving behind me, using me as a shield. "Percy," she hissed, gripping my hand tighter. I looked at her, wondering what got her in such a tizzy. Sure, Mrs. Dodds was scary, but not that scary.

Mrs. Dodds tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you were going to get away with it?"

The look in her eyes were beyond mad. They were evil.

Cammie tugged on my hand again. "Percy."

"What," I snapped, feeling bad about it limitedly.

Cammie didn't mind though. "Let's go," she pleaded. "Please Percy. I don't want to be here. She looks strange. She don't look human."

"She's not going to hurt us," I said softly, ignoring the human comment.

"Percy—"

"Did you really think you could get away with it?" Mrs. Dodds intruded. "Did you really thing no one would find out?"

I gave her a confused look. "What do you mean?"

She stared growling again, causing Cammie to plant her face in my back, like she always did when we watched scary movies. I looked back at her, than when I looked back, Mrs. Dodds was gone.

Thunder shook the building.

"It was only a matter of time till you were found out," she said from behind me, and when I turned, she was on top of one of the display cases. "We are no fools, Percy Jackson."

Cammie grabbed my hand and I started following her. This was just too much. Someone must have slipped something into my sandwich.

"Where is it?"

I didn't know what she was talking about. All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer the internet instead of writing it myself, and now they were going to make me redo it. Or worse. They'd make me read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Look, I don't know what we did, but whatever you're—"

"Time's up," she hissed, smiling.

That's when the weirdest thing of all time happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human, that was for sure (Wow, Cam hit the nail on the head on that one). She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice us to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in t front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in each hand.

"What ho, Jacksons!" he shouted, and tossed the pens to both me and Cammie.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at me first.

Yelling my name, Cammie pushed me to the ground, throwing herself to the other side of the room to avoid the monster that used to be our Pre-algebra teacher.

Snatching the ballpoint pen out of the air, I covered my head with my hands, almost cutting my head off. 'Cause when the pen hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword. A sword! I looked to Cammie, who also had a sword in hand, giving me a bewildered look.

Standing, my knees felt like jelly, almost making me drop the sword.

"It's a Fury!" Cammie yelled from the other side of the room.

"A what?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes. "A Furry! Greek mythology! Ring any bells? Unlike you, I actually paid attention in class!"

"Hurtful," I muttered, then remembered that there was a huge leathery monster about to rip me to pieces with her razor sharp talons.

"Die honey!" Mrs. Dodds cackled loudly.

As she came at me, I turned my head away, swinging the sword around wildly. Mrs. Dodds tried clawing at me, but the blade of the sword kept getting in the way of her making me into confetti.

The next thing I know, Cammie's behind Mrs. Dodds, hacking at her wings.

"AH!" Mrs. Dodds yelled, one of her wings hanging to her back uselessly.

"LEAVE US ALONE!" Cam yelled.

Swinging her arm at Cammie, she yelled in rage. Cammie went flying to the other side of the room, hitting her head on the foot of a statue of Poseidon.

Mrs. Dodds laughed as though the action amused her. She flew over to Cammie, fast as lightning, even with her useless wing.

"You're father cannot save you now, Honey," she hissed. "You will die now!"

Cammie, distracted by what she said, looked up at her with confused eyes. "What?"

"CAMMIE!" I yelled, running over to her. Use you're sword, Cam! I yelled in my mind. I raised my sword, knowing even if Cammie could read my mind, she'd never have her sword up and ready to use before Mrs. Dodds tore her apart. Pointing the tip at Mrs. Dodds back, I held it tight, pushing it into her. It sliced into her like she was made of water. Cammie gasped.

Hissss….

Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me. As the smoke cleared, I saw Cammie laying on the floor, propped up on her elbows, the sword's tip almost touching her nose.

I looked around.

We were alone.

The sword wasn't a sword anymore. It was a pen again.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody but me and Cam.

I looked to Cammie to see if she was in the same state of confusion as me. Looking down at her, I saw Cammie sobbing. I dropped the pen, and bent down on my knees.

"Are you okay, Cam?" I asked. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm not okay! I'm not hurt, but I'm not okay ether!" She flung her arms around me, shoving her head into the crook of my neck. "What just happened, Percy? Did that really happen?"

I put my arms around her, looking around again, as if Mrs. Dodds was going to pop out now, and kill us. "I'm not sure. You said it was a Fury?"

"That's mythology!" she wailed. "It's all myths!"

I nodded. "Maybe it's something that we ate."

She pulled away to look at me. "But you saw it too, right? It wasn't just me? You saw the creature too?"

I nodded. "Maybe we share a brain?" I joked, hoping to make her laugh.

She let out a choked laugh, and hugged me again. "I hope not. Then you'd know all my evil plans."

Smiling, I pulled her up. "Come on. Let's go."

"Now you want to go!" she said, rolling her eyes. "Why didn't you listen to me before?"

I pulled her by the arm out of the room, rolling my eyes too. But I had to ask myself:

Did I imagine it? Did Cammie imagine it too? Was it all just a figment of our imagination?

"Here, give me your pen," I told her, holding out my hand to her.

She handed it over, and I looked it over. It looked normal.

We went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw us, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your guy's butts!"

I cocked my head to the side. "Who?"

"Our teacher.

"You mean Mrs. Dodds," Cammie asked, her tough façade back on.

"No stupid!" Nancy yelled back. "Mrs. Kerr."

"Who's Mrs. Kerr," I asked Cam. She shrugged.

We walked over to Grover.

"Who's Mrs. Kerr?" I asked.

He paused first, not looking at ether one of us, so I thought he was messing with us. "Not funny man," I said. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed, and I was sure lightning would light up the sky like it usually did. But it didn't.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I walked over to him, Cammie's voice telling Grover to answer my question in the background.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, those would be my pens. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson. That goes for Cameron too. Do please pass on the massage."

I handed back his pens, not realizing it was still in my hand.

"Sir," I asked, slightly afraid of the answer. "Where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"

"No, Sir. I'm not."

Yay! First chapter finished! I'm trying to stir away from it being so much like the book. Next chapter will be Cammie's pov. Can't wait!

Okay, I don't normally do this—in fact I haven't done this at all till this fanfiction. All the characters, except Cam and later on characters, and settings belong to Rick Riordan, and Ally Carter owns Cammie, and some of the content later in this story. I don't do disclaimers mainly because the website clearly says fanfiction, meaning that the ideas and characters belong to a published author or producer. But because I'm rewriting the first Percy Jackson book, and using a lot of Rick's work, I thought I'd better give him a huge chunk of credit.

I won't be updating this for a while, mainly because I have two other stories to finish up, but I just wanted to get this first chapter out to some awaiting readers, and see what people think of it. I know it sounds a lot like the book, but I'm stirring away after this. I just wanted to get a clear into to some of the characters and settings.

Hope you enjoyed! I'll update as soon as possible.