Chapter 2: I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals

"I can't say that cannibals sound like good playmates." Leo said.

"I don't recommend it." Percy replied.

"There goes a normal school day." Jason laughed.

"We already knew there was no chance of that." Thalia smirked at her brother.

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 beanbag chairs instead of at desks, and we don't get grades, and the teachers wear jeans and rock concert T-shirts to work.

"That sounds like an awesome school." Connor said eagerly.

"Wish we could have gone there." Travis agreed.

That's all cool with me. I mean, I'm ADHD and dyslexic, like most half-bloods, so I'd never done that great in regular schools even before they kicked me out. The only bad thing about Meriwether was that the teacher 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 psycho. 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.

"What?" Athena looked horrified.

"That is the best exam ever." Leo whistled. "I am so jealous."

"I can't believe any teacher thought that would be a good idea." Silena shook her head in astonishment.

What happened was a massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eighth graders, two pebble fights,

"Pebble fights? Is that just throwing stones at each other?" Reyna asked.

"Pretty much." Percy shrugged.

"How did nobody get seriously injured?"

"Luck mostly."

and a full-tackle basketball game. The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most of those activities. Sloan wasn't big or strong, but he acted liked he was.

Clarisse's lip curled.

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

Aphrodite cringed.

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.

"So enjoys pretending to be tough and is actually very stupid. Not a great combination." Leo noted. He hated bullies but he especially hated having to try and survive by using his awesome sense of humour.

Anyway, Sloan was giving everybody wedgies until he made the mistake of trying it on my friend Tyson.

Everyone who knew Tyson burst out laughing.

"I hope it hurt." Annabeth said.

"The wedgie?" Reyna asked. She thought it was out of character for Annabeth to wish a wedgie to be successful.

"No. What Tyson did to him when he tried." She snickered.

Tyson was the only homeless kid at Meriwether College Prep. As near as my mom and I could figure, he'd been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so…different. He was six-foot-three and built like the Abominable Snowman,

"He's bigger now." Percy grinned.

but he crie a lot and was scared of just about everything, including his own reflection.

"He's getting better about that too." Annabeth smiled.

"Yeah. He's pretty brave nowadays." Grover agreed.

His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. I couldn't tell you what color his eyes were, because I could never make myself look higher than his crooked teeth.

The Gods exchanged looks. That seemed like the mist was hiding Tyson's face but surely if he was a monster then Percy and his friends wouldn't speak so fondly of him.

His voice was deep, but he talked funny, like a much younger kid—I guess because he'd never gone to school before coming to Meriwether. He wore tattered jeans, grimy size-twenty sneakers, and a plaid flannel shirt with holes in it. He smelled like a New York City alleyway, because that's where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box off 72nd Street.

Percy sighed. At least Tyson was away from there now. He was under the sea in the forges, doing what he was meant to do.

Meriwether Prep had adopted him as a community service project so all the students could feel good about themselves.

"That sounds terrible. He's a person not a project." Beckendorf frowned. The son of Hephaestus got on quite well with Tyson as they bonded over making things.

"That's Meriwether." Percy scowled.

Unfortunately, most of them couldn't stand Tyson. Once they discovered he was a big softie, despite his massive strength and his scary looks, they made themselves feel good by picking on him.

There were a few angry mutterings from the Greek demigods.

I was pretty much his only friend, which meant he was my only friend.

"Well, I didn't want to be friends with the bullies anyway." Percy scoffed.

"I don't blame you." Leo nodded.

My mom had complained to the school a million times that they weren't doing enough to help him. She'd called social services, but nothing ever seemed to happen. The social workers claimed Tyson didn't exist. They swore up and down that they'd visited the alley we described and couldn't find him, though how you miss a giant kid living in a refrigerator box, I don't know.

"How could he not exist?" Chris frowned.

"The mist." Travis muttered quietly. Chris then nodded.

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.

Everyone burst out laughing, although those who didn't know his true nature were also shocked and a little confused.

"You freak!" Sloan yelled. "Why don't you go back to your cardboard box!"

"Clearly Tyson didn't hit him hard enough." Beckendorf scowled.

Tyson started sobbing. He sat down on the jungle gym so hard he bent the bar,

"Ok? What kind of person bends bars when they sit down?" Reyna asked.

"Monster." Dakota said.

"The Greeks all seem to know and like him. I don't see him being a monster." Gwen pointed out.

and buried his head in his hands. "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."

"If you're the type of friend he could have then why would he want them?" Thalia scoffed.

