In a blink of an eye, the next two years passed by. For the most part, life had been peaceful, ignoring the occasional moments when monsters came to lurk. There were days when mom and I went out into the city to run some kind of errand, but took a very deliberate detour to the destination. After the first three times this had happened, I began to realize the moments when she was finding ways to avoid a close proximity to the creatures hidden under the Mist. Her entire body would tense up, a worried expression would fall over her beautiful features, and she would slowly backtrack towards a different path.

What irked me the most about this was the fact that I couldn't see through the Mist. I could only see the mental strain the nightmare-esque shades gave mom in the way that her face hardened throughout the months and years that I grew bigger, thus easier to find.

Mr. Ugliano walked into our cozy apartment near the Queensboro bridge a little before the winter break of 2nd Grade.

From what I could remember of my past (and what I could decipher from chicken-scratch dyslexic scrawls in a diary shoved deep under my bed), Gabe Ugliano was supposed to be a disgusting man, gross enough to hide a demigod's scent. He seemed pleasant enough during the first dinner together, but his true nature gradually revealed itself to me the longer I got to know him. I wanted to curse the revolting man out of my home, but I knew that he supposedly protected a child of the Big Three so well, the Real Percy had only been actively pursued by monsters once puberty hit. But his stench was puke-worthy, I could be persuaded that Mr. Ugliano was secretly a woman with a horrid case of yeast infection.

However horrible the man was, mom was relieved of a tremendous amount of stress. She quit her job at the aquarium and started working at a candy store that was closer to home. As a clear-sighted mortal, her life was automatically more hectic than normal. Add a demigod child and pour a little bit of trashy husband and the result was a fuckton of new white hairs. Her youthful demeanor was still there, but I caught the glint of white in her lovely brown mane.

Anyway, school was a bitch. The nearby Emerald Academy for Elementary school students was a public school but still kind of weird in that it actually seemed invested in its students. I was tested for ADHD (didn't have ADHD in my previous life, wow it feels terrible now) and some subset of dyslexia. However, I loved reading. Always had and always will. I had put visiting the library behind visiting playground and parks for quite a while now because me stupido like that, but I considered it high time that I took to discovering if I could enjoy books the same in Greek.

The first thing I did when visiting the Manhattan Library was zoom to the foreign part of the library and pick up the Greek version of Harry Potter: The Philosopher's Stone.

Demigods' brains were hardwired for Ancient Greek, not modern Greek. But the dialect preserved a great deal of the language, so it wasn't too hard of a read. The transitions between the ancient and modern dialects were annoying, but not the end of the world. I was just pleased that I found a platform of language in which I could enjoy novels like the great majority of kids. It was funny to explain to the teachers at school that I was completely fluent in (Ancient) Greek despite having an obviously American parent and accent, but I supposed they thought that my biological dad taught me it before I entered school.

Partial truth?

After that little fact came out, the administration workers at Emerald Academy believed to have misdiagnosed my inability to decipher the English written word as dyslexia when they thought it was actually me only knowing how to read in Greek as a phony bilingual. But I really was dyslexic, so it sucked having to go through after-school classes about relearning English.

I wasn't illiterate I was fucking dyslexic.

That lasted until almost the end of third grade because that was when mom found that I had been staying after school an hour longer than I was supposed to.

"Percy, the bus was supposed to drop you off an hour ago! Do you know how worried I was when you weren't home when I came back from work?" Mom said while frantically placing her hands all over my body to make sure I hadn't garnered any injuries from whatever she thought had held me up.

"Doesn't your shift end at 9 pm?" I deflected quietly, not wanting Mr. Ugliano to hear her mother-henning from where he was by the TV. Considering how small the apartment was, he probably heard her worrying her head off even from the other side of our home. I wasn't embarrassed at having a loving mom, but I didn't want there to ever be a moment when she was made fun of for loving her only child.

"My manager let me leave early today because of our vacation we have scheduled. But you need to answer me, young man."

Oh fuck, I forgot about Montauk.

I stuttered. "Sorry mom, but, but, it's a… secret. Can I tell you later?"

