Hey guys. Reviews are appreciated here. I'm gonna start the second book.
Percy's Point of View
My nightmare started like this.
I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned.
Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida.
Then I heard hooves clattering against the pavement. I turned and saw my friend Grover running for his life.
Yeah, I said hooves.
Grover is a satyr. From the waist up, he looks like a typical gangly teenager with a peach-fuzz goatee and a bad case of acne. He walks with a strange limp, but unless you happen to catch him without his pants on (which I don't recommend), you'd never know there was anything un-human about him. Baggy jeans and fake feet hide the fact that he's got furry hindquarters and hooves.
Grover had been my best friend in sixth grade. I hadn't seen him since last July, when he set off alone on a dangerous quest-a quest no satyr had ever returned from. He only was able to go on the quest because he had successfully brought two powerful sons of the big three(My brother Jordan and I) to camp.
Anyway, in my dream, Grover was hauling goat tail, holding his human shoes in his hands the way he does when he needs to move fast. He clopped past the little tourist shops and surfboard rental places. The wind bent the palm trees almost to the ground.
Grover was terrified of something behind him. He must've just come from the beach. Wet sand was caked in his fur. He'd escaped from somewhere. He was trying to get away from ... something.
A bone-rattling growl cut through the storm. Behind Grover, at the far end of the block, a shadowy figure loomed. It swatted aside a street lamp, which burst in a shower of sparks.
Grover stumbled, whimpering in fear. He muttered to himself, Have to get away. Have to warn them!
I couldn't see what was chasing him, but I could hear it muttering and cursing. The ground shook as it got closer. Grover dashed around a street corner and faltered. He'd run into a dead-end courtyard full of shops. No time to back up. The nearest door had been blown open by the storm. The sign above the darkened display window read: ST. AUGUSTINE BRIDAL BOUTIQUE.
Grover dashed inside. He dove behind a rack of wedding dresses.
The monster's shadow passed in front of the shop. I could smell the thing-a sickening combination of wet sheep wool and rotten meat and that weird sour body odor only monsters have, like a skunk that's been living off Mexican food.
Grover trembled behind the wedding dresses. The monster's shadow passed on.
Silence except for the rain. Grover took a deep breath. Maybe the thing was gone.
Then lightning flashed. The entire front of the store exploded, and a monstrous voice bellowed:
"MIIIIINE!"
I sat bolt upright, shivering in my bed.
There was no storm. No monster.
Morning sunlight filtered through my bedroom window.
I thought I saw a shadow flicker across the glass-a humanlike shape. But then there was a knock on my bedroom door-my mom called: "Percy, you're going to be late"-and the shadow at the window disappeared.
It must've been my imagination. A fifth-story window with a rickety old fire escape ... there couldn't have been anyone out there.
"Come on, dear," my mother called again. "Last day of school. You should be excited! You've almost made it.'"
"Coming," I managed.
I felt under my pillow. My fingers closed reassuringly around the ballpoint pen I always slept with. I brought it out, studied the Ancient Greek writing engraved on the side: Anaklusmos. Riptide.
I thought about uncapping it, but something held me back. I hadn't used Riptide for so long...
Besides, my mom had made me promise not to use deadly weapons in the apartment after I'd swung a javelin the wrong way and taken out her china cabinet. It wasn't that big of a deal to me as Jordan fixed it with a spell but she was very disappointed nevertheless, I put Anaklusmos on my nightstand and dragged myself out of bed.
I got dressed as quickly as I could. I tried not to think about my nightmare or monsters or the shadow at my window.
Have to get away. Have to warn them!
What had Grover meant?
I made a three-fingered claw over my heart and pushed outward-an ancient gesture Grover had taught me for warding off evil.
The dream couldn't have been real.
Last day of school. My mom was right, I should have been excited. For the first time in my life, I'd almost made it an entire year without getting expelled. No weird accidents. No fights in the classroom. No teachers turning into monsters and trying to kill me with poisoned cafeteria food or exploding homework. Even last year while I didn't care because I knew I was going to camp I was not invited back and basically , I'd be on my way to my favorite place in the world-Camp Half-Blood.
