Jess
I guess it all started the day my Geography teacher, Mrs Copeland, attacked me. I was walking out of class, thinking about the pizza I was planning to have for dinner that day, (what can I say? I like my food) when she jumped on me. And can I just say for all the people out there who are immediately going, 'It's her own fault. Should have done her homework,' that when I say 'jumped on me'? I'm not exaggerating. She actually did. Well, that's a pretty loose interpretation of the word 'she'. At this moment of time I have to say that the word 'it' is more of an accurate description. She had transformed into this terrifying, ugly, huge…troll! In fact, the first thing I thought when I saw her was, 'Whoa! She could really use some skin cream,' followed by something like, 'AAAAAAAGGH!' What? You didn't see how awful and gigantic she looked.
So, just to be clear, 'it' jumped on me, screaming,
"A child of the big three! Finally!"
Now as you can imagine, I was just a little bit worried and squashed at this point. And also a lot annoyed. I was just about to yell,
"Hey! Get off my back! Literally! And just because my mother may be a tiny bit on the large side, don't you dare call me, 'a child of the big tree!' She's doing all she can to lose weight! And I'll have you know that using the word 'tree' when describing someone else is very politically incorrect!" Because at the time that really was what I thought she had meant. Boy, I wish it were.
But before I could give her a piece of my mind, this weird half goat, half man thing trotted in the room. I blinked, recognising him as a boy from my maths class. A boy, I realised, I had never seen without a hat on and crutches… At this moment I was starting to think that I must have been hallucinating. It was the only logical answer. I almost just let my Geography teacher that was also so not my geography teacher, take me away…except that her firm grip on my arm felt way too real. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that this wasn't really happening, even though the only sensible part of me knew that it couldn't be.
"Put her down!" the weird, goat/man thing bellowed. Then he kicked her in the shin with his hoof. I could tell that this must have been a pretty sore point for her, because she howled, and dropped me. I sprinted down the corridor, and hid behind some lockers shaking. For a moment I sighed with relief, before realising that Mrs Copeland (if I can even call her that) was no longer howling and was advancing out of the classroom, looking for something. Looking, I realised, for me. "Jess! Look in your pocket!' the goat/man ordered, looking worried. I did as he asked, thinking that he had got his priorities slightly muddled up. Didn't he see this three-headed monster chasing me? I found a pen.
"Um. Why…?" I whimpered, afraid. I had pinned all my hopes of survival on listening to this goat guy – he seemed to know what he was talking about – only to find that he had had me looking for a pen? How would that help me? Don't forget, I was just an ordinary girl. Going to school, (which I hated. Dyslexia and ADHD are no joke you know) doing homework, spending my whole life trying not to embarrass myself…not that that worked out so well. But the point remains the same - I was completely unprepared for a situation like this. And I knew that.
"Just click it! Click the pen, will you?"
I did as he asked, feeling that it would be a much better idea to just run home. But still…there was something in the goat man's eyes that told me I should listen to him. The second I clicked the pen it became this great, big, celestial bronze sword, with 'Riptide' written on it in Greek. Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking. Since when did I know how to read Greek? Well, don't ask me! It was as much as a surprise to me as it is to you – trust me. But before I had time to marvel over this new discovery or faint in shock over what this pen had just one, what used to be Mrs Copeland stood before me.
"So you've found yourself a weapon, have you?" she said, nastily. "A fine one, too…" She didn't look worried; she still thought that she was going to win, that much was clear. But she did look irritated. As though annoyed that she would have to waste precious time and energy defeating me. "No matter. I'll still win." She smirked.
Then she lunged.
Luckily, my instincts took over. I dodged, stabbed, shoved, slashed, ran, hid…until I thought I could do no more. Her smirk had long since turned into a scowl, and I could see nothing but concentration in her dark, evil eyes. We were good enough to delay her – that was for sure. But it just wasn't enough. I was tiring, and the goat man was wearier even than me. 'Back away! Back away now!' 'Step to the side!' 'Lunge! LUNGE!' he gasped endlessly, but when it came to lunging himself, he was always a fraction too slow. Finally, when I was almost on the verge of giving up, I had a sudden stroke of inspiration. Her main useful trait when fighting was her colossal strength. If I could just find some way to use this against her…Yes! It could work!
