We headed to the school buses right after breakfast. There were about 30 of us total. The bus, thankfully, fit all of us. I was stuck in a seat with Theo. I suppose it was better that way, seeing how anyone else would get completely confused and call us weirdos because I had lost my memory. That's really what kids would do, I knew it.

"Her name is Sally," Theo started, when we sat down. "You usually call her Salamander just to get on her nerves, it works, by the way. She's your girlfriend...or might as well be. I'm just you best friend and all, you know. I don't know how you could forget that, but I guess it's possible.

"We go to boarding school in Seattle, Washington. You've only been here a year. I'll give you a copy of your schedule when we get back to the room."

"Wait, wait," I interrupted. "You have a copy of my schedule?"

"Yeah," he said, "don't worry about it. I've gotcha covered in nearly every case or situation."

Somebody likes to be prepared, hmm?

"Anyway, right now we're obviously on a trip to a park so, sit back and enjoy the city while you can. Hello, nature, here comes trouble!"

I laughed a bit.

He smiled and looked at me. I could almost feel his eyes glancing over me, as if scanning my expression for any sign of a lie.

"If I find out that you've been lying about this, you can expect more than a bit of prickly pear syrup in your t-shirt tomorrow."

I looked at him with wide eyes. He busted up laughing.

"Okay, okay, you're obviously not lying now."

When we arrived at the park, everyone was shoved out the small doors at the front of the bus and immediately greeted by a park ranger and a guy who looked like a student teacher. He must have been at least 20 years old, by the looks of it. He had brown hair that was somewhat curly and dark, he was tall, but not extremely so, and had a t-shirt and jeans as if he were expecting to go on a big, long hike (which we probably were about to go on).

"Okay! We're splitting everyone up into groups! We'll start over here..." The guy grouped us together in groups of two. Of course, when he got to us, he put Sally in another group and Theo and me in the same group.

"Everybody follow me." We followed the student-teacher-man down the trail. I turned to Theo, my mouth open, about to ask who this guy was, anyway, and, before I could say anything, Theo said, "That's Mr. Jeffrey, our student teacher in Science. He's cool, but still a bit weird."

I closed my mouth. I didn't think I was that predictable. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, so I tripped over a dead branch laying on the ground. I fell on my hands and knees, but quickly jumped back up and brushed myself off. My face felt hot with embarrassment.

"Ouch, dude." Theo was laughing at me. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I said, "accept for the fact I can't remember worth squat."

"Hey, I'm sure it's just a bit of amnesia." He patted me on the shoulder. "It'll all come back, right?"

I didn't respond. I sure hoped it came back to me.

We made it out to the water at the end of the trail and sat down on rocks to do a worksheet about the ecosystem of a pond. I didn't know the answer to most of these questions. That's beside the fact that I really didn't care if I got the answers right or not. All I cared about was what I was going to do about my memory. I looked back at Theo and suddenly asked, "What year is it?"

"Why?"

"Just curious."

He looked up from his worksheet.

"It's 2010, why?"

"I just..."

"...don't remember that either?"

I nodded my head and looked back out at the water. It made me smile. All I could think about was the beautiful, glassy surface of the water and how great it would be to just jump in and...

And then what? Look like an idiot? The only one dumb enough to just jump in the water for the heck of it?

I rubbed my eyes, yawned, and looked around at the other students. As I was, I noticed that Mr. Jeffrey was staring at me oddly. Almost as if I shouldn't be there. That bothered me, of course, but I decided to try to answer a couple of the questions before completely giving up.

"Mr. Jackson! Can I have a word?"

I looked back up at the student teacher.

"Ah, sure."

I climbed down from my rock and walked over to him.

"Nice weather, eh?" he said. "Why, I would like weather to be this nice all the time, but, obviously, if we had no rain, we wouldn't have this. It's much nicer out here than in the city, what do you think?"

"I don't mean to be rude, but did you call me over here to talk about nature, sir?"

He looked at me. He looked like he was about an inch taller than me and couldn't stand to sit still and just examine me with his eyes. He had that look that you'd imagine a cop in a movie would have when he looks at a suspicious terrorist-looking dude walking through an airport. It looked like he wanted to run me over with a metal detector baton just to be safe.

"No, Percy. I want to tell you that, whatever you think you're doing, it isn't fooling me one bit. Those kids might think otherwise, but you know as well as I do that there's something...out of place, shall we say?"

I raised my eyebrow, confused.

"What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean, Jackson, and I shouldn't have to explain myself."

"But..." I hesitated. "I really don't remember anything. It's the weirdest thing. I woke up this morning and I didn't even know my own name."

He examined me a bit more with those eyes of his, then his expression changed.

