Chapter Twenty Four, The letter I always and never wanted
Mortals can be really crazy sometimes. It's really kind of shameful, but helpful, too. They didn't question us on our journey. Instead, they made up their own idea of what we went through.
According to them, we had been kidnapped by this crazy kidnapper (coughAres) in New York and were brought across country on a "ten-day odyssey of terror." It's not like we were going to object and tell them the real story.
The mortals went on to say that the kidnapper had caused the explosion at the Santa Monica beach when he fired a shotgun at the police and accidentally hit a gas main that ruptured during the earthquake.
Percy -big shocker here- wasn't actually a criminal all along! He had caused a commotion on the Greyhound bus in New Jersey to try to get away from the kidnapper. Apparently, people even saw Ares on the bus. The crazy man (I wondered how Ares was taking all these names the mortals were calling him.) had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening us outside her diner and had gotten her friend to take a photo, then notified the police.
Then, Percy braved up and stole a gun from the kidnapper in Los Angeles, where they battled shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. The police had arrived just in time, but during the explosion where five police cars had been destroyed, the captor had fled. No fatalities occurred.
Now Percy, Grover, and I were in police custody. As the reporters fed us the whole story, we played along and nodded, acting tearful and exhausted, playing victimized kids for the cameras. Percy got a little too into the job.
"All I want," Percy gasped, choking back his "tears", "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew...somehow...we would be okay. And I know he'll want to reward each and every person in the beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number."
Nice one, Percy. I wondered if Percy's stepfather was watching the TV right now. What would he be saying? Probably a lot of ugly words.
The police and reporters were so moved by Percy's speech that they passed around a hat and raised money for three tickets to the next plane to New York.
All the while when we were boarding the plane, Percy was as white as a ghost. He clutched his hands on his armrests (and one of mine) and he wouldn't let go.
"Percy, relax." I said.
Percy started breathing loudly. "I know, I know." He said, but he wouldn't let go of the armrests.
I, myself, was wondering how it was going to go. Would Zeus be mad and kill us? But that didn't seem likely. After all, he most likely didn't want to risk harming his master bolt.
Grover and I exchanged looks. Grover started eating a tin can, attracting strange looks from people sitting around us and from a flight attendant.
"Um, are you okay, little boy?" An uncertain flight attendant asked. Little boy?
"Huh?" Grover asked, looking up. "What do you mean?" Then he realized people had noticed him eating a tin can. "Oh, this?" He asked. "Um... I'm not actually eating it... I'm sucking on it. Did you know that tin cans have a lot of minerals? They're... very good for your health." He looked to Percy and me for help.
"Yeah," Percy said. "Haven't you heard?"
"It's made the front page in the New York Times," I added. "It's a... new fad for people our age, actually. In our school, tons of people carry around tin cans for snacks."
