The Lightning Thief

too—pretty much anything I could get my hands on, from dad’s history books to fantasy novels—because I spent a lot of time sitting around in hotels and airports and dig sites in foreign countries where I didn’t know anybody. My dad was always telling me to put the book down and play some ball. You ever try to start a game of pick-up basketball in Aswan, Egypt? It’s not easy.
    Anyway, my dad trained me early to keep all my possessions in a single suitcase that fits in an airplane’s overhead compartment. My dad packed the same way, except he was allowed an extra workbag for his archaeology tools. Rule number one: I was not allowed to look in his workbag. That’s a rule I never broke until the day of the explosion.
     
    It happened on Christmas Eve. We were in London for visitation day with my sister, Sadie.
    See, Dad’s only allowed two days a year with her—one in the winter, one in the summer—because our grandparents hate him. After our mom died, her parents (our grandparents) had this big court battle with Dad. After six lawyers, two fistfights, and a near fatal attack with a spatula (don’t ask), they won the right to keep Sadie with them in England. She was only six, two years younger than me, and they couldn’t keep us both—at least that was their excuse for not taking me. So Sadie was raised as a British schoolkid, and I traveled around with my dad. We only saw Sadie twice a year, which was fine with me.
    [Shut up, Sadie. Yes—I’m getting to that part.]
    So anyway, my dad and I had just flown into Heathrow after a couple of delays. It was a drizzly, cold afternoon. The whole taxi ride into the city, my dad seemed kind of nervous.
    Now, my dad is a big guy. You wouldn’t think anything could make him nervous. He has dark brown skin like mine, piercing brown eyes, a bald head, and a goatee, so he looks like a buff evil scientist. That afternoon he wore his cashmere winter coat and his best brown suit, the one he used for public lectures. Usually he exudes so much confidence that he dominates any room he walks into, but sometimes—like that afternoon—I saw another side to him that I didn’t really understand. He kept looking over his shoulder like we were being hunted.
    “Dad?” I said as we were getting off the A-40. “What’s wrong?”
    “No sign of them,” he muttered. Then he must’ve realized he’d spoken aloud, because he looked at me kind of startled. “Nothing, Carter. Everything’s fine.”
    Which bothered me because my dad’s a terrible liar. I always knew when he was hiding something, but I also knew no amount of pestering would get the truth out of him. He was probably trying to protect me, though from what I didn’t know. Sometimes I wondered if he had some dark secret in his past, some old enemy following him, maybe; but the idea seemed ridiculous. Dad was just an archaeologist.
    The other thing that troubled me: Dad was clutching his workbag. Usually when he does that, it means we’re in danger. Like the time gunmen stormed our hotel in Cairo. I heard shots coming from the lobby and ran downstairs to check on my dad. By the time I got there, he was just calmly zipping up his workbag while three unconscious gunmen hung by their feet from the chandelier, their robes falling over their heads so you could see their boxer shorts. Dad claimed not to have witnessed anything, and in the end the police blamed a freak chandelier malfunction.
    Another time, we got caught in a riot in Paris. My dad found the nearest parked car, pushed me into the backseat, and told me to stay down. I pressed myself against the floorboards and kept my eyes shut tight. I could hear Dad in the driver’s seat, rummaging in his bag, mumbling something to himself while the mob yelled and destroyed things outside. A few minutes later he told me it was safe to get up. Every other car on the block had been overturned and set on fire. Our car had been freshly washed and polished, and several twenty-euro notes had been tucked under the windshield wipers.
    Anyway, I’d come to respect the bag. It was our good luck charm. But when my dad kept it close, it meant we were going to need good luck.
    We drove through the city center, heading east toward my grandparents’ flat. We passed the golden gates of Buckingham Palace, the big stone column in Trafalgar Square. London is a pretty cool place, but after you’ve traveled for so long, all cities start to blend together. Other kids I meet sometimes