"I don't." Percy said.

I balled my fists. I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt. "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.

"Matt Sloan has cannibal friends?" Piper asked.

"I doubt he knows if they are." Jason said.

"Just wait till P.E, Jackson," Sloan called. "You are so dead." When 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.

"What? He thinks that is a success?" Apollo frowned.

"Apparently so." Hermes said, trying for a grin. The prank with his sons had put him in a better mood but now that they were reading again it felt like a permanent reminder of his future son.

We all passed his course, and we should never, never grow up to be violent people.

"So they passed your course by having fights but they shouldn't be violent?" Leo asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Talk about mixed messages." Chris snorted.

"I wish it was always that easy to pass an exam." Connor sighed. Many demigods nodded in agreement.

Matt Sloan nodded earnestly, then gave me a chip-toothed grin. I had to promise to buy Tyson an extra peanut butter sandwich at lunch to get him to stop sobbing. "I…I am a freak?" he asked me. "No," I promised, gritting my teeth.

"Why were you gritting your teeth?" Nico frowned.

"Just angry with Sloan." Percy said but Nico wasn't entirely convinced.

"Matt Sloan is the freak." Tyson sniffled. "You are a good friend. Miss you next year if…if I can't…" His voice trembled. I realized he didn't know if he'd be invited back next year for the community service project. I wondered if the headmaster had even bothered talking to him about it.

"He hadn't." Percy put in.

"That's terrible." Silena said.

"Don't worry, big guy," I managed. "Everything's going to be fine." Tyson gave me such a grateful look I felt like a big liar. How could I promise a kid like him that anything would be fine?

"You can't know for sure but it's probably better to lie a little than tell him he's screwed." Thalia said.

"Yeah." Percy sighed. He wasn't sure that was true.

Our next exam was science. Mrs. Tesla told us that we had to mix chemicals until we succeeded in making something explode.

"I seriously need to go to this school." Travis said.

"I'm so jealous." Leo agreed. "You have the easiest exams ever."

"But that's terribly dangerous." Annabeth pointed out.

"I don't think they seem to care." Thalia shrugged.

Tyson was my lab partner. His hands were way 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.

"Not quite a proper explosion but not bad." Leo nodded.

"You mixed unknown chemicals and possibly created a toxic cloud." Annabeth looked at Percy sternly.

"Hey, Tyson did it, not me." He shrugged.

After Mrs. Tesla evacuated the lab and called the hazardous waste removal squad, she praised Tyson and me for being natural chemists.

"What?" Athena gasped in exasperation. "They knocked the chemicals over. That doesn't make them natural chemists, it makes them naturally clumsy."

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 something might be wrong at camp. Even worse, I couldn't shake the memory of my bad dream. I had a terrible feeling that Grover was in danger.

"There was still time." Grover smiled.

"Yeah, I just feel bad that I knew you were in danger and yet we still went to Camp and took forever to do anything about it." Percy frowned.

In social studies, while we were drawing latitude/longitude maps, I opened my notebook and stared at the photo inside—my friend Annabeth on vacation in Washington, D.C.

"You have a photo of Annabeth in your notebook?" Silena asked with a knowing smile.

"Awwww." Aphrodite squealed. Percy went bright red.

"I wanted to remind myself that Camp was real and hadn't been just a dream." He explained. Nico noted that Annabeth looked a little disappointed with that explanation. He felt a light stab of jealousy that Percy kept a photo of her but it wasn't as strong as usual. During this reading, and the Big Three kid bonding times, he was finding the mystery of Percy being stripped away. He wasn't the all powerful, invincible hero that Nico had first thought he was. And while that was ok, it was quite nice knowing he was human like the rest of them, it also made Nico realise that his crush was on who he thought Percy was and not who he actually was.

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 place. See, Annabeth wants to be an architect when she grows up, so she's always visiting famous monuments and stuff. She's weird that way. She'd e-mailed me the picture after spring break, and every once in a while I'd look at it just to remind myself she was real and Camp Half-Blood hadn't just been my imagination.

"That would be one hell of a dream." Clarisse scoffed.

"Given my usual dreams, it really wasn't that out of the question." Percy pointed out. She shrugged and nodded in agreement.

I wished Annabeth were here. She'd know what to make of my dream. I'd never admit it to her, but she was smarter than me, even if she was annoying sometimes.

There was a lot of muffled snickering.

"You don't need to admit it to me. I know." Annabeth said smugly. Percy rolled his eyes.

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.

"Git." Thalia scowled.

