3. GROVER LOSES HIS PANTS

I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

I know it wasn't nice but Grover was starting to annoy me, looking at me like I was a dead man (which I technically was, but he didn't need to know that) muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"

Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.

A word about my mother, before you meet her.

Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world. Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.

I have only one memory of him, holding me as a baby with a large smile and a sort of warm glow. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.

They weren't even married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.

Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.

She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.

Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who I immediately knew was trouble, but mom didn't believe me when I told her. I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe because the guy reeked.

Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I would occasionally get into fights ... well, when I came home is a good example.

I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.

Hardly looking up, he said "So, you're home."

"Where's my mom?"

"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"

That was it. No Welcome back. No 'how has your life been the last six months?'

Gabe had put on weight (which was saying something, he was fat enough to make Choji look like a pencil). He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp.

He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks and spending the money on cigars and beer.

He had expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." The first time he tried that, I punched him in the face and died his clothes pink.

"I don't have any cash," I told him.

"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"

Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."

"Am I right?" Gabe repeated.

Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels.

"Maybe I should've been more specific. I meant I don't have any cash for have any cash for you" I said with a growl as I walked past them.

"Your report card came boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"

I slammed the door to my room, which wasn't really my room. During school, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.

I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.

Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"

She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.

My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change colour in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few Gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never thought of her as old.

"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"

Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.

We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters.

I just talked animatedly, talking about random incidents which happened in the school, like how the English teacher's chair happened break, or the many times the PE teacher tried to get me to join the school football team (I was more of a Basketball guy myself).

From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"

I started to get up, ready to turn Gabe into bean dip, but my mom held me down.

.

For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin especially. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy.

Until that trip to the museum ...

"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"

"No, Mom."

I felt guilty, I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds , but I didn't want her to be in danger if I was being targeted.

'We are not fools, Percy Jackson' she had said. 'It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain.'

She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back but didn't push me.

"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."

I grinned. "Montauk?"

"Three nights—same cabin."

"When?"

She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."

My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.

Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"

Yet again, I found myself being held back by my mother as I glared at him. He flinched, so slightly that even I almost didn't notice, but I took the tiny victory anyway.

"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."

Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"

"Course we were. You will let us go right?" I said with an ever so sweet smile.

"Of course, he will," my mom said evenly. "Your stepfather is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."

Gabe immediately backed down "So, this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"

"Yes, honey," my mother said.

"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."

"We'll be very careful."

Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And if the kid… never mind."

That's what I thought you discount walrus.

."

He went back to his game.

"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"

For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.

But then her smile returned, and I wondered if I imagined it. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.

An hour later we were ready to leave.

Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this car, boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

Like I'd be the one driving, I was twelve.

Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some accident with the hinges, but I didn't check as I turned around to control my snickering.

I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.

Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

I loved the place.

We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.

As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.

I guess I should explain the blue food.

See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop and even made me blue noodles, usually ramen.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.

"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."

Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."

I wondered how she could say that. Unless he knew what I got up to as Naruto I didn't know what he could be proud of.

"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"

I knew the answer. Exactly 7 months and 4 days, but I wanted to hear it from her.

She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But... he knew me as a baby."

"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."

Now I knew something was off, mom never lied, especially to me.

I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.

"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"

She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."

"But why? I could help out at home, keep the football in line"

She took my hand and squeezed it tight. "It's for your own good. I have to send you away."

Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy, and what Grover had been saying, that he had to protect me.

"Because I'm not normal," I said.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?"

She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.

During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me beside a limp, scaly rope I strangled to death with my meaty toddler hands.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.

"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."

"Dad wanted me to go to a special school?"

"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."

I narrowed my eyes. Why would my dad talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?

"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."

"For good? But it's only a summer camp! Besides, they wouldn't be able to keep me from visiting you.."

She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.

That night I had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.

I ran toward them, trying to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion, even though I could see my surroundings passing by me in a blur. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, No!

The dream faded away, and I was standing at the edge of a red cliff as I stared out onto the infinite darkness.

I knew where I was, I'd been here once.

Sure enough, there he was, a slight outline of grey as what seemed like a head leaned down, his pale silver eyes looking straight at me, like he could see through my soul.

"Hello. Haven't seen you in a while, Chaos" I said without a trace of fear on me. I knew this was a being who could kill me with a thought.

Against a force like that, there was no point in feeling fear. Being afraid never helped anyone.

The being chuckled with a voice deeper than the grand canyon.

"You're as impertinent as last time, Perseus Jackson, or should I say, Naruto Uzumaki.

I felt no surprise that he knew who I'd been in my past life, he'd been the one who brought me to this one after all.

"Well, I know you didn't bring me here after 12 years for a meet and greet, so please, get to the point. I can feel a presence outside the door and it doesn't feel like a human's."

Rather than being offended, the being just shook it's head like saying 'He's hopeless' and said "You are correct. Do you remember what I told you when I brought you here?"

I nodded grimly. Kinda hard to forget when you're basically given a prophecy saying that I'd fight the worst of the worst of this world's deities.

"Your story starts now. I thought it might help you if I gave you a little warning. Now wake. Your satyr friend is getting impatient.

I just looked at him, confused as the world faded to darkness. 'Satyr as in the half goats from Mr Brunner's stories?'

I woke with a start.

Outside, it was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses.

With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

I thought that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.

I suddenly felt my danger sense going crazy as I looked towards the door, feeling the beast which rushed to where I currently was.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.

My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't exactly Grover.

"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"

My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.

"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"

I registered that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I did wonder though about how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...

Oh.

That's what Chaos meant by Satyr friend.

My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Percy. Tell me now!"

I immediately told her about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"