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Book 1. Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief

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Chapter 11

11. I BECOME SUPREME LORD OF THE BATHROOM

Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour,

though I was careful not to walk behind him. I’d done pooper-scooper patrol in the

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I’m sorry, I did not trust

Chiron’s back end the way I trusted his front.

We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One

pointed to the minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, “That’s him.”

Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than

Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with

nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn’t normally shy, but the

way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to

do a flip or something.

I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I’d realized—four

stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was checking

out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in

the uppermost window of the attic gable.

Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct

impression I was being watched.

“What’s up there?” I asked Chiron.

He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. “Just the attic.”

“Somebody lives there?”

“No,” he said with finality. “Not a single living thing.”

I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had

moved that curtain.

“Come along, Percy,” Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced.

“Lots to see.”

We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels

of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.

Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants

and Mount Olympus. “It pays our expenses,” he explained. “And the strawberries

take almost no effort.”

He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy

when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from

growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.

I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to

leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered

if Grover could work that kind of magic with music. I wondered if he was still inside

the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr. D.

“Grover won’t get in too much trouble, will he?” I asked Chiron. “I mean ... he

was a good protector. Really.”

Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horses back like

a saddle.

“Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable. To reach

his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a

new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill.”

“But he did that!”

“I might agree with you,” Chiron said. “But it is not my place to judge.

Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I’m afraid they might not

see this assignment as a success.

After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there’s the unfortunate ... ah ...

fate of your mother.

And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the

property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on

Grover’s part.”

I wanted to protest. None of what happened was Grover’s fault. I also felt

really, really guilty.

If I hadn’t given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in

trouble.

“He’ll get a second chance, won’t he?”

Chiron winced. “I’m afraid that was Grover’s second chance, Percy. The

council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first

time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying

again. He’s still so small for his age... .”

“How old is he?”

“Oh, twenty-eight.”

“What! And he’s in sixth grade?”

“Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent

of a middle school student for the past six years.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Quite,” Chiron agreed. “At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr

standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious

to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career... .”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?”

Chiron looked away quickly. “Let’s move along, shall we?”

But I wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me

when Chiron talked about my mother’s fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the

word death. The beginnings of an idea—a tiny, hopeful fire—started forming in my

mind.

“Chiron,” I said. “If the gods and Olympus and all that are real ...”

“Yes, child?”

“Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?”

Chiron’s expression darkened.

“Yes, child.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “There is a place

where spirits go after death. But for now ... until we know more . . . I would urge you

to put that out of your mind.”

“What do you mean, ‘until we know more’?”

“Come, Percy. Let’s see the woods.”

As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a

quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been

in there since the Native Americans.

Chiron said, “The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go

armed.”

“Stocked with what?” I asked. “Armed with what?”

“You’ll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and

shield?”

“My own—?”

“No,” Chiron said. “I don’t suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I’ll visit

the armory later.”

I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, but there was too

much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the

canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn’t seem to like very much), the javelin

range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword

and spear fights.

“Sword and spear fights?” I asked.

“Cabin challenges and all that,” he explained. “Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes,

and there’s the mess hall.”

Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a

hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.

“What do you do when it rains?” I asked.

Chiron looked at me as if I’d gone a little weird. “We still have to eat, don’t

we?” I decided to drop the subject.

Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the

woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row

on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings

I’d ever seen.

Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on

the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine

had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the walls and

a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They all faced a

commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains,

flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more my speed).

In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a

warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the

flames, poking the coals with a stick.

The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like

his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front.

Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors

shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to

streak across them. Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns

garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of

peacocks.

“Zeus and Hera?” I guessed.

“Correct,” Chiron said.

“Their cabins look empty.”

“Several of the cabins are. That’s true. No one ever stays in one or two.”

Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot. Twelve cabins for the

twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?

I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.

It wasn’t high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer

walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the

slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I peeked inside the

open doorway and Chiron said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that!”

Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the

wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had

ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his

hand on my shoulder and said, “Come along, Percy.”

Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.

Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been

splashed on with buckets and fists. The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed

wild boar’s head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I

could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and

arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe

thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a

camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me

of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and

her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.

I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron’s hooves. “We haven’t seen any

other centaurs,”

I observed.

“No,” said Chiron sadly. “My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I’m afraid.

You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you

won’t see any here.”

“You said your name was Chiron. Are you really ...”

He smiled down at me. “The Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and

all that? Yes, Percy, I am.”

“But, shouldn’t you be dead?”

Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. “I honestly don’t know about

should be. The truth is, I can’t be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish.

I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish ... and I gave up much. But I’m still here,

so I can only assume I’m still needed.”

I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn’t have

made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.

“Doesn’t it ever get boring?”

“No, no,” he said. “Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring.”

“Why depressing?”

Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.

“Oh, look,” he said. “Annabeth is waiting for us.”

* * *

The blond girl I’d met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin

on the left, number eleven.

When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking