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the lightning thief percy jackson and the olympians ­ book 1 rick riordan scanned by cluttered mind 1 i accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher look i didn t want to be a half-blood if you re reading this because you think you might be one my advice is close this book right now believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your 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 if you re a normal kid reading this because you think it s fiction great read on i envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened 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 sense it too and they ll come for you don t say i didn t warn you.

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my name is percy jackson i m twelve years old until a few months ago i was a boarding student at yancy academy a private school for troubled kids in upstate new york am i a troubled kid yeah you could say that i could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it but things really started going bad last may when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to manhattan twenty-eight mentalcase kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus heading to the metropolitan museum of art to look at ancient greek and roman stuff i know it sounds like torture most yancy field trips were but mr brunner our latin teacher was leading this trip so i had 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 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 the trip would be okay at least i hoped that for once i wouldn t get in trouble boy was i wrong see bad things happen to me on field trips like at my fifth-grade school when we went to the saratoga battlefield i had this accident with a revolutionary war cannon i wasn t aiming for the school bus but of course i got expelled anyway and before that at my fourth-grade school when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the marine world shark pool i sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim and the time before that well you get the idea this trip i was determined to be good all the way into the city i put up with nancy bobofit the freckly redheaded kleptomaniac girl hitting my best friend grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-andketchup sandwich.

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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 anyway nancy bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair and she knew i couldn t do anything back to her because i was already on probation the headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad embarrassing or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip i m going to kill her i mumbled grover tried to calm me down it s okay i like peanut butter he dodged another piece of nancy s lunch that s it i started to get up but grover pulled me back to my seat you re already on probation he reminded me you know who ll get blamed if anything happens looking back on it i wish i d 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 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 he 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 who always wore a black leather jacket even though she was fifty years old she looked mean enough to ride a harley right into your

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locker she had come to yancy halfway through the year when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown from her first day mrs dodds loved nancy bobofit and figured i was devil spawn she 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 one time after she d made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight i told grover i didn t think mrs dodds was human he looked at me real serious and said you re absolutely right mr brunner kept talking about greek funeral art finally nancy bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele and i turned around and said will you shut up it came out louder than i meant it to the whole group laughed mr brunner stopped his story mr jackson he said did you have a comment my face was totally red 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 because i actually recognized it that s kronos eating his kids right yes mr brunner said obviously not satisfied and he did this because well i racked my brain to remember kronos was the king god and god mr brunner asked titan i corrected myself and he didn t trust his kids who were the gods so um kronos ate them right but his wife hid baby zeus and gave kronos a rock to eat instead and later when zeus grew up he tricked his dad kronos into barfing up his brothers and sisters eeew said one of the girls behind me.

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and so there was this big fight between the gods and the titans i continued and the gods won some snickers from the group 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 mr jackson brunner said to paraphrase miss bobofit s excellent question does this matter in real life busted grover muttered shut up nancy hissed her face even brighter red than her hair at least nancy got packed too mr brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong he had radar ears i thought about his question and shrugged i don t know sir i see mr brunner looked disappointed 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 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 and i were about to follow when mr brunner said mr jackson i knew that was coming i told grover to keep going then i turned toward 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 had seen everything you must learn the answer to my question mr brunner told me about the titans

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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 accept only the best from you percy jackson i wanted to get angry this guy pushed me 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 me to be as good as everybody else despite the fact that i have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and i had never made above a c in my life no he didn t expect me to be as good he expected me to be better and i just couldn t learn all those names 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 a huge storm was brewing with clouds blacker than 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 lightning 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 grover and i sat on the edge of the fountain away from the others we thought that maybe if we did that everybody wouldn t know we were from that school the school for loser freaks who couldn t make it elsewhere detention grover asked nah i said not from brunner i just wish he d lay off me sometimes i mean i m not a genius

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grover didn t say anything for a while then when i thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better he said can i have your apple i didn t have much of an appetite so i let him take it 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 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 remind 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 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 cafe table i was about to unwrap my sandwich when nancy bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends i guess she d gotten tired of stealing from the tourists and dumped her half-eaten lunch in grover s lap oops she grinned at me with her crooked teeth her freckles were orange as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid cheetos i tried to stay cool the school counselor had told me a million times count to ten get control of your temper but i was so mad my mind went blank a wave roared in my ears i don t remember touching her but the next thing i knew nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain screaming percy pushed me mrs dodds materialized next to us some of the kids were whispering did you see the water like it grabbed her i didn t know what they were talking about all i knew was that 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 me there was a triumphant fire in her eyes as if i d done something she d been waiting for all semester now honey

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i know i grumbled a month erasing workbooks that wasn t 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 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 man i told him thanks for trying honey mrs dodds barked at me now nancy bobofit smirked i gave her my deluxe i ll-kill-you-later stare then 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 went after mrs dodds.

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halfway up the steps i glanced back at grover he was looking pale cutting 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 i looked back up mrs dodds had disappeared again she was now inside the building at the end of the entrance hall okay i thought she s going to make me buy a new shirt for nancy at the gift shop 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 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 i did the safe thing i said yes ma am she tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket did you really think you would get away with it the look in her eyes was beyond mad it was evil she s a teacher i thought nervously it s not like she s going to hurt me i said i ll i ll try harder ma am thunder shook the building we are not fools percy jackson mrs dodds said it was only a matter of time before we found you out confess and you will suffer less pain i didn t know what she was talking about.

