Aminta Dysis Chase-Jackson

The few friends I had thought I was lucky. The rest thought I was insane. Home-schooled since I was seven, after being kicked out of my ninth school(I did, as a matter of fact, keep track), they had reason to. After mysterious circumstances, I got kicked out of every school my parents entered me into. One time, the principal caught me "doodling" in a math textbook. Even though my pencil just happened to be sitting on it. I know, a minor schoolhouse crime, but yeah... My teachers are almost always clinically proven insane. Another time, I got in serious trouble with all of my teachers, as well as my parents, which was unusual. Apparently, I had caused a huge flood in the school. But only in Hall Block D. Crazy, right? Especially since I was in music class, over in Block J, at the time of the crime. After that one, my parents had one of their serious talks. I could tell by the way they tried to butter me up before going into the living room by themselves after I was supposed to be in bed. So now I'm home-schooled. I have the usual spelling, English, PE, and math, but I also have some pretty weird ones, like mythology, ancient heroes, and Ancient Greece. The weird part is, my parents sound completely serious when they're talking about the gods and stuff. I mean, they can't be real, right?

Speaking of weird, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Aminta Chase-Jackson. Some other names I have seem to be Troublemaker, Knowitall, Smartypants, and Minty. I'm thirteen years old. For my birthday, my parents gave me a pen. Yeah, that's right. A pen. A very nice pen, but still. It's pink and silver, and it looks just like my dad's blue and gold one. He affectionately calls it Riptide, for reasons unknown to me. And for whatever reason, he never uses it. He told me not to use mine either. My mother emphatically nodded to this point, so I still haven't used it, though I'm afraid it will run out of ink soon. They said its name is Maelstrom. I find that strange and a little disconcerting.

My parents are also strange. My mother, Annabeth, is very pretty, although she never seems to notice. Whenever I tell her that, her eyes harden, and she tells me some "conventional wisdom". Usually, this seems to be the usual "beauty is only skin deep" lecture all parents eventually give to their children, but sometimes it morphs into odd things, like how to deal with which kind of monsters and stuff like that, though I'm not quite sure why that makes any sense at all. She's an architect, and has been called in to work at the Empire State Building several times. For some reason, she always seems to pride these jobs over any others, though she's also worked at the Eiffel Tower, Brooklyn Bridge, and Chrysler Building. Her kind of field trip is taking me to famous buildings or museums to look up this or read about that. She's almost always working or teaching innocents how to do this or spell that. People look up to her, and she's a natural leader.

Dad is just, well, Dad. His name is Perseus, but in normal, everyday company he goes by Percy. He seems determined to spoil me rotten, though Mom tries her best to make sure he doesn't. His kind of "field trip" is taking me swimming and having races and contests, like who can stay underwater the longest. We usually get pretty far, but a lifeguard almost always ruins it by diving in to "save" us when they think we're drowning. He's a lifeguard himself, and he's saved a couple of lives. He's also been in the newspaper a couple of times, though he always downplays it.

So that's my life. At least, that was my life. Before my thirteenth birthday, when my pen turned into a sword and a harpy tore apart our apartment.