Only one more day to go. Surely even I couldn't mess that up.
As usual, I didn't have a clue how wrong I was.
My mom made blue waffles and blue eggs for breakfast. She's funny that way, celebrating special occasions with blue food. I think it's her way of saying anything is possible. Percy can pass seventh grade unaided. Waffles can be blue. Little miracles like that.
I ate at the kitchen table while my mom washed dishes. She was dressed in her work uniform-a starry blue skirt and a red-and-white striped blouse she wore to sell candy at Sweet on America. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
The waffles tasted great, but I guess I wasn't digging in like I usually did. My mom looked over and frowned. "Percy, are you all right?"
"Yeah ... fine."
But she could always tell when something was bothering me. Jordan looked over from his seat across from me, mouth full of cereal. "School, or ..."
He didn't need to finish. I knew what he was asking.
"I think Grover's in trouble," I said, and I told him about my dream.
Our mom pursed her lips. We didn't talk much about the other part of my life. We tried to live as normally as possible, but my mom knew all about Grover.
"I wouldn't be too worried, dear," she said. "Grover is a big satyr now. If there were a problem, I'm sure we would've heard from ... from camp... ." Her shoulders tensed as she said the word camp.
"No, actually mom since Percy and I are connected to the sea because of our father our demigod dreams have more of a chance of being prophetic due to sea oracle genetics." Jordan said, concerned about the dream and Grover who he'd come to see as a little brother.
"What is it?" I was bothered by my mom's posture.
"Nothing," she said. "I'll tell you what. This afternoon we'll celebrate the end of school. I'll take you and Tyson to Rockefeller Center-to that skateboard shop you like."
Oh, man, that was tempting. We weren't struggling with money, we just lived more humbly than most. Between my mom's night classes and our private school tuition, we never used money to do special stuff like shop for a skateboard. But something in her voice bothered me.
"Wait a minute," I said. "I thought we were packing us up for camp tonight."
She twisted her dishrag. "Ah, dear, about that ... I got a message from Chiron last night."
My heart sank. Chiron was the activities director at Camp Half-Blood. He wouldn't contact us unless something serious was going on. "What did he say?"
"He thinks ... it might not be safe for you two to come to camp just yet. We might have to postpone." "Postpone? Mom, how could it not be safe? We are half-bloods! It's like the only safe place on earth for us!"
"Usually, dear. But with the problems they're having-"
"What problems?"
"Percy ... I'm very, very sorry. I was hoping to talk to you about it this afternoon. I can't explain it all
now. I'm not even sure Chiron can. Everything happened so suddenly."
My mind was reeling. How could I not go to camp? I wanted to ask a million questions, but just then the kitchen clock chimed the half-hour.
My mom looked almost relieved. "Seven-thirty, dears. Y'all should go. Tyson will be waiting."
"But-"
"Percy, we'll talk this afternoon. Go on to school."
That was the last thing I wanted to do, but my mom had this fragile look in her eyes-a kind of warning, like if I pushed her too hard she'd start to cry. Besides, she was right about our friend Tyson. We had to meet him at the subway station on time or he'd get upset. He was scared of traveling underground alone.
I gathered up my stuff, but I stopped in the doorway. "Mom, this problem at camp. Does it... could it have anything to do with my dream about Grover?"
She wouldn't meet my eyes. "We'll talk this afternoon, dear. I'll explain ... as much as I can." Reluctantly, I told her good-bye. We jogged downstairs to catch the Number Two train.
I didn't know it at the time, but my mom and I would never get to have our afternoon talk.
In fact, Jordan and I wouldn't be seeing home for a long, long time.
As we stepped outside, I glanced at the brownstone building across the street. Just for a second I saw a dark shape in the morning sunlight-a human silhouette against the brick wall, a shadow that belonged to no one.
Then it rippled and vanished.
Jordan's Point of View
My day started normal. Or as normal as it ever gets at Meriwether College Prep.
See, it's this "progressive" school in downtown Manhattan, which means we sit on bean bag chairs
instead of at desks, and we don't get grades, and the teachers wear jeans and rock concert T-shirts to work.