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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 from the internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade or worse they were going to make me read the book well she demanded ma am i don t your time is up she hissed then the weirdest thing 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 she was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs and she was about to slice me to ribbons then things got even stranger mr brunner who d been out in front of the museum a minute before wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery holding a pen in his hand what ho percy he shouted and tossed the pen through the air mrs dodds lunged at me with a yelp i dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear i snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air but when it hit my hand it wasn t a pen anymore it was a sword mr brunner s bronze sword which he always used on tournament day mrs dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes my knees were jelly my hands were shaking so bad i almost dropped the sword she snarled die honey and she flew straight at me absolute terror ran through my body i did the only thing that came naturally i swung the sword the metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water hisss!

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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 i was alone there was a ballpoint pen in my hand mr brunner wasn t there nobody was there but me my hands were still trembling my lunch must ve been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something had i imagined the whole thing i went back outside it had started to rain grover was sitting by the fountain a museum map tented over his head nancy bobofit was still standing there soaked from her swim in the fountain grumbling to her ugly friends when she saw me she said i hope mrs kerr whipped your butt i said who our teacher duh i blinked we had no teacher named mrs kerr i asked nancy what she was talking about she just rolled her eyes and turned away i asked grover where mrs dodds was he said who but he paused first and he wouldn t look at me so i thought he was messing with me not funny man i told him this is serious thunder boomed overhead i saw mr brunner sitting under his red umbrella reading his book as if he d never moved.

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p. 12

i went over to him he looked up a little distracted ah that would be my pen please bring your own writing utensil in the future mr jackson i handed mr brunner his pen i hadn t even realized i was still holding it sir i said 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 2 three old ladies knit the socks of death i was used to the occasional weird experience but usually they were over quickly this twentyfour/seven hallucination was more than i could handle for the rest of the school year the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me the students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that mrs kerr a perky blond woman whom i d never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip had been our pre-algebra teacher since christmas every so often i would spring a mrs dodds reference on somebody just to see if i could trip them up but they would stare at me like i was psycho it got so i almost believed them mrs dodds had never existed almost.

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p. 13

but grover couldn t fool me when i mentioned the name dodds to him he would hesitate then claim she didn t exist but i knew he was lying something was going on something had happened at the museum i didn t have much time to think about it during the days but at night visions of mrs dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat the freak weather continued which didn t help my mood one night a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room a few days later the biggest tornado ever spotted in the hudson valley touched down only fifty miles from yancy academy one of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the atlantic that year i started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time my grades slipped from ds to fs i got into more fights with nancy bobofit and her friends i was sent out into the hallway in almost every class finally when our english teacher mr nicoll asked me for the millionth time why i was too lazy to study for spelling tests i snapped i called him an old sot i wasn t even sure what it meant but it sounded good the headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week making it official i would not be invited back next year to yancy academy fine i told myself just fine i was homesick i wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the upper east side even if i had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties and yet there were things i d miss at yancy the view of the woods out my dorm window the hudson river in the distance the smell of pine trees i d miss grover who d been a good friend even if he was a little strange i worried how he d survive next year without me i d miss latin class too mr brunner s crazy tournament days and his faith that i could do well.

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p. 14

as exam week got closer latin was the only test i studied for i hadn t forgotten what mr brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me i wasn t sure why but i d started to believe him the evening before my final i got so frustrated i threw the cambridge guide to greek mythology across my dorm room words had started swimming off the page circling my head the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards there was no way i was going to remember the difference between chiron and charon or polydictes and polydeuces and conjugating those latin verbs forget it i paced the room feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt i remembered mr brunner s serious expression his thousand-year-old eyes i will accept only the best from you percy jackson i took a deep breath i picked up the mythology book i d never asked a teacher for help before maybe if i talked to mr brunner he could give me some pointers at least i could apologize for the big fat f i was about to score on his exam i didn t want to leave yancy academy with him thinking i hadn t tried i walked downstairs to the faculty offices most of them were dark and empty but mr brunner s door was ajar light from his window stretching across the hallway floor i was three steps from the door handle when i heard voices inside the office mr brunner asked a question a voice that was definitely grover s said worried about percy sir i froze i m not usually an eavesdropper but i dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult i inched closer alone this summer grover was saying i mean a kindly one in the school now that we know for sure and they know too we would only make matters worse by rushing him mr brunner said we need the boy to mature more

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p. 15

but he may not have time the summer solstice deadline will have to be resolved without him grover let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can sir he saw her his imagination mr brunner insisted the mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that sir i i can t fail in my duties again grover s voice was choked with emotion you know what that would mean you haven t failed grover mr brunner said kindly i should have seen her for what she was now let s just worry about keeping percy alive until next fall the mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud mr brunner went silent my heart hammering i picked up the book and backed down the hall a shadow slid across the lighted glass of brunner s office door the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer s bow i opened the nearest door and slipped inside a few seconds later i heard a slow clop-clop-clop like muffled wood blocks then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door a large dark shape paused in front of the glass then moved on a bead of sweat trickled down my neck somewhere in the hallway mr brunner spoke nothing he murmured my nerves haven t been right since the winter solstice mine neither grover said but i could have sworn go back to the dorm mr brunner told him you ve got a long day of exams tomorrow don t remind me

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