The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)

by Rick Riordan

I opened my notebook and stared at the photo inside—my friend Annabeth on vacation in Washington, D.C. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over her orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt.

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. 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.

I felt like I’d just gotten the Heimlich maneuver from a gorilla.

Laistrygonians

Annabeth punched him in the nose and knocked him flat. “And you,” she told him, “lay off my friend.”

Now, under different circumstances, I would’ve been really happy to see her.

I’d missed Annabeth probably more than I wanted to admit.

Ever come home and found your room messed up? Like some helpful person (hi, Mom) has tried to “clean” it, and suddenly you can’t find anything?

The camp felt like a military school. And believe me, I know. I’ve been kicked out of a couple.

“Whasthat!” he gasped. “The stables for pegasi,” I said. “The winged horses.” “Whasthat!” “Um…those are the toilets.”

Thalia had gotten herself turned into a pine tree when she was twelve. Me…well, I was doing my best not to follow her example.

Nobody answered. “Right,” I muttered. “Just checking.”

“You caused plenty of it last summer, I understand.” I was too mad to speak. Like it was my fault the gods had almost gotten into a civil war?

Suddenly, I wasn’t Percy Jackson, the cool guy who’d retrieved Zeus’s lightning bolt last summer. Now I was Percy Jackson, the poor schmuck with the ugly monster for a brother.

“He’s more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like…a half-brother twice removed, or something.” Nobody bought it.

After all, Annabeth’s mom, Athena, had invented the chariot, and my dad had created horses. Together we would own that track.

In my dream, Grover was wearing a wedding dress.

His voice sent a chill down my back, because he sounded almost exactly like the monster I’d heard in my dream.

Despite our occasional fights, we’d been through a lot together.

“You mean the Mediterranean?” “No. Well, yes…but no.” “Another straight answer. Thanks.”

the marshmallow committed suicide,

The evil aura radiating from Tantalus was as strong as any monster I’d ever faced.

“Young people don’t always do what they’re told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment.

if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn’t matter if they hate you, or embarrass you,

“Well then, Seaweed Brain? What are you waiting for?”

My mom hoped I would inherit Perseus’s luck. Judging by how my life was going so far, I wasn’t real optimistic.

“We have to get out of here.” “You think I want to be in the girls’ restroom?” “I mean the ship, Percy! We have to get off the ship.”

I shuddered. If Annabeth and Tyson were actually agreeing about something, I figured I’d better listen.

I didn’t need maps anymore to know I was getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant—the presence of evil.

He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

“When you’re at sea, you have perfect bearings. That is so cool.”

But whenever Annabeth talked about the time she’d spent with them, I kind of felt…I don’t know. Uncomfortable? No. That’s not the word. The word was jealous

“And don’t you think it’s strange that one appeared immediately after you told Tyson to get donuts? