Reading Pjo: The Lightning Thief

I Am Offered A Quest

I am offered a quest

The next morning, Chiron moved me to cabin three.

I didn't have to share with anybody. I had plenty of room for all my stuff: the Minotaur's horn, one set of spare clothes, and a toiletry bag. I got to sit at my own dinner table, pick all my own activities, call "lights out" whenever I felt like it, and not listen to anybody else.

And I was absolutely miserable.

"Why? It's amazing, plus I get to sneak in Annie." John winked, Annabeth blushed.

"That's gross."

Just when I'd started to feel accepted, to feel I had a home in cabin eleven and I might be a normal kid— or as normal as you can be when you're a half-blood- I'd been separated out as if I had some rare disease.

Hestia glared at the demigods, smirking when they all gulped or looked away.

Nobody mentioned the hellhound, but I got the feeling they were all talking about it behind my back. The attack had scared everybody. It sent two messages: one, that I was the son of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing to kill me. They could even invade a camp that had always been considered safe.

"But that's not your fault!"

The other campers steered clear of me as much as possible. Cabin seven barely talked to me when I went to the infirmary to make sure I was binding correctly. 

"You did have a lot problems with that."

And cabin eleven was too nervous to have sword class with me after what I'd done to the Ares folks in the woods, so my lessons with Luke became one-on-one. He pushed me harder than ever, and wasn't afraid to bruise me up in the process.

"You're going to need all the training you can get," he promised, as we were working with swords and flaming torches. "Now let's try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions."

"What's he training you so hard for? The army?" Jason mocked.

"No, he'd use a him for that."

"We should rake him lessons from your mom, did you see the way she was throwing around that thing in the Battle of Manhattan."

"For real though, why was Like training you so hard?"

Percy shrugged, "I was a big three kid during a time where Zeus and Poseidon were fighting, he probably knew I'd be pushed into the mess."

Annabeth still taught me Greek in the mornings, but she seemed distracted. Every time I said something, she scowled at me, as if I'd just poked her between the eyes.

After lessons, she would walk away muttering to herself: "Quest... Poseidon?... Dirty rotten... Got to make a plan..."

"You're always planning something." Piper teased.

"Athena-"

"-always has a plan, we know." Annabeth blushed at the other demigods words.

Even Clarisse kept her distance, though her venomous looks made it clear she wanted to kill me for breaking her magic spear. I wished she would just yell or punch me or something. I'd rather get into fights every day than be ignored.

"I'll tell her that."

"Thanks Frank."

I knew somebody at camp resented me, because one night I came into my cabin and found a mortal newspaper dropped inside the doorway, a copy of the New York Daily News, opened to the Metro page. The article took me almost an hour to read, because the angrier I got, the more the words floated around on the page.