All of these characters belong to Rick Riordan, as I'm sure you know.

Chapter 1

"Hey look at this seashell!" The boy screeched with joy. "It looks like a starfish stamp!"

His mother chuckled. "No, silly, that's a sand dollar. It's actually an animal, so let's leave it there so it can live in peace, okay sweetie?"

"Okay mom!" The boy was too overwhelmed with joy of being at the beach, his favorite place in the whole wide world.

He would skip around, his mother trying desperately to keep up with him. The boy would stand on big rocks with his arms spread out like he was the king of the ocean, the breeze ruffling his scruffy black hair and filling his green eyes with a sparkling light.

This happened every time they went.

One day, his mother decided she wanted to take him to a special beach away from their usual one in Long Island. Away from New York. She wanted to go somewhere really nice. So they flew over to California.

Her son had a fit before they got on the plane. It seemed he was afraid of them. It took a while to get him on the plane, but she promised to make him fresh blue cookies when they got back. Blue anything was his favorite.

In California, they dropped their bags off at their hotel and immediately went to the beach. The boy's mother had made sure a beach was in walking distance.

Once they got to the beach, the boy did the same thing he always did. Expect this time was a little different. The boy was skipping around, like usual, but he kicked up a lot of sand and didn't see where he was going. He ended up running into a girls sand castle, destroying it completely. She looked very angry, as if she had spent a lot of time on it.

The girl looked about his age, maybe seven or eight. She had eyes the color of the rocks the boy would stand on, and blonde hair matching the sand, only shinier and with streaks of brown in it. She was really beautiful, and she was really mad.

"Hey, why'd you knock over my sand castle? I worked really hard on that, and I was almost done!" She shouted. "I just needed to get that last arch in the throne room right and it would've been done!" She pounded the sand next to her with a small fist.

"Well, I'm sorry," the boy said. "I mean, you make it seem like you were making an actual castle. I guess I could help you fix it?" He offered. "I'm Percy, by the way."

The girl grumbled. "I'm Annabeth. You better help me fix it completely or I'm not letting you leave."

She showed Percy what he should do and handed him about six buckets to fill with water and sand.

Percy tried very hard to do what Annabeth said, because she was really scary. He messed up a bunch of times, though. He spilled a full bucket of water in the moat, making it overflow, then he accidentally sat down on one of the side towers. Every time Percy messed up, Annabeth would fix him with a glare that was rock solid.

After a few hours, Annabeth finished designing the inside and touched up the outside and sent Percy to clean the buckets out. Percy came back, exhausted from carrying heavy buckets back and forth. He sat down- thankfully not on the castle, this time- and stared at Annabeth's creation in awe.

The castle was huge, taller than him, the door big enough so he could see the inside. Percy poked his head in and marveled at the beauty of the large cavern Annabeth called the throne room, and at the spiraling staircase leading to other floors. He carefully pulled his head out and looked at Annabeth with respect.

"That. Is. So. Cool." Percy whispered. She only looked back with a smug expression and her arms crossed.

Then she looked it over and said, "I wish I could've done the garden in the front, or at least the walkway."

Percy only shook his head and said goodbye to her. He looked everywhere for his mother. She wasn't in sight. He wanders around until he came back to Annabeth, who was still kneeling in the sand, staring at her masterpiece.

"Whoa, you're still here?" She asked as she looked up at Percy.

"Yeah, I can't find my mom." Percy said. "I'm kinda scared."

"Well, I can ask my dad if you can come back with me, unless you know where you're staying."

Percy desperately tried to remember where they dropped off their stuff, but he couldn't, as he'd been too excited for the new beach. He shook his head sadly.

"It's okay, you can come to my house. We can have cookies!" Annabeth said.

Percy immediately lit up. "Are they gonna be blue?"

Annabeth's face scrunched up in confusion. "Why would they be blue?"