Ah... just another unremarkable day. Wrong.

It was my second day staying in New York City. I woke up, checked the clock (it was 7:56 am), decided I was too awake to fall back asleep, yawned, stretched, and checked on my family. My mom, aunt and sister were still asleep. Well, I thought, I guess I'm the early bird. So I took a look outside.

Now, my family and I were staying in a hotel room overlooking Times Square. We had a large window, so I could see in basically every direction. Mostly everything was normal outside. The jumbotrons were flashing a couple of different ads, it was snowing, which is typical for the middle of December, and people were bustling around for last-minute Christmas shopping. But there was one weird thing...

There was a large chariot in front of M&M World, which was across the street from my hotel. There were four people getting out of it, and even stranger, there were two winged horses harnessed to it. Pegasi! Well, that's something to check off of my bucket list. But anyways, just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I woke up my mom to see if she could see the chariot. This is how it went:

"Hey, mom, do you see that?" I asked, pointing to the chariot.

"That? That's just a bunch of police horses. Now, go back to sleep, Larissa. You're probably just seeing things because you're tired," she said.

I didn't see any police horses. Just the chariot. Hopefully it was just people going to a convention of some sort, and since the Hershey store was next to my hotel...

About five minutes later, I heard knocking at the door. Cautiously, I looked through the peephole. There stood four teenagers, all looking to be about a year or two older than me. From left to right, there was a blond girl with dark gray eyes, who looked like I do when I'm trying to do advanced multiplication (like I'm trying to think a million things at once), a Cherokee girl with brown hair and brown eyes, no, green eyes, no, blue eyes, and back to brown. Next in line, holding hands with the Cherokee girl, was a tall blond guy with blue eyes, and then a short Latino kid with curly black hair and a tool belt.

Then the blond girl looked in from her way. I ducked down. A few seconds later, I looked up again. The blond girl was talking to the others. Then the Latino kid pulled a room key out of his tool belt. Oh, I thought, These guys probably just forgot their room number. I looked behind them, expecting to see their parents, but instead seeing adults trudging behind them, I barely saw the room keeper, slumped over her cart, unconscious. Oh crud, I thought. The Latino kid started opening the door, and I ran into the bathroom. I heard them, but only saw the blond dude. This is what I heard:

"Leo!" said an older girl's voice, "I thought you said the new demigod was staying here!"

I was totally confused.

"Yeah," answered a guy's voice, Leo, because I could only see Jason, "It's because she does! I bet you a million dollars, Annabeth, that she's just sleeping."

Another voice spoke. It wasn't the older girl's (Annabeth's) voice, so it must've be the Cherokee girl. "Well, we should leave and come back later, I don't want to intrude."

"Piper," Leo laughed, "We already did intrude! Jason jumped that cleaning lady," he jabbed a thumb at the guy I could see, "I stole her key, and we got in here. So, unless I'm mistaken, intruder alert!"

Jason changed the subject: "Guys, Annabeth's right. Chiron gave me a picture. None of these people are the girl we're looking for. But, this one looks like her." he motioned to my twin sister. Then, he pulled a photo out of his back pocket. It was of me.

"Oh my God!" I accidentally yelled. Oops.

The teenagers heard me. I retreated into the shower, forgetting that the door didn't lock. Crud.

I must've been more scared than I realized. The next thing I knew, Thump. I blacked out.