Ugh, macaroni and barf again, Jon thought to himself as he picked at his lunch with his spork. The macaroni at his school was always melted together and if you picked one noodle up the whole thing came up with it. He stared glumly at the other tables full of laughing people and then he looked at his, him and his best friend Michael. Michael must have stayed back a few grades because he already had a goatee and his voice was very deep for a thirteen year-old. He had a bad limp so he was permanently excused from gym.
"I can't believe that they're serving this crap again. Didn't we have this on Monday and Wednesday this week? And last week?" Michael asked.
"We have this three times a week, and it's different crap the rest of the time," I replied and he laughed.
"Well at least this is our last day of school," Michael pointed out optimistically.
"Wooo," I cheered sarcastically, "three months of nothing, but the orphanage and those idiots that live there."
"But don't you get to go camping because of one of those charities?"
"Yeah, even better, two weeks of the outdoors with the same idiots that I usually deal with inside."
Michael spent the rest of the day trying to cheer me up, but it got me even more depressed about the upcoming camping trip. My time would probably be spent either telling everyone else to shut up (they made fun of my ADHD and dyslexia) or fending for myself as they tried to teach me a lesson, like a pack of piranhas. The women who looked after us, Maude and Crystal, never really cared what we did just as long as they had their smokes and hair spray.
When I got back to the orphanage Maude shouted at me to go get my bag and throw it on the bus. I ran upstairs and easily threw my bag over my shoulder. I had few clothes and little of everything else. Right as I was walking downstairs I ran into the "bully" of the orphanage, Peter. Peter was a small, lanky kid with cruel eyes and he could never beat me up, but he got two thugs to do the beating for him, Jacob and Evan. They were huge boys, muscular and fat, with the I.Q. of a piece of wood (make that dead wood).
"Well, well, well, what do we have here? A little Jon on his way to the bus? Well move out of our way or we'll teach you another lesson," Peter threatened, but I didn't move.
"What lesson? I gave you a black eye and Jacob and Evan did all the work. You just stood back crying because of your eye," I retorted and Peter turned red.
"I had something in my eye!" Peter exclaimed. "Get him."
And with that Evan and Jacob pounced onto where I had been, but I was too fast for them. I flew past them and on the way down I gave Peter a punch in the gut so he would lay off. He screamed in pain and Maude ran into the room, wide-eyed. It was just my luck that Maude would run in because the only kid that she liked in the whole orphanage was Peter; she thought that he was the most wonderful thing in the world and that he was helpless because he was so small.
"What have you done to poor, little Peter?!" Maude shouted and Peter put on the water works pretending that he had broken a rib. "GET OUT!"
I listened to Maude, but no the way she had wanted me to listen, I left, and I didn't stop running through the city, trying to find where Michael lived. It was somewhere in Manhattan in a small apartment. Luckily I had always been somewhat of a track star so running through the hot city was no problem for me. Finally I found Michael's apartment. It was a very nice place with terraces and even a doorman that was dressed pretty well. I ran in and I immediately saw the front desk because it had been carved out of shiny granite and the sun was glinting off of it. The man raised his eyebrows probably thinking that a sweat soaked kid with ratty clothes was only there to make trouble.
"I'm looking for the Underwood's apartment," I explained and the man quickly searched through his computer.
"Penthouse suite," He replied and I was surprised. Michael had told me it was a small apartment, but penthouses were huge in Manhattan.
I tapped my foot impatiently as the elevator slowly rose to the penthouse floor. Finally, with a bing!, the door opened and I walked out. There was only one door in the whole hallway and it was slightly cracked open and I could hear voices coming from the room.
"It can't be her child, that's impossible!" I heard Michael protest.
"It explains so much and the prophecy would explain why Ouranos is gathering the Titans and why there is a lot of activity coming from Tartarus," I heard a husky voice say. I knocked on the door and it opened up, showing me what I had never planned on seeing, Michael without his pants.
For some reason Michael's legs had a weird curve to them and they were extremely furry.. and instead of feet he had something like goat hooves. The man next to him looked normal, except he was shirtless and had the body of a horse….. Wait, what?
"Jon, we've been expecting you," the horse thing explained.
Ok, I would like to say that I fought these two, things, off, as they walked towards me, but that wasn't the case. I fainted.