I hit her shin in the exact same place as the goat man had earlier, and she gasped in pan. This was nothing new though – we had all hurt ourselves at some point. She looked down at her leg for a fraction of a second, and I motioned at the goat men to collapse on the floor – I needed her attention to be entirely focused on me. And the only way of doing that was to have her thing the goat guy was out.
I knew he had no idea what my plan was, but he nodded anyway, and collapsed realistically at my feet.
"Aha!" Mrs Copeland, taunted. "It's just you and me now, Jessica Slater." I faked a panicked expression, but was really laughing inside. She was falling for it. Forcing my legs to move, I ran off down the long corridor.
"All a waste of time!" Mrs Copeland called, following me annoyingly fast. "You'll die anyway. Why don't you just save yourself the effort?'
I frowned to myself. What if she was right? I pushed that thought out of my mind. If there was ever a moment to be optimistic, it was now. I silently slipped into a nearby art classroom, and began constructing my plan. I ripped off the curtains and made a makeshift trap out of them. Then I yanked a huge tube of superglue out of the cupboard, and squirted the wall with it until it was completely empty. I began to panic. What if she came in when I wasn't finished? I realised that somewhere along the way my sword had vanished. I swallowed. If she came in now, I was dead-meat. I bit my lip, but carried on. I ran over to the door, and locked it, then piled some desks in front of it, just to be sure.
There was nothing left to do now; nothing but wait. I had barely thought this when I heard an angry voice from the other side of the door. She had realised the door was locked with desks piled in front of it.
"Very clever, Jess Slater, but not clever enough." She cackled. "You have underestimated my incredible strength!" Then she gave one gigantic shove against the door. It flung open immediately, and the desks only splintered as she fell through them. 'Aha!' she screamed, but I only smiled. Everything was going to plan.
The thing was, she had underestimated her colossal strength, not me. Her amazing force when she had broken through the door was too strong – she couldn't stop. So she went flying across the room…straight into my (rather cool, if I do say so myself) trap.
She realised what was going on way to late. I needed to act fast. I knew she could probably heave her way out of the trap if she had enough time – she was that strong. The only option was to kill her before she had enough time to do it. Even after everything she had done, I still felt awful. She had been my Geography teacher for a whole year! If it weren't for her, I would never have known how to calculate the correct Latitude and Longitude of a specific place…
Okay, scratch that. I so didn't need to know how to do that. But still…
Cringing, I sliced her head swiftly off with my sword. Her eyes bulged right out of their sockets when she realised what was happening. (Well, nearly.)
And then she dissolved before my eyes. I swallowed.
Goat man came strolling over to me, his eyes bright and laughing.
"Wow! That was awesome! And you've never fought a monster before?"
I nodded numbly. The adrenaline was fading, and confusion was taking its place. Goat man seemed unaware of my distress, and whistled.
"Just shows you though, dunnit? How much being a daughter or son of the big three makes a difference, you know?"
"Hey!" I snapped. "I don't know what you're talking about, or why you're half goat or what that…thing was, but I would just like you to know, I don't like it when people refer to my mum as 'big tree', okay? It's already happened twice in the last half an hour - maybe it's some kind of nickname I don't know about – but I really, really don't like it! So shut up!"
He looked confused for a moment, and then he started to laugh. 'Whoa, calm down, okay?' he chuckled. 'Sorry. I forgot you still haven't found out about all this stuff yet. I don't think I should be the one to tell you about, you know, what you are, and you need to go there anyway, so come on. Come with me.'
'Um, I'm sorry,' I said hotly. 'But I don't think I need to go anywhere with you. What I need to do is have a good, long sleep – all this stress seems to be going to my head. Take you for example. You're not real, okay? You're in my head! You want proof? That sword? The one I found in my pocket as a pen? It's gone, okay? Gone. If it was real, why would it be gone?'
I thought that I had proved to him – proved to myself – that all this was just my imagination going wild. But he just laughed again.
'I'm Blake, by the way. And as for the sword, well, it couldn't stay all day, could it? It was going to return to his pocket some time. '
'Whose?' I asked.
'Percy Jackson's of course. Your cousin.'