The Lightning Thief

caught the first taxi uptown.
    “East One-hundred-and-fourth and First,” I told the driver.
    A word about my mother, before you meet her.
    Her name is Sally Jackson and she’s the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck. Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn’t care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.
    The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.
    I don’t have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn’t like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.
    See, they weren’t married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.
    Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.
    She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn’t an easy kid.
    Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.
    Between the two of us, we made my mom’s life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along . . . well, when I came home is a good example.
    I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.
    Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, “So, you’re home.”
    “Where’s my mom?”
    “Working,” he said. “You got any cash?”
    That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?
    Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.
    He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don’t know why he hadn’t been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our “guy secret.” Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.
    “I don’t have any cash,” I told him.
    He raised a greasy eyebrow.
    Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should’ve covered up everything else.
    “You took a taxi from the bus station,” he said. “Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?”
    Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. “Come on, Gabe,” he said. “The kid just got here.”
    “Am I right ?” Gabe repeated.
    Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.
    “Fine,” I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. “I hope you lose.”
    “Your report card came, brain boy!” he shouted after me. “I wouldn’t act so snooty!”
    I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn’t my room. During school months, it was Gabe’s “study.” He didn’t study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.
    I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.
    Gabe’s smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady’s shears snipping the yarn.
    But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover’s look of panic—how he’d made me promise I