Sloan handed the photo to his ugly buddies, who snickered and started ripping it up to make spit wads.

"Ooh Tyson did not hit that kid hard enough." Thalia said angrily.

They were new kids who must've been visiting, because they were all wearing those stupid HI! MY NAME IS: tags from the admissions office. They must've had a weird sense of humor, too, because they'd all filled in strange names like: MARROW SUCKER, SKULL EATER, and JOE BOB. No human beings had names like that.

"Really? A bad sense of humour is what you thought of instead of monsters?" Poseidon asked his son.

"I hadn't seen any monsters all summer." Percy shrugged. "I had sort of relaxed a little too much."

"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 the face.

"Don't hold back. Just punch him." Clarisse encouraged.

"I wish I had." Percy sighed.

"You're such a loser, Jackson. Good thing I'm gonna put you out of your misery next period."His huge buddies chewed up my photo. I wanted to pulverize them, but I was under strict orders from Chiron never to take my anger out on regular mortals, no matter how obnoxious they were. I had to save my fighting for monsters.

Chiron nodded and smiled at Percy.

Still, 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, "Percy!" 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.

"First the bedroom window, then this. Percy's got an invisible stalker." Chris sniggered.

"I wonder who it could be?" Grover smirked as everyone looked over at Annabeth who had gone red.

Before I had time to consider whether or not I'd been imagining things, a crowd of kids rushed for the gym, carrying Tyson and me along with them. It was time for P.E. Our coach had promised us a free-for-all dodgeball game, and Matt Sloan had promised to kill me.

"This should be fun." Clarisse grinned.

"Not the word I would have used." Rachel muttered thinking of the chapter title.

The gym uniform at Meriwether is sky blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts. Fortunately, 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.

There was an outbreak of sniggering.

I changed as quickly as I could in the locker room because I didn't want to deal with Sloan. I was about to leave when Tyson called, "Percy?" He hadn't changed yet. He was standing by the weight room door, clutching his gym clothes. "Will you…uh…" "Oh. Yeah." I tried not to sound aggravated about it. "Yeah, sure, man."

Percy sighed. He really hadn't been a good friend to Tyson at first. Or a good brother. A few people gave him confused looks as he had spoken so highly of Tyson but seemed aggravated by him in the book.

Tyson ducked inside the weight room. I stood guard outside the door while he changed. I felt kind of awkward doing this, but he asked me to most days. I think it's because he's completely hairy and he's got weird scars on his back that I've never had the courage to ask him about.

"Well that's a personal question." Rachel said.

"Yeah." Percy nodded.

Anyway, I'd learned the hard way that if people teased Tyson while he was dressing out, he'd get upset and start ripping the doors off lockers.

"Always a good way of getting rid of stress." Leo said with a laugh.

"Yeah, it's not a good day unless I've ripped at least a few locker doors off." Connor nodded.

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 me 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.

There was more laughter.

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 me the other team's captain, but it didn't matter who I picked, because all the jocks and the popular kids moved over to Sloan's side. So did the big group of visitors. On my side I 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.

"Clearly even teams then." Grover scoffed.

"Yeah, I had Tyson." Percy grinned a little.

"And they have cannibals apparently." Thalia pointed out.

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 almost as tall and strong-looking as Tyson, and there were six of them. Matt Sloan spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym. "Scared," Tyson mumbled. "Smell funny." I looked at him. "What smells funny?" Because I didn't figure he was talking about himself. "Them." Tyson pointed at Sloan's new friends. "Smell funny."

"He can smell monsters?" Reyna asked. "Interesting."

The visitors were cracking their knuckles, eyeing us like it was slaughter time. I couldn't help wondering where they were from. Someplace where they fed kids raw meat and beat them with sticks. 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.

"Somehow I don't think that's going to work." Clarisse rolled her eyes.

"Unless they are monsters who will only be after Percy." Rachel pointed out.

"The rest of the mortal kids will probably attack them though." Chris shrugged.

"Tyson," I said. "Let's g—" A ball slammed into my gut. I sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor. The other team exploded in laughter. My eyesight was fuzzy. I felt like I'd just gotten the Heimlich maneuver from a gorilla. I couldn't believe anybody could throw that hard.

"You still haven't worked out they are monsters?" Thalia raised an eyebrow.

"Er…" Percy tried for a winning smile but judging by her scoff he failed miserably.

Tyson yelled, "Percy, duck!" I rolled as another 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!"

"I think that might be the point." Ares grinned.

