LUNACY; percy jackson

chapter 12

[act one; chapter twelve     -     best laid plan]

     Andromeda had always known how prone to altering perspectives the human race was. As a species, they changed the way they viewed certain things, or people. Men would change how they viewed women. How men viewed men. How women viewed women. How adults viewed kids. How kids viewed adults. None of it was original, she knew. It all came from some idea, a root. But they believed what they were okay with believing, forever avoiding the uncomfortable, always running from fear. It was why only few people could see the effects of the Mist. Or the world that it hid.

    It was why, according to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake. Not that Ares, the Greek god of war, had threatened death on a group of children. Children who were, quite simply, doing what had been asked of them.

    This crazy kidnapper, the news thought, was the same man who had abducted Percy and three other adolescents in New York and brought them across the country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.

    As it turns out, poor little Percy Jackson wasn't an international criminal after all. He'd caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from his captor (and afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather-clad man on the bus—"Why didn't I remember him before?"). The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no kid could've done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police. Finally, brave Percy Jackson had stolen a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach, trying to keep himself and his friends alive. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Percy Jackson and his three friends were safely in police custody.

    The reporters fed them this whole story. They just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn't hard, if you asked Andromeda), and played victimized kids for the cameras. But it was easy. It wasn't hard to act as something that the world would always perceive them as.

     "All I want," Percy said, choking back his tears, "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew...somehow...we would be okay. And I know he'll want to reward each and every person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number."