That's all cool with me. I mean, I'm actually physically and mentally older than I let show so I'm okay with basic classes. The only bad thing about Meriwether was that the teachers always looked on the bright side of things, and the kids weren't always ... well, bright.
Take my first class today: English. The whole middle school had read this book called Lord of the Flies, where all these kids get marooned on an island and go insane and become less human as their morals are sacrificed. So for our final exam, our teachers sent us into the break yard to spend an hour with no adult supervision to see what would happen. It was funny to watch them pretend those two scenarios were even close to accurate, especially for the eight graders who are probably used to some independence from their parents. What happened was a massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eighth graders, two pebble fights, and a full-tackle basketball game. The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most of those activities. The only good part was I could keep an eye on Percy who was still in seventh while Tyson and I were in eighth.
Sloan wasn't big or strong, but he acted like he was. He had eyes like a pit bull, and shaggy black hair, and he always dressed in expensive but sloppy clothes, like he wanted everybody to see how little he cared about his family's money. One of his front teeth was chipped from the time he'd taken his daddy's Porsche for a joyride and run into a PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR CHILDREN sign. Percy or I could easily take this kid down but it's below him and definitely below me to use my abilities on a mortal...especially a child.
Anyway, Sloan was giving everybody wedgies until he made the mistake of trying it on my cyclops brother Tyson.
Tyson was the only homeless "kid" at Meriwether College Prep. As near as Percy could figure, he'd been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so ... different. What my little brother didn't know was that Tyson was a monster. He was six-foot-three and built like the Abominable Snowman, but he cried a lot and was scared of just about everything, including his own reflection. His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. This was because the mist couldn't cover up everything. While I could've used a spell to give him a human form it would exert me too much to constantly apply it. My magic is better spent somewhere else. His eye was Brown. His voice was deep but because cyclops and satyrs develop differently when we first met he talked strangely, like a much younger kid. This kid voice still slips out occasionally. He wore a nice pair of blue jeans,custom made large black and white converse, and a plaid flannel shirt which is enchanted to never get dirty. It's the least I could do so that they had one less reason to bully him. He smelled like the fancy cologne I gave him because before he smelled like the New York City alleyway, where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box off 72nd Street.
Meriwether Prep had basically adopted him as a community service project so all the students could feel good about themselves. This was due to some precise Charm Speak on my part. Unfortunately, most of them couldn't stand Tyson. Once they discovered he was a big softie, despite his massive strength(which I suppressed with a spell) and his scary looks, they made themselves feel good by trying to pick on him. I always stood up for him as he is my little brother. Percy did too even though he just thinks Tyson is just a friend.
Percy thinks mom had complained to the school a million times that they weren't doing enough to help him and that she'd called social services, but nothing ever seemed to happen. This is because she could see through the mist and I explained that this wasn't an average monster but a friendly son of Poseidon. Anyway, Matt Sloan snuck up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and Tyson panicked. He swatted Sloan away a little too hard. Sloan flew fifteen feet and got tangled in the little kids' tire swing.
"You freak!" Sloan yelled. "Why don't you go back to your cardboard box!"
Tyson started sobbing.
"Take it back, Sloan!" I shouted.
Sloan just sneered at me. "Why do you even bother, Jackson? You might have friends if you weren't always sticking up for that freak."
I balled my fists. I was two seconds from putting a curse on him. "He's not a freak. He's just..."
I tried to think of the right thing to say, but Sloan wasn't listening. He and his big ugly friends were too busy laughing. I wondered if it were my imagination, or if Sloan had more goons hanging around him than usual. I was used to seeing him with two or three, but today he had like, half a dozen more, and I was pretty sure I'd never seen them before. I went up to Tyson and asked if he smelt the "bad smell" and his nod told me we were surrounded by monsters.
"Just wait till PE, Jackson," Sloan called. "You are so dead."
When the first period ended, our English teacher, Mr. de Milo, came outside to inspect the carnage. He pronounced that we'd understood Lord of the Flies perfectly. We all passed his course, and we should never, never grow up to be violent people. Matt Sloan nodded earnestly, then gave me a chip-toothed grin.