The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at me evilly. Somehow, he looked a lot bigger now… even taller than Tyson. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. "I hope so, Perseus Jackson! I hope so!" The way he said my name sent a chill down my back. Nobody called me Perseus except those who knew my true identity. Friends…and enemies.

"Oh good. He's clocked on." Grover smirked at his friend.

"Er, from my experience gym clothes don't tend to have pockets. Percy probably doesn't have his sword on him." Rachel pointed out.

"Well there's that Percy luck." Thalia sighed.

What had Tyson said? They smell funny. 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.

"Monsters tattooed with valentine hearts?" Beckendorf snorted.

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.

"Oh wonderful." Grover groaned.

"Let them go!" I yelled at the giants. 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!"

"Yes, I always wanted to be someone's lunch." Percy muttered.

"Well, if you still feel that way then I'm sure there are plenty of monsters who would take you up on that offer." Annabeth smirked.

"I think I'll pass." Percy grimaced.

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!" I 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. Maybe the coach saw a few eighth graders pounding the younger kids like usual.

"The rest of the mortal kids saw them as monsters." Rachel pointed out.

"Well, they saw them as more dangerous than just regular kids from Detroit. I don't think they saw actual monsters." Beckendorf said.

"Plus the coach clearly isn't paying any real attention." Nico added.

Maybe 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 dove aside as the fiery bronze comet sailed past my shoulder. "Corey!" I screamed. Tyson pulled him out from behind the exercise mat just as the ball exploded against it, blasting the mat to smoking shreds.

"Well done Tyson." Rachel breathed.

"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!"

"I think it's quite difficult to leave if you've been eaten." Connor pointed out.

"Just a bit." Travis agreed.

He launched his own fireball. My teammates scattered as it blasted a crater in the gym floor. I reached for Riptide, which I always kept in my pocket, but then I realized I was wearing gym shorts. I had no pockets. Riptide was tucked in my jeans inside my gym locker. And the locker room door was sealed. I was completely defenseless.

"Wonderful." Poseidon groaned.

"I hate gym even more than before." Percy said.

Another fireball came streaking toward me. Tyson pushed me out of the way, but the explosion still blew me head over heels. I found myself sprawled on the gym floor, dazed from smoke, my tie-dyed T-shirt peppered with sizzling holes. Just across the center line, two hungry giants were glaring down at me. "Flesh!" they bellowed. "Hero flesh for lunch!" They both took aim. "Percy needs help!" Tyson yelled, and he jumped in front of me just as they threw their balls.

"Woah. The kid cries at anything but he is willing to jump in front of those things for Percy." Reyna said, looking over at the son of the Sea God.

"Tyson!" I screamed, but it was too late. Both balls slammed into him…but no…he'd caught them. Somehow Tyson, who was so clumsy he knocked over lab equipment and broke playground structures on a regular basis, 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.

The Greek demigods all cheered.

"Go Tyson!" The Stolls yelled. The Romans all exchanged looks, trying to work out what Tyson was. Clearly he was no mortal but they couldn't see Percy being friends with a monster.

The giants disintegrated in twin columns of flame—a sure sign they were monsters, all right. Monsters don't die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust, which saves heroes a lot of trouble cleaning up after a fight.

"Yeah. That is very helpful." Beckendorf nodded.

"Makes life much easier." Clarisse agreed.

"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!

"Please tell me he noticed that?" Apollo raised an eyebrow.

"It's probably safer if he doesn't. The monsters are ignoring him for now." Hermes muttered.

"But how does he not notice explosions going on all around him?" Ares asked in astonishment. The other Gods all shrugged. Mortals were weird.

Kids were running around screaming, trying to avoid the sizzling craters in the floor. Others were banging on the door, calling for help. 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 help us.

"I don't think they are going to be able to help much." Rachel sighed.

"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,

Sniggers could be heard throughout the room.

but before I could, he hefted another ball. The other three giants followed his lead. I knew we were dead. Tyson couldn't deflect all those balls at once. His hands had to be seriously burned from blocking the first volley. Without my sword… I had a crazy idea.

"Oh dear." Chris winced.

"No, the crazy ideas are the best ones." Thalia said. "It's the carefully made plans you need to worry about."

"Oh shut up." Percy stuck his tongue out.

I ran toward the locker room. "Move!" I told my teammates. "Away from the door." Explosions behind me. Tyson had batted two of the balls back toward their owners and blasted them to ashes. That left two giants still standing. A third ball hurtled straight at me. I forced myself to wait—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—then dove aside as the fiery sphere demolished the locker room door.