"Man, looks like you're right. Dang, and I thought I was going to get to the bottom of this. Shoot."

"What do I do?"

"Well, for starters-"

BOOM!

Everyone looked up. It had started to rain and the waters were getting choppy. Everyone was backing away from the water and tucking their worksheets under their jackets and into pockets. There was another huge flash of lightning and, shortly after, an equally huge BOOM that you could feel in the ground below you as well as in your ear drums.

We all headed back to the bus, but as soon as we got to the doors, the winds picked up so much that we were all forced to hold on to whatever was near us for support. The storm continued.

To answer Mr. Jeffrey's question: no, it wasn't such a nice day, and the weather was not all that nice.

Just then, there was a big flash of light and another loud BOOM! A tree fell down, just missing me. I, by this point, was scared out of my wits. Nothing made sense. I couldn't remember anything and I couldn't believe the sudden weather change.

To add to it all, the raining had stopped, so it was just us kids, the roaring wind, and a burning tree.

Great.

I got an idea, just then, and let my instincts take over.

"Get everyone behind the bus!" I yelled through the wind. Obviously, Mr. Jeffrey understood and listened because, directly afterwards, he told everyone to shelter themselves behind our now over-turned bus.

I guess I forgot to mention that part.

Whoops.

Anyhow, I was left, standing in front of a big ol' burning tree and had no idea what to do. Instinct and adrenaline rushed through my veins and mind and, immediately, I felt a slight tug in my gut. I waved my hand from the direction of the water toward the fire.

A gigantic wave of water rushed through the trees (less recklessly than it sounds when I try to describe it) and landed on the huge, burning log. The fire was doused quickly, and, surely enough, Mr. Jeffrey, Sally, and Theo had seen it all. None of the other kids had, of course. They were too busy freaking out or laughing nervously.

The winds were still ripping through the trees and over the pine-needle covered ground. I ran back to the others.

"We need to get out of here!" I yelled over the roar and commotion.

"No dip, Sherlock!" Theo yelled. I made a mental note to give him a hard time about the sarcasm later.

"Okay! We-" Mr. Jeffrey started, but then stopped as a dagger spiraled through the air and landed right where his hand had been a moment before. His eyes went wide and he had a sort of nervous laugh. Sally looked up and squinted her amber-like eyes against the wind. She then yelled, "Get everyone away from the bus!"

Mr. Jeffrey, amazingly, followed her instructions and led the class out from behind the sideways bus. Theo and I just looked at Sally, though. She was looking directly upward still. That's when I finally got a smart idea and looked up too. There were a whole bunch of these cloud-figures. I had no idea what they were, but they looked threatening.

Great gods...I thought. What is all this?

Immediately, I thought, Why am I thinking this? and, as always, if you have enough time to think that, then you've probably wasted too much time already.

The figures started dive-bombing the three of us.

"Who is it? Who is it?" they cackled.

Again, on instinct alone, I reached in my pocket and pulled out a ballpoint pen.

"Ah, dude?" Theo said to me, half watching me and half watching the figures, "I know the pen's mightier than the sword and all but I don't think-"

I uncapped the pen.

It grew into a 3 foot long sword.

Celestial bronze. Anaklusmos: Riptide: the unexpected tide that pulls you under.

I blinked. How did I know all of that?

It shone a bright bronze color (but that's up with the "celestial" part?) with a leather hilt and the letters engraved into the side.

Ancient Greek, I thought.

Dang, amnesia sucks.

I swung the sword at the first one to fly at me. I sliced right through it. I was worried, for a moment, that a sword couldn't do much because they were cloud-like creatures, but the poor first victim turned into dust as soon as the blade made contact. The same happened with the second and the third. Theo had managed to find a long stick and throw it at one. It made a sort of oof! noise as it was slammed up against a tree, whereupon it turned to dust like it's buddies.

Sally was standing there simply trying not to be targeted. She seemed to get an idea after I swung clear through the fifth cloud-person. She raised her hands up and said, "Απόλλων στείλτε μας Κυρ!" (A/N: phonetic translation: Apóllon steílte mas Kyr!)

Suddenly, her hands glowed a bright gold and the clouds parted, showing the sun instead of the raging grey above. The cloud-creatures shrieked and disappeared into thin air. Suddenly, two people ran into the parking area where we were standing. One of them, a girl with brown hair and bright blue eyes, wearing what looked like Greek battle armor (how did I even know that?) ran straight up to me, grabbed me by the shirt collar and said, "Where's Jason?"

A/N: I'll make this brief: what Sally said means roughly "Apollo send us sun!" which is...practically a that's so Sally moment all ready! I'm getting predictable! Oh no!