Chapter 12

“Annabeth,” Chiron said, “I have masters’ archery class at noon. Would you

take Percy from here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cabin eleven,” Chiron told me, gesturing toward the doorway. “Make

yourself at home.”

Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp

cabin, with the emphasis on old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint

peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor’s symbols, a winged pole with

two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it... ? A caduceus.

Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the

number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like

a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.

Chiron didn’t go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw

him they all stood and bowed respectfully.

“Well, then,” Chiron said. “Good luck, Percy. I’ll see you at dinner.”

He galloped away toward the archery range.

I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren’t bowing anymore.

They were staring at me, sizing me up. I knew this routine. I’d gone through it at

enough schools.

“Well?” Annabeth prompted. “Go on.”

So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself.

There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.

Annabeth announced, “Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven.

“Regular or undetermined?” somebody asked.

I didn’t know what to say, but Annabeth said, “Undetermined.”

Everybody groaned.

A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward. “Now, now, campers.

That’s what we’re here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor,

right over there.”

The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and

muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange

tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay

beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran

from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.

“This is Luke,” Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I

glanced over and could’ve sworn she was blushing. She saw me looking, and her

expression hardened again. “He’s your counselor for now.”

“For now?” I asked.

“You’re undetermined,” Luke explained patiently. “They don’t know what

cabin to put you in, so you’re here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors.

Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers.”

I looked at the tiny section of floor they’d given me. I had nothing to put there

to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur’s

horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also

the god of thieves.

I looked around at the campers’ faces, some sullen and suspicious, some

grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my

pockets.

“How long will I be here?” I asked.

“Good question,” Luke said. “Until you’re determined.”

“How long will that take?”

The campers all laughed.

“Come on,” Annabeth told me. “I’ll show you the volleyball court.”

“I’ve already seen it.”

“Come on.” She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the

kids of cabin eleven laughing behind me.

When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, “Jackson, you have to do

better than that.”

“What?”

She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, “I can’t believe I thought

you were the one.”

“What’s your problem?” I was getting angry now. “All I know is, I kill some

bull guy—”

“Don’t talk like that!” Annabeth told me. “You know how many kids at this

camp wish they’d had your chance?”

“To get killed?”

“To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?”

I shook my head. “Look, if the thing I fought really was the Minotaur, the

same one in the stories ...”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s only one.”

“Yes.”

“And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the

labyrinth. So ...”

“Monsters don’t die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don’t die.”

“Oh, thanks. That clears it up.”

“They don’t have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while,

maybe even for a whole lifetime if you’re lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron

calls them archetypes.

Eventually, they re-form.”

I thought about Mrs. Dodds. “You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a

sword—”

“The Fur ... I mean, your math teacher. That’s right. She’s still out there. You

just made her very, very mad.”

“How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?”

“You talk in your sleep.”

“You almost called her something. A Fury? They’re Hades’ torturers, right?”

Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and

swallow her.

“You shouldn’t call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones,

if we have to speak of them at all.”

“Look, is there anything we can say without it thundering?” I sounded whiny,

even to myself, but right then I didn’t care. “Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven,

anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks

right over there.”

I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. “You don’t just

choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or ... your parent.”

She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.

“My mom is Sally Jackson,” I said. “She works at the candy store in Grand

Central Station.

At least, she used to.”

“I’m sorry about your mom, Percy. But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking

about your other parent. Your dad.”

“He’s dead. I never knew him.”

Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she’d had this conversation before with other kids.

“Your father’s not dead, Percy.”

“How can you say that? You know him?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how can you say—”

“Because I know you. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t one of us.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“No?” She raised an eyebrow. “I bet you moved around from school to school.

I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them.”

“How—”

“Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too.”

I tried to swallow my embarrassment. “What does that have to do with

anything?”

“Taken together, it’s almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you

read, right?

That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—

you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom. That’s your battlefield reflexes. In a

real fight, they’d keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that’s because you

see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal’s. Of

course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don’t want

you seeing them for what they are.”

“You sound like ... you went through the same thing?”

“Most of the kids here did. If you weren’t like us, you couldn’t have survived

the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar.”

“Ambrosia and nectar.”

“The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff

would’ve killed a normal kid. It would’ve turned your blood to fire and your bones to

sand and you’d be dead. Face it. You’re a half-blood.”

A half-blood.

I was reeling with so many questions I didn’t know where to start.

Then a husky voice yelled, “Well! A newbie!”

I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us.

She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all

wearing camo jackets.

“Clarisse,” Annabeth sighed. “Why don’t you go polish your spear or

something?”

“Sure, Miss Princess,” the big girl said. “So I can run you through with it

Friday night.”

‘‘Erre es korakas!” Annabeth said, which I somehow understood was Greek

for ‘Go to the crows!’ though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded.

“You don’t stand a chance.”

“We’ll pulverize you,” Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn’t

sure she could follow through on the threat. She turned toward me. “Who’s this little

runt?”

“Percy Jackson,” Annabeth said, “meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares.”

I blinked. “Like ... the war god?”

Clarisse sneered. “You got a problem with that?”

“No,” I said, recovering my wits. “It explains the bad smell.”

Clarisse growled. “We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy.”

“Percy.”

“Whatever. Come on, I’ll show you.”

“Clarisse—” Annabeth tried to say.

“Stay out of it, wise girl.”

Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it, and I didn’t really want her

help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.

I handed Annabeth my minotaur horn and got ready to fight, but before I knew

it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building

that I knew immediately was the bathroom.

I was kicking and punching. I’d been in plenty of fights before, but this big girl

Clarisse had hands like iron. She dragged me into the girls’ bathroom. There was a

line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. It smelled just

like any public bathroom, and I was thinking—as much as I could think with Clarisse

ripping my hair out—that if this place belonged to the gods, they should’ve been able

to afford classier johns.

Clarisse’s friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I’d

used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn’t there.

“Like he’s ‘Big Three’ material,” Clarisse said as she pushed me toward one of

the toilets.

“Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, he was so stupid looking.”

Her friends snickered.

Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.

Clarisse bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head toward the

toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. I strained

to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, I will not go into

that. I won’t.

Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the

plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse’s grip on my hair loosened. Water shot

out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I

was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.

I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in

the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt. The water stayed on her like the

spray from a fire hose, pushing her backward into a shower stall.

She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her. But then the

other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back.

The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls

right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed

away.

As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water

shut off as quickly as it had started.

The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn’t been spared. She was

dripping wet, but she hadn’t been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly

the same place, staring at me in shock.

I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole

room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn’t have one drop of water on

my clothes. Nothing.

I stood up, my legs shaky.

Annabeth said, “How did you ...”

“I don’t know.”

We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the

mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse’s hair was

flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like

sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred. “You are dead, new boy. You are

totally dead.”

I probably should have let it go, but I said, “You want to gargle with toilet

water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth.”

Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while

the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.

Annabeth stared at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was just grossed out or

angry at me for dousing her.

“What?” I demanded. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” she said, “that I want you on my team for capture the flag.”

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