"Nice thinking." Nico grinned.

Now, I figured that the built-up gas in most boys' locker rooms was enough to cause an explosion, so I wasn't surprised when the flaming dodgeball ignited a huge WHOOOOOOOM!

All of the females wrinkled their noses.

"Cool." Connor grinned.

"Gross." Thalia corrected.

The wall blew apart. Locker doors, socks, athletic supporters, and other various nasty personal belongings rained all over the gym.

"Oh great, now you need to find your sword in that mess." Poseidon sighed.

I turned just in time to see Tyson punch Skull Eater in the face.

"Nice." Clarisse grinned happily.

"Tyson has taken out almost all of them by himself." Frank said in awe.

The giant crumpled. But the last giant, Joe Bob, had wisely held on to his own ball, waiting for an opportunity. He threw just as Tyson was turning to face him. "No!" I yelled. The ball caught Tyson square in the chest. He slid the length of the court and slammed into the back wall, which cracked and partially crumbled on top of him, making a hole right onto Church Street. I didn't see how Tyson could still be alive, but he only looked dazed. The bronze ball was smoking at his feet. Tyson tried to pick it up, but he fell back, stunned, into a pile of cinder blocks.

"Wow." Dakota said.

"He should be dead." Reyna noted.

"Well!" Joe Bob gloated. "I'm the last one standing! I'll have enough meat to bring Babycakes a doggie bag!" He picked up another ball and aimed it at Tyson. "Stop!" I yelled. "It's me you want!" The giant grinned. "You wish to die first, young hero?" I had to do something. Riptide had to be around here somewhere. Then I spotted my jeans in a smoking heap of clothes right by the giant's feet. If I could only get there.…I knew it was hopeless, but I charged.

"Percy." Poseidon groaned.

"Why would you charge right at a monster who is about to kill you?" Apollo asked.

"I needed my sword." Percy shrugged.

The giant laughed. "My lunch approaches." He raised his arm to throw. I braced myself to die. 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 cavalry has arrived then." Thalia grinned.

"I wonder if that's Percy's stalker." Grover smirked.

"I was not stalking him." Annabeth scowled.

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.

The room laughed once more.

"That's some pretty good timing there." Piper smiled at Annabeth.

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, like she'd just been chased a thousand miles by ghosts.

"That's not good." Reyna frowned.

"I was alright." Annabeth smiled slightly.

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."

"Yes!" The room cheered.

"Nice one, bird brain." Clarisse smirked.

"Really Clarisse?" Annabeth raised an eyebrow. The other girl just grinned.

The gym was in flames. Kids were still running around screaming. 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…" I 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." "The shadow I saw this morning—that was—" My face felt hot. "Oh my gods, you were looking in my bedroom window?"

Aphrodite wolf whistled while Apollo scowled at the confirmation. Percy and Annabeth were both red.

"There's no time to explain!" she snapped, though she looked a little red-faced herself. "I just didn't want to—" "There!" a woman screamed. The doors burst open and the adults came pouring in. "Meet me outside," Annabeth told me. "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.

Thalia sighed as Annabeth looked regretful.

"You'd better bring him." "What?" "No time!" she said. "Hurry!" She put on her Yankees baseball cap, which was a magic gift from her mom, and instantly vanished. That left me standing alone in the middle of the burning gymnasium when the headmaster came charging in with half the faculty and a couple of police officers.

"Thanks for that." Percy told Annabeth dryly.

"Hey, the cap doesn't cover more than one." She grinned.

"Percy Jackson?" Mr. Bonsai said. "What…how…" Over by the broken wall, Tyson groaned and stood up from the pile of cinder blocks. "Head hurts." Matt Sloan was coming around, too. He focused on me with a look of terror. "Percy did it, Mr. Bonsai! He set the whole building on fire.

"What? It was his stupid friends." Rachel scowled.

"That's Matt Sloan for you." Percy shrugged.

Coach Nunley will tell you! He saw it all!" Coach Nunley had been dutifully reading his magazine, but just my luck—he chose that moment to look up when Sloan said his name. "Eh? Yeah. Mm-hmm." The other adults turned toward me. I knew they would never believe me, even if I could tell them the truth. I grabbed Riptide out of my ruined jeans, told Tyson, "Come on!" and jumped through the gaping hole in the side of the building.

"You won't be going back there then?" Rachel laughed.

"No. Definitely not." Percy grinned.

"That's the end of the chapter." Jason said.

"I haven't read yet." Silena noted. Jason passed her the book.