''Thalia, get up! We have something important we need to do today!'' My mother was shaking me awake.
''I want to sleep,'' I mumbled. ''Why do I have to be involved in whatever this is?'' My mom kept shaking me.
Ugh. I hated my life. It was always like this – my mom dragging me along with every stupid, pointless thing she did. She was a famous TV actress. You know, the kind that does dumb things, and then the reporters catch you on camera doing those dumb things, and then those dumb things end up splashed on the cover of all the tabloids. All she wanted was attention, and she didn't care what she had to do to get it.
My dad is Zeus. Yeah, the king of the gods and all that. Mom went ecstatic that she had attracted his attention. It was like she had reached the biggest goal ever, had gotten the best attention ever. I wasn't supposed to be born. I wasn't supposed to know about that, either, but I overheard my mom and dad talking about it. Apparently, Zeus's immortal wife, Hera, the queen of the gods, hates any demigod children that Zeus has with mortal women. That just might explain why monsters keep trying to have me for dinner. Or lunch, or breakfast, or any meal.
People had been saying lately that mom was too self-involved and not a good mother, which is so true, so she had made a point to take me, her nine-year-old daughter, along with her to every public event she attended. For good publicity. To show she was a 'caring mom'. Yeah, right. Sometimes she even took my sweet little baby brother, Jason, with her.
Jason was the most adorable baby ever. He was two years old and always so cute, so happy. He was too innocent to be involved in this wreck of a family. Jason was the only reason I put up with my mom. He was the only thing that brightened up my life and made me keep going every day. I had to protect him and take care of him. Obviously my mother couldn't do the job.
Finally I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I glared at my mom. ''Well? What is it today? A talk show? An exclusive celeb party?''
She looked nervous, for some reason. Maybe a big interview coming up? That had happened before, and you should have seen her when the interviewer started asking her questions about her family.
Finally she found some words. ''No, Thalia. Today we are… uh, going to have some fun! I'm taking you and Jason to… to the park! It's the coolest place, up near the wine country. And, um, we're going to spend the whole day there! We're going to… have a picnic and everything! What do you think?''
Whoa. Hold up a moment. What was going on? My brain immediately registered all the things that were totally wrong, totally suspicious. First, Mom never tried to have fun with us, much less take us to the park. Second, she was acting so nervous, like she knew something bad was going to happen soon. Third, she wasn't talking in her usual rude way, more in a fidgety, half-guilty tone. And Jason was coming too? That was unusual.
A part of me wanted to believe her so badly. Mom and I had never gotten along, and we most definitely never did anything for fun. I wanted to believe that she had changed, and that she was telling me the truth, that all she wanted to do was have a fun trip with her kids.
But the other part of me, which was most of me, grew immediately skeptical. I had never trusted Mom. I had good reasons not to. She had lied to me plenty of times and had dragged me into plenty of bad situations in the past. This seemed like another one of those times.
I decided that I had to give her a chance. But I would be very, very careful during this 'trip'.
''Fine,'' I said.