"I ... I am a freak?" he asked me.
"No," I promised, gritting my teeth. "You have godly blood unlike that loser."
Tyson sniffled. "You are a good brother."
Our next exam was science. Mrs. Tesla told us that we had to mix chemicals until we succeeded in making something explode, Tyson was my lab partner. His hands were slightly too big for the tiny vials we were supposed to use. He accidentally knocked a tray of chemicals off the counter and made an orange mushroom cloud in the trash can.
After Mrs. Tesla evacuated the lab and called the hazardous waste removal squad, she praised Tyson and me for being natural chemists. We were the first ones who'd ever aced her exam in under thirty seconds.
I was glad the morning went fast, because it kept me from thinking too much about my problems. I couldn't stand the idea that Grover is in danger but I have to let Percy solve the problem while only providing some help.
In social studies, while we were drawing latitude/longitude maps, I opened my notebook and stared at the photo inside-my friend and future sister in law Annabeth on vacation in Washington, D.C. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over her orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Her blond hair was pulled back in a bandanna. She was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial with her arms crossed, looking extremely pleased with herself, like she'd personally designed the 'd e-mailed Percy and I the picture after spring break.
I knew Annabeth was here
I was about to close my notebook when Matt Sloan reached over and ripped the photo out of the rings. "Hey!" I protested.
Sloan checked out the picture and his eyes got wide. "No way, Jackson. Who is that? She is not your-" "Give it back!" My ears felt hot. I snatched it and pushed him into his monster buddies. They were new kids who must've been visiting, they were all wearing those stupid HI! MY NAME IS: tags from the admissions office. They'd all filled in strange names like: MARROW SUCKER, SKULL EATER, and JOE BOB. No human beings had names like that and I was even more convinced of their true nature
"These guys are moving here next year," Sloan bragged, like that was supposed to scare me. "I bet they can pay the tuition, too, unlike your retard friend."
"He's not retarded." I had to try really, really hard not to punch Sloan in the face.
"You're such a loser, Jackson. Good thing I'm gonna put you out of your misery next period."
Part of me thought, if Sloan only knew who I really was ...
The bell rang.
As Tyson and I were leaving class, a girl's voice whispered, "Jordan!"
I looked around the locker area, but nobody was paying me any attention. Like any girl at Meriwether would ever be caught dead calling my name. I knew I was clear so I casted a quick spell "using some magic to alleviate fear, make Annabeth appear right here." She stood in front of me with her cap in hand the next instant. "Hey Annabeth." I said hugging her. She laughed and hugged me back before starting to talk about her time on the run as we walked to the gym. I told her about the monster situation and to be ready to go invisible when we reach the gymnasium.
It was time for PE. Our coach had promised us a free-for- all dodgeball game, and Matt Sloan had promised to kill my brother and I.
The gym uniform at Meriwether is sky blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts. Due to weather charms I controlled we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn't have to jog through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children.
I changed myself and Tyson quickly using a spell in the locker room bathroom because I didn't want to deal with Sloan. I was about to leave when I heard my father Chaos' voice in my head utter a single word "anaklusmos". Sometimes when he is busy doing whatever the creator of the universe does he gives me brief messages like that. I went to my little brother's locker and took his pen out of his jean pockets and made it disappear into a pocket inventory created using my mother Hecate's powers.
When we got into the gym, Coach Nunley was sitting at his little desk reading Sports Illustrated. Nunley was about a million years old, with bifocals and no teeth and a greasy wave of gray hair. He reminded Perce of the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood-which was a shriveled-up mummy-except Coach Nunley moved a lot less and he never billowed green smoke. Well, at least not that I'd observed.
Matt Sloan said, "Coach, can I be captain?"
"Eh?" Coach Nunley looked up from his magazine. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Mm-hmm."
Sloan grinned and took charge of the picking. He made Percy the other team's captain, but it didn't matter who Percy picked, because all the jocks and the popular kids moved over to Sloan's side. So did the big group of "visitors".
