Crimson Rivers [1] - Percy jackson

Chapter 17: The Prophecy

We were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke, so of course everybody treated us as if we’d won some reality-TV contest. According to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared
in our honor, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burnbthe burial shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence. Annabeth’s shroud was so beautiful—gray silk with embroidered owls—I told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me and told me to shut up.
Being the son of Poseidon, Percy didn’t have any cabin mates, so the Ares
cabin had volunteered to make his shroud.

They’d taken an old bedsheet and painted smiley faces with X’ed-out eyes around the border, and the word LOSER painted really big in the middle. It was fun to burn. Mine was  several shades of green silk with constellations embroidered. As Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along and passed out s’mores, I was surrounded by my Hermes cabinmates, Annabeth’s friends from Athena, and Grover’s satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand-new searcher’s license he’d received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had
called Grover’s performance on the quest “Brave to the point of indigestion.
Horns-and-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past.”

The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose poisonous looks told me they’d never forgive us for disgracing their dad.
That was okay with me. Even Dionysus’s welcome-home speech wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits. “Yes, yes, so the little brats didn’t get themselves killed and now they’ll have even bigger heads. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be no canoe races this Saturday.…”

Percy moved back into cabin three, but it didn’t feel so lonely anymore. He had
my friends to train with during the day.
As for Percy's mother, she had a chance at a new life. Her letter arrived a
week after we got back to camp. She told us Gabe had left mysteriously disappeared off the face of the planet, in fact. She’d reported him missing to
the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him. On a completely unrelated subject, she’d sold her first life-size concrete sculpture, entitled The Poker Player, to a collector, through an art gallery in Soho. She’d gotten so much money for it, she’d put a deposit down on a new apartment and made a payment on her first semester’s tuition at NYU. The Soho gallery was clamoring for more of her work, which they called “a huge step forward in super-ugly neorealism.”

But don’t worry, his mom wrote. I’m done with sculpture. I’ve disposed
of that box of tools you left me. It’s time for me to turn to writing.bAt the bottom, she wrote a P.S.: Percy, I’ve found a good private schoolbhere in the city. I’ve put a deposit down to hold you and Syrus a spot, in case you want to enroll for seventh grade. You could live at home. But if you want to go year-round at Half-Blood Hill, I’ll understand.

He folded the note carefully and set it on his bedside table.  On the Fourth of July, the whole camp gathered at the beach for a fireworks display by cabin nine. Being Hephaestus’s kids, they weren’t going to settle for a few lame red-white-and-blue explosions. They’d anchored a bargeboffshore and loaded it with rockets the size of Patriot missiles.  The finale was supposed to be a couple of hundred-foot-tall Spartan warriors who wouldbcrackle to life above the ocean, fight a battle, then explode into a million colors.

As Percy and I were spreading a picnic blanket, Grover and Annabeth showed up to tell us good-bye. He was dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt and sneakers,bbut in the last few weeks he’d started to look older, almost high-school age.bHis goatee had gotten thicker. He’d put on weight. His horns had grown at
least an inch, so he now had to wear his rasta cap all the time to pass as human.

“I’m off,” he said. “I just came to say…well, you know.”

I hugged and him and wished him luck stating I knew he could do it. Annabeth gave him a hug. She told him to keep his fake feet on. Percy asked him where he was going to search first. “Kind of a secret,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I wish you could come with me, guys, but humans and Pan…”