Chapter 13

7. MY DINNER GOES UP IN SMOKE

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers

pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just

staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.

She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging

their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant

marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two

facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed

together if you didn’t get to the top fast enough.

Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

“I’ve got training to do,” Annabeth said flatly. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty. Just

follow your cabin to the mess hall.”

“Annabeth, I’m sorry about the toilets.”

“Whatever.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I’d made water

shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn’t understand how. But the toilets had

responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.

“You need to talk to the Oracle,” Annabeth said.

“Who?”

“Not who. What. The Oracle. I’ll ask Chiron.”

I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for

once.

I wasn’t expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my

heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base

of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-

shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in

and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.

I didn’t know what else to do. I waved back.

“Don’t encourage them,” Annabeth warned. “Naiads are terrible flirts.”

“Naiads,” I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. “That’s it. I want to go

home now.”

Annabeth frowned. “Don’t you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only

safe place on earth for kids like us.”

“You mean, mentally disturbed kids?”

“I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human.”

“Half-human and half-what?”

“I think you know.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a

sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.

“God,” I said. “Half-god.”

Annabeth nodded. “Your father isn’t dead, Percy. He’s one of the Olympians.”

“That’s ... crazy.”

“Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran

around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they’ve

changed their habits in the last few millennia?”

“But those are just—” I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron’s

warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth. “But if all the kids

here are half-gods—”

“Demigods,” Annabeth said. “That’s the official term. Or half-bloods.”

“Then who’s your dad?”

Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I’d just trespassed

on a sensitive subject.

“My dad is a professor at West Point,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since I

was very small.

He teaches American history.”

“He’s human.”

“What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female

attractive? How sexist is that?”

“Who’s your mom, then?”

“Cabin six.”

“Meaning?”

Annabeth straightened. “Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle.”

Okay, I thought. Why not?

“And my dad?”

“Undetermined,” Annabeth said, “like I told you before. Nobody knows.”

“Except my mother. She knew.”

“Maybe not, Percy. Gods don’t always reveal their identities.”

“My dad would have. He loved her.”

Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn’t want to burst my bubble.

“Maybe you’re right.

Maybe he’ll send a sign. That’s the only way to know for sure: your father has

to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens.

“You mean sometimes it doesn’t?”

Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. “The gods are busy. They have a lot of

kids and they don’t always ... Well, sometimes they don’t care about us, Percy. They

ignore us.”

I thought about some of the kids I’d seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who

looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never

come. I’d known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by

rich parents who didn’t have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave

better.

“So I’m stuck here,” I said. “That’s it? For the rest of my life?”

“It depends,” Annabeth said. “Some campers only stay the summer. If you’re a

child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you’re probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training

and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it’s too

dangerous to leave. We’re year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters.

They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they’ll ignore us until

we’re old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most

demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive

in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you’d

know them. Some don’t even realize they’re demigods. But very, very few are like

that.”

“So monsters can’t get in here?”

Annabeth shook her head. “Not unless they’re intentionally stocked in the

woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside.”

“Why would anybody want to summon a monster?”

“Practice fights. Practical jokes.”

“Practical jokes?”

“The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From

the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry

farm.”

“So ... you’re a year-rounder?”

Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather

necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke’s, except

Annabeth’s also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.

“I’ve been here since I was seven,” she said. “Every August, on the last day of

summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I’ve been here longer

than most of the counselors, and they’re all in college.”

“Why did you come so young?”

She twisted the ring on her necklace. “None of your business.”

“Oh.” I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. “So ... I could just

walk out of here right now if I wanted to?”

“It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D’s or Chiron’s permission. But

they wouldn’t give permission until the end of the summer session unless ...”

“Unless?”

“You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time ...”

Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn’t gone

well.

“Back in the sick room,” I said, “when you were feeding me that stuff—”

“Ambrosia.”

“Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice.”

Annabeth’s shoulders tensed. “So you do know something?”

“Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking

about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn’t

have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?”

She clenched her fists. “I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but

they won’t tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last

time I was there, everything seemed so normal.”

“You’ve been to Olympus?”

“Some of us year-rounders—Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others—we

took a field trip during winter solstice. That’s when the gods have their big annual

council.”

“But... how did you get there?”

“The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire

State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor.” She looked at me like she

was sure I must know this already. “You are a New Yorker, right?”

“Oh, sure.” As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the

Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.

“Right after we visited,” Annabeth continued, “the weather got weird, as if the

gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I’ve overheard satyrs talking. The

best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn’t returned

by summer solstice, there’s going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping ... I

mean— Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of

course she’s got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we

could work together. I thought you might know something.”

I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and

mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.

“I’ve got to get a quest,” Annabeth muttered to herself. “I’m not too young. If

they would just tell me the problem ...”

I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth

must’ve heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she’d catch me later. I left

her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.

Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for

dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features:

sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that

teachers would peg as troublemakers.

Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on

the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.

The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too.

It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

“Found you a sleeping bag,” he said. “And here, I stole you some toiletries

from the camp store.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

I said, “Thanks.”

“No prob.” Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. “Tough first

day?”

“I don’t belong here,” I said. “I don’t even believe in gods.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s how we all started. Once you start believing in them?

It doesn’t get any easier.”

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty

easygoing guy.

He looked like he could handle just about anything.

“So your dad is Hermes?” I asked.

He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he

was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. “Yeah.

Hermes.”

“The wing-footed messenger guy.”

“That’s him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody

who uses the roads. That’s why you’re here, enjoying cabin eleven’s hospitality.

Hermes isn’t picky about who he sponsors.”

I figured Luke didn’t mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.

“You ever meet your dad?” I asked.

“Once.”

I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me. Apparently, he

didn’t. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.

Luke looked up and managed a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Percy. The

campers here, they’re mostly good people. After all, we’re extended family, right?

We take care of each other.”

He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an

older guy like him—even if he was a counselor—should’ve steered clear of an

uncool middle-schooler like me.

But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He’d even stolen me some

toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day.

I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me

all afternoon.

“Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being ‘Big Three’ material. Then

Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be ‘the one.’ She said I should talk to the Oracle.

What was that all about?”

Luke folded his knife. “I hate prophecies.”

“What do you mean?”

His face twitched around the scar. “Let’s just say I messed things up for

everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the

Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn’t allowed any more quests. Annabeth’s been

dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he

already knew her fate. He’d had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn’t tell her the

whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn’t destined to go on a quest yet. She had to

wait until... somebody special came to the camp.”

“Somebody special?”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Luke said. “Annabeth wants to think every new

camper who comes through here is the omen she’s been waiting for. Now, come on,

it’s dinnertime.”

The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a

conch shell, even though I’d never heard one before.

Luke yelled, “Eleven, fall in!”

The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined

up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the other

cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had

looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went

down.

We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the

meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the

woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw

one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come

skipping up the hill.

In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen

assorted wood nymphs and naiads.

At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire

burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table,

covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin

eleven’s was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half

my butt hanging off.

I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of

plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic

table being way too small for a centaur.

Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with

her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.

Clarisse sat behind me at Ares’s table. She’d apparently gotten over being

hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***