On Percy's side he had Tyson, Corey Bailer, the computer geek, Raj Mandali the calculus whiz, and a half dozen other kids who always got harassed by Sloan and his gang along with me. Normally I would've been okay with just Tyson-he was worth half a team all by himself-but the visitors on Sloan's team were as tall and strong-looking as Tyson, and there were six of them. I wonder if they are enemy Cyclops'.
Matt Sloan spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym.
"I'm Scared," Tyson mumbled.
I looked at him. "It'll be okay. If they try anything i'm gonna give you a power boost."
The visitors were cracking their knuckles, eyeing us like it was slaughter time.
Sloan blew the coach's whistle and the game began. Sloan's team ran for the center line. On my side, Raj Mandali yelled something in Urdu, probably "I have to go potty!" and ran for the exit. Corey Bailer tried to crawl behind the wall mat and hide. The rest of my team did their best to cower in fear and not look like targets.
"Tyson," Percy said. "Let's g-"
A ball slammed into his gut. He sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor. The other team exploded in laughter.
His eyesight was fuzzy. I couldn't believe anybody could throw that hard.
Tyson yelled, "Jordan, duck!"
I rolled as a dodgeball whistled past my ear at the speed of sound.
Whooom!
It hit the wall mat, and Corey Bailer yelped.
"Hey!" I yelled at Sloan's team. "You could kill somebody!"
The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at me evilly. He looked a lot bigger now ... even taller
than Tyson. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. "I hope so, Jordanus Jackson! I hope so!"
The way he said my name sent a chill down my back. Nobody called me Jordanus because my name isn't greek like Percys. My full name is Jordan. Monsters.
All around Matt Sloan, the visitors were growing in size. They were no longer kids. They were eight-
foot-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth, and hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts.
Matt Sloan dropped his ball. "Whoa! You're not from Detroit! Who ..."
The other kids on his team started screaming and backing toward the exit, but the giant named Marrow Sucker threw a ball with deadly accuracy. It streaked past Raj Mandali just as he was about to leave and hit the door, slamming it shut like magic. Raj and some of the other kids banged on it desperately but it wouldn't budge.
"Let them go!" I yelled at the giants pulling my wand out from its invisible leg holster.
The one called Joe Bob growled at me. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said: JB luvs Babycakes. "And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We Laistrygonians aren't just playing for your death. We want lunch!"
He waved his hand and a new batch of dodgeballs appeared on the center line-but these balls weren't made of red rubber. They were bronze, the size of cannon balls, perforated like wiffle balls with fire bubbling out the holes. They must've been searing hot, but the giants picked them up with their bare hands.
"Coach!" Percy yelled.
Nunley looked up sleepily, but if he saw anything abnormal about the dodgeball game, he didn't let on. That's the problem with mortals. A magical force called the Mist obscures the true appearance of monsters and gods from their vision, so mortals tend to see only what they can understand. I should know my mother is the Goddess of it. Using my powers I know the coach saw a few eighth graders pounding the younger kids like usual. The other kids saw Matt Sloan's thugs getting ready to toss Molotov cocktails around. (It wouldn't have been the first time.) At any rate, I was pretty sure nobody else realized we were dealing with genuine man-eating bloodthirsty monsters.
"Yeah. Mm-hmm," Coach muttered. "Play nice."
And he went back to his magazine.
The giant named Skull Eater threw his ball. I held my hand up and the fiery bronze comet stopped midair only to be sent back with full force hitting the giant in the throat and disintegrating him into dust.
"Run!" I told my teammates. "The other exit!"
They ran for the locker room, but with another wave of Joe Bob's hand, that door also slammed shut. "No one leaves unless you're out!" Joe Bob roared. "And you're not out until we eat you!"
"We'll see about that!" I roared, getting a spell ready to cast.
"Alohomora" I shouted too engaged to come up with a rhyming spell as my wand let out a purple beam opening one up one of the magically sealed doors and letting students pour out the gymnasium.
I looked over and saw Percy reaching for Riptide, which he usually kept in my pocket, but then he realized he was still wearing his gym shorts.