She pursued her lips, but let me escape to my bedroom. This was only after bestowing a lung-crushing hug.

Well, I now had maybe half an hour tops to make something up.

At 6 o'clock on the dot, mom and I stuffed our bags into the trunk of her ancient white Subaru Forester. The thing had to be at least twenty years old, with an engine that kept spluttering every ten minutes or so. In the car was when she drilled me on what I had been doing that day.

"Do you always come home an hour later than you're supposed to?"

Frick. "No, mom. It's only been for the past few days. And, uhhh, I joined the arts and crafts club. I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, but it's because there's this really cool person there that I wanted to impress, but I thought it was embarrassing to tell you so - !"

I was cut off by her laughter. It was an intoxicating sound that drew me in like a bee to honey. The genuine laughter had been absent recently, and it lifted a weight off my shoulders I didn't realize I had been carrying. Sad that it was for a fake reason, though. I really just kept going to the ESL lessons as long as possible because I hated the ambience of our apartment, where a gross, foreign barbarian was invading the humble abode it had been before his intrusion. And now that mom thought I was attending the arts and crafts after school club; I could continue to stay in the peaceful environment in the quieter New York neighborhood where the academy was situated.

"It's okay sweetie," she hummed gently, "you can continue arts and crafts club as long as I know where you are."

Yes.

"And," she continued, "you bring back your artwork for me. I want to see the masterpieces my son has been making behind my back!"

Fuck.

Now I had to actually join the club. It's not like I hated the arts, but the most artsy thing I was capable of was doodling stick figures on the edges of work sheets.

We reached our beach house in Montauk by nine o'clock. The trails of light left by the moon and stars lit the resemblance of a pathway to the entrance of our rented house. 'Bob says Hello,' I thought, examining the dazzling artwork overhead. And then headed in, more than ready to fall asleep.

An hour later, I was still awake.

I felt something tossing and turning in my head, creating the greatest urge to take an entire bottle of Tylenol to drown out the hurling winds of the brain. Because that would be not only dangerous but also stupid, I instead crept outside to lay in the cool, damp sand right by the edge of the black void.

Icy water splashed against my toes, but the sensation wasn't unpleasant. Cold waters never affected me as much as they had in the other body, where the cold had been everywhere, submerging the body whole as if it was being swallowed by a maw of a giant whale, darker and deader than the pits of hell, hundreds of hands clamping down hard on the ankles and dragging the body down, down, down…

I jolted upwards when the water splashed against my toes again, the coldness jolting me from head to toe (not the temperature, but pure, unadultered fear).

"I can swim," I whispered to the void.

"I can fucking swim," I whispered to myself and my past.

"I'm the son of the god of the sea, I'm not scared, I'm not scared, I'm not scared," my grainy voice cracked out.

At that moment, faced with the unending chasm of salt water, my legs started to carry me forward, against the wishes of my thrashing heartbeat. The froth from the waves reached ankle-level, mid-calf, knees, then mid-thigh. Salty wetness rolled down my cheeks and I felt lightheaded because I couldn't breathe. Then I could. Then I couldn't. My throat tore open, then shut close in a ragged pattern until everything around me became the crashing of the waves, bubbles popping to the surface, plethora of voices screaming in my head to 'get out of the water, it's too dangerous, you're going to drown, you're going to die in this storm,' except it wasn't storming and thundering, for all was quiet down in the void.

When I could no longer hold my breath, I gasped in – but stopped to gape at the view, for I had entered the void.

"I can breathe underwater," I murmured, forgetting everything and anything.

Being suspended in the viscous atmosphere of marine life was dizzying, yet something my blood sung out for. It felt – no, it was natural to me, like I knew how to react in this domain better than I knew the back of my hand. In and out I breathed, but nothing choked up my lungs, nothing there except for freedom. I shivered, not knowing whether it was from my heightened senses or because an epitome was reached inside my soul.

I came to a conclusion on how to best face my fears. "My name is Perseus Jackson," my voice wavered when nothing swam into my line of sight, but I strengthened that resolve, "and I am the son of Poseidon."

