This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

―i. not a troubled kid

NAOMI MURPHY WAS NOT a troubled kid—at least, not on purpose. She tried hard in school, even though her dyslexia and ADHD diagnoses made things unfairly difficult; she stayed out of people's hair as much as she could, even though they rarely gave her the same courtesy; she very rarely complained about her lot in life, even though it was downright awful. 

In everything she did, she tried to avoid trouble as much as possible. But no matter how hard she tried, it always managed to find her.

Especially on field trips.

Squished into a dinky school bus seat with her only two friends wasn't exactly Naomi's idea of a good time, but as they rode to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she tried to be optimistic about the day ahead.

It was late May, and while it wasn't as warm as Naomi would have liked, it was still better than the bitter winter they had left behind. Despite the freakishly unpredictable weather that had plagued most of the East Coast for the last few months, nature fought back. The May flowers nurtured by April showers were in bloom in every garden and courtyard they passed, the colors a welcome sight in the otherwise wet, dreary city. 

The school bus was loud with chatter and obnoxious laughter. Projectiles of all kinds—broken pieces of pencils, crumbled balls of papers, bits of food, someone's retainer (ick)—were flying around. Luckily for Naomi, she was too short for her head to poke out over the top of the bus seat, so she managed to stay out of the way of her rowdy classmates' aerial battles.

Yancy Academy was a private school for troubled kids, full of rich brats who managed to get out of going to juvie by enrolling at Yancy instead. Naomi spent most of her childhood going to public school, but the kids at Yancy were five times worse than any of her elementary school bullies. 

Naomi had never fit in with them—unlike the majority of her classmates, she wasn't a rich kid. She had a dime to her name on a good day, which were few and far between. The only reason Naomi was even at Yancy was because of the school's new initiative to offer free tuition to "children in need" (a moniker Naomi hated with a passion).

Of course, it was all a publicity stunt—the school had come under fire in recent years for an embezzlement scandal and more than a few severe instances of bullying. To try to salvage their image, the school board had decided to institute a program where children who normally couldn't afford to enroll at Yancy were offered a spot in the school, free of charge.

Naomi had been one of the oh-so-lucky winners.

So, rather than wasting away in a public school somewhere in Manhattan with the other kids at St. Monica's Orphanage, Naomi spent most of the school year wasting away in a private school somewhere else in Manhattan.

Naomi didn't mean to be ungrateful, but it wasn't fun being known as the poor little orphan who was only at the school because they thought her story sounded good in their newsletters.

Luckily, though, there were two singular bright spots in her life. Bright spots who went by the names Grover and Percy—the only two friends she'd ever made and kept for longer than a month.

As the dinky yellow school bus ambled down the street, Naomi squinted at the worksheet they were supposed to turn in at the end of the field trip. She wasn't sure why she even bothered, since trying to read gave her a headache just sitting in a classroom, and trying to read on a shaky school bus was just asking for a migraine. 

She gave up after one more try, folding it up and stuffing it back into her pocket to be forgotten.

She was currently squished between Grover and the window, but she didn't dare complain. She'd had to beat Percy in a game of rock-paper-scissors to get the window-seat.