Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

TLO Spoilers,

Chapter 1 (there will be more to this story!) (It takes a while to get to the point.)

When someone you love dies you never want to forget the way their chin fit perfectly into your shoulder when you hugged them, or they way they laughed and smiled. You tell yourself that you'll never forget their favorite color, or they way they smelled, or the way they tapped their fingers when they were nervous. You say that you'll never forget which eye they winked with, but tell me, was it the left eye or the right? You say you won't forget… but you always do.

Payton's POV

I was alone. I never had a father and my mother is an insane freak. I don't know how she got that way. For a while I assumed she was just born like that, but that couldn't possibly be it, because then I would be insane too right?

But who knows, maybe I am a freak just like she is. Sometimes I feel that way. I tend to see things differently from other people, and nobody hears the same things I do.

In my heart I know I'm not imagining these things but there's always the question tugging at my gut, What if I am?

For my whole life I put up with my horrible mother. She never cared about me. When I was a little girl I would wake up and she would be perfectly normal, she would stroke my cheek and push my wild brown hair out of my eyes, she would leave for work while my nanny watched me and every day I would hope for the same thing when she got back.

I would hope that she wouldn't change by the time she came home, but it was always the same.

I used to think that maybe she was a princess with an evil spell cast over her and that I was also a princess because I was her daughter. Slowly my fantasy world died a slow black death and it took my hope and innocence of being a child with it.

Her "episodes" as I call them got more frequent to the point where she was like that 24/7.

She was fired from her job and had to stay home and ruin my life. Somehow we never ran out of money. Many times my nanny tried to explain that our money was an old fortune passed down through generations on my dad's side and we had inherited it, but I never understood.

As I grew up my mother was less and less of a mother to me. I stopped caring about her, and it may seem like an appalling thing to say, but yes, I stopped loving her. My nanny, Molly, from that point on was my mother.

She loved me and I loved her, but she was always worried about me. She never understood where my visions and hallucinations were coming from. For a long time she had me tested, I always came back normal.

We soon gave up and figured maybe I was just gifted. In fact in school, I was a smart kid almost smartest in my class, well except for the fact I had dyslexia. I did particularly well in history.

Molly would always tell me how lucky I was. She must have been addressing how well I did in school because my life outside of school was pretty messed up.

One day I came home from school police cars were everywhere. My house was blocked off and they wouldn't even let me inside. Tears streamed down my faced and my heart was beating so hard you could hear it a mile away.

I was finally allowed in my front door. No one would look at me or explain anything to me. I mean I knew I was just a kid but they could have at least acknowledged my existence!

That's when I saw it. Molly had blood all over her, glass was shattered everywhere and my kitchen was destroyed. My mother had either fainted (she did that a lot after her episodes) or had been knocked out, but they already had her in hand cuffs.

All I could think of was the hate that over took my body. My hands and teeth were clenched. I wanted to scream at the top of my lunges so hard that my head exploded, I wanted to curl up and cry and never come out of hiding.

Instead I ran. I pushed my way out of the crowd and ran. I didn't care where I was going; I ran across streets and through Central Park and never wanted to stop.

I figured if I was lucky I would get hit by a car and die instantly. But me, having the worst luck any twelve-year-old girl could get, instead ran into a hot pretzel stand. Hot nacho cheese (apparently people put cheese on pretzels) spilled all over me.

My instincts were telling me to run away from the pretzel man before he called the cops, but the hot cheese blasted me back to reality. I had been running for hours. I was tired and was still filled with hatred at my mother for killing the one person in the whole world who ever cared about me.

So, instead of running I got up and did the only logical thing I could think of, okay so maybe it wasn't logical but I was hungry, I grabbed a pretzel and walked away.

I didn't care that the man was screaming at me and some foreign language, I kept walking. And I realized that I didn't feel like crying anymore. It was a whole new me, a person who just stopped caring. I know, it sounds stupid and that's how many people wind up making bad choices in their lives, blah blah blah!

You have no idea how good it felt to just stop caring. The old me would have wondered where I was going to sleep that night, but the new me didn't care! And it felt great. There was this numb feeling all around me and pain just washed by me leaving me feeling like a free person.

There was nothing that could stop me! Then, (did I mention I have the worst luck?) an alligator looking thing that was about ten feet tall came around the corner of a building.

At first I tried not to care, especially since everyone around me wasn't even paying it any attention, but that didn't work. All emotions came flooding back into me like a tidal wave and fear was leading the stampede.

Again, I did what was logical, I screamed and ran. What was up with me and having to run all the time? I wanted to hide, but where? Then out of nowhere, a boy, who under any other circumstances would have taken my breath away, called to me.

"Duck!" so I ducked. He threw a sword flying over my head about one hundred miles an hour strait into the heart of the monster. Do monsters even have hearts? I didn't care.

The monster evaporated into dust. I stood there with my mouth wide open at the spot the monster, just three seconds ago, had been standing. When I turned around the extremely hot guy was right beside me. He reached out his hand,

"I'm Percy. Let's get you out of here before any other monsters show up, okay?" I took his hand. Mine was probably all sweaty. With him standing right next to me I realized he was much older than I was. I realized that I should introduce myself.

"Hi, I'm Payton, and my life sucks, so please don't take me back home." I said it kind of sarcastically but he didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed like he understood.

"Don't worry most of us feel like that. Camp is just ahead and I'll introduce you to Chiron and Mr. D"

"Sure! Um…I mean, that sounds cool, I guess." What a stupid thing to say! He just laughed. I realized I liked him. Not in a lovey dovey way, but more as a friend. I mean, after he saved my life, I kind of looked up to him.

When we got to his "camp" I was blown away. Everybody was wearing orange t-shirts that said "Camp Half-blood". It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

(Don't worry I'm totally for Percabeth, so Payton and Percy won't end up liking each other!) P.S. I want reviews!!