The Lightning Thief Read Online Free PDF Page B

tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn’t totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.
    When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.
    Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom’s eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.
    “He was kind, Percy,” she said. “Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes.”
    Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. “I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud.”
    I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.
    “How old was I?” I asked. “I mean . . . when he left?”
    She watched the flames. “He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin.”
    “But . . . he knew me as a baby.”
    “No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born.”
    I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember . . . something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.
    I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even seen me . . .
    I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He’d left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.
    “Are you going to send me away again?” I asked her. “To another boarding school?”
    She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.
    “I don’t know, honey.” Her voice was heavy. “I think . . . I think we’ll have to do something.”
    “Because you don’t want me around?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out.
    My mom’s eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. “Oh, Percy, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away.”
    Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.
    “Because I’m not normal,” I said.
    “You say that as if it’s a bad thing, Percy. But you don’t realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you’d finally be safe.”
    “Safe from what?”
    She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I’d tried to forget.
    During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.
    Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I’d somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.
    In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.
    I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn’t make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I