"What Ho, Percy!" I shouted, referencing what Chiron had said the day of the field trip as I tossed the same ballpoint pen at my brother from my inventory.
Another fireball came streaking toward me. Tyson pushed me out of the way just before it made contact.
"Flesh!" they bellowed. "Hero flesh for lunch!" They both took aim.
"Solvo" I muttered, releasing any enchantments I had on Tyson to suppress his abilities.
"Percy needs help!" Tyson yelled, and he jumped in front of him just as they threw their balls. "Tyson!" Percy screamed, but it was too late.
Both balls slammed into him ... but no ... he'd caught them. Tyson had caught two fiery metal balls speeding toward him at a zillion miles an hour. He sent them hurtling back toward their surprised owners, who screamed, "BAAAAAD!" as the bronze spheres exploded against their chests.
"My brothers!" Joe Bob the Cannibal wailed. He flexed his muscles and his Babycakes tattoo rippled. "You will pay for their destruction!"
"Tyson!" I said. "Look out!"
Another comet hurtled toward us. Tyson just had time to swat it aside. It flew straight over Coach Nunley's head and landed in the bleachers with a huge KA-BOOM!
Sloan himself stood petrified in the middle of the court, watching in disbelief as balls of death flew around him.
Coach Nunley still wasn't seeing anything. He tapped his hearing aid like the explosions were giving him interference, but he kept his eyes on his magazine.
Surely the whole school could hear the noise. The headmaster, the police, somebody would come soon.
"Victory will be ours!" roared Joe Bob the Cannibal. "We will feast on your bones!"
I wanted to tell him he was taking the dodgeball game way too seriously and that so far he was losing, but before I could, he hefted another ball. The other one quickly followed his lead.
Tyson couldn't deflect all those balls at once. He was still a fairly young cyclops.
Percy charged the remaining giants leaping over one and plunging his sword into the others rib cage causing it to explode into dust. He turned and faced the other one Joe Bob. The giant roared. "My lunch approaches." He raised his arm to throw. Suddenly the giant's body went rigid. His expression changed from gloating to surprise. Right where his belly button should've been, his T-shirt ripped open and he grew something like a horn-no, not a horn- the glowing tip of a blade.
The ball dropped out of his hand. The monster stared down at the knife that had just run him through from behind.
He muttered, "Ow," and burst into a cloud of green flame, which I figured was going to make Babycakes pretty upset.
Standing in the smoke was my friend Annabeth. Her face was grimy and scratched. She had a ragged backpack slung over her shoulder, her baseball cap tucked in her pocket, a bronze knife in her hand, and a wild look in her storm-gray eyes, understandable since she'd just been chased a thousand miles by ghosts.
Matt Sloan, who'd been standing there dumbfounded the whole time, finally came to his senses. He blinked at Annabeth, as if he dimly recognized her from my notebook picture. "That's the girl ... That's the girl-"
Annabeth punched him in the nose and knocked him flat. "And you," she told him, "lay off my friend."
The gym was in flames. I heard sirens wailing and a garbled voice over the intercom. Through the glass windows of the exit doors, I could see the headmaster, Mr. Bonsai, wrestling with the lock, a crowd of teachers piling up behind him.
"Annabeth ..." Percy stammered. "How did you ... how long have you ..."
"Pretty much all morning." She sheathed her bronze knife. "I've been trying to find a good time to talk to you, but you were never alone. I spoke to Jordan tho."
There!" a woman screamed. The doors burst open and the adults came pouring in.
"Meet me outside," Annabeth told us. "And him." She pointed to Tyson, who was still sitting dazed against the wall. Annabeth gave him a look of distaste that I didn't quite understand. "You'd better bring him."
"What?" Percy asked confused.
"No time!" she said. "Hurry!"
I quickly wrapped the three of us in mist turning us invisible and led us out the exit to the outside of the building all while simultaneously warping the minds of everyone in the room convincing them that Percy and Jordan Jackson along with Tyson were not in the gymnasium prior to the "freak gas line explosion" that occured.