Half a second later, a school of fish rushed over from my left to swim in circles around my suspended form.

"Hello, hello, hello, hello…!" They voiced, tinny noises sounding together in a gaggle of high-pitched whines.

A huge, looming shadow came in from my 3 o'clock. A leatherback turtle. Wait, how did I know what kind of turtle it was?

It swam with slow, heavy, deliberate strokes until it was only a few feet from my face. "Welcome home, Perseus," Its voice groaned out, the deep vibrato resonating in my eardrums.

I paused. "Does my father know that I have entered his domain?"

The turtle seemed to telepathically communicate with me a death stare. Ah, right. He was the god of the seas, of course he would know if his own blood entered the ocean. "Little Perseus, your father knows everything that is happening in all seven seas. However, he is very busy dealing with the territorial dispute between the mermaids and saltwater naiads to offer any godly advice a demigod would want."

I stuffed my hands in my shorts, not expecting for the turtle to give any kind of answer. But this information was kind of helpful. Don't bother dad right now, alright.

"Y'know," I started, "I didn't really expect to see my dad immediately. I just wanted…"

To get over my irrational fear of the deep ocean.

"…wanted to explore a bit. Get to know my powers."

It was the coolest shit that I was basically an overpowered waterbender. Kiss my ass, Katara. The ADHD and dyslexia bit were not cool, though.

When all Mr. Turtle did was stare back, I quickly added another comment. "So, uhhh, what's your name?"

His response was clipped. "You may call me Kura Kura."

"How's… the weather?"

Fuckin' shit, that was me. Whelp, that conversation died.

At that point, Kura Kura tipped his slick navy blue down in what I presumed to be a bow. "I must take my leave now, little Perseus. If you ever need assistance from the sea, we are all here to help your arduous journey."

That was the most graceful exit of an awkward conversation I had ever seen.

Just as Kura Kura was going to swim back to the deeper waters north, I shouted "wait!"

He paused, inclining his head to let me talk.

"Please don't tell any of the other gods that my dad had me," I hung my head, slightly regretting all my impulsive incidents that led me to apologizing.

The great leatherback turtle guffawed. "No need, for you are protected from the heavens and the sky down here. I must take my leave now. Farewell, demigod."

I watched his silhouette grow smaller and smaller in the murkiness.

For the rest of the weekend in Montauk, I made epic sandcastles with mom, ate a bunch of candy she brought from her job, and assimilated into the icy depths.

At the start of 4th grade, I gained the reputation of being the hugest fucking nerd to ever grace the planet when my thrift store backpack broke in the middle of social studies class, revealing a waterfall of marine biology and equestrian care textbooks. Some of the weird kids tried inviting me into their friend group when gossip spread about how I liked horses (like a girl), but I declined them and attempted to go back to the kids I sat with during lunch time. Maybe because it was a public school in one of the meaner parts of Manhattan (still infinitely better than my neighborhood, to be honest), maybe I really was just a weirdo, but I ended being rejected by the groups of nine and ten year olds.

It hurt a lot more than I thought it would. Bullying, teasing, school meanness was a part of growing up, but even as a mental adult, the forced isolation triggered some frantic crying.

I didn't cry after the first day, because I was stronger than that. Jacksons were tougher than nails.

The preferred way to beat the new loneliness was to hole up in the public library until it was closing time. Closing time was also coincidentally when mom's shift ended, so she could walk home, get the car, and pick me up. It was ideal situation if I had to be honest, because I spent more time doing enjoyable things with books than with obnoxious kids. I made a few friends at the library in the form of old Mediterranean grandmas who taught me modern Greek better than accent-less, inflection-less books.

A way to get over phobias, I had read, was constant exposure. First, through simple text, imagination, and words. Second, though pictures. Third, through a supervised sample test. Fourth, the real thing.

Naturally, being me, I went backwards.

By the end of the 4th grade, I could play in pools, look through picture books featuring the ocean, and enjoy the soothing pattern of the rhythmic crashing waves without suffering.

(Secretly, in the middle of the night, I wake up in a cold sweat from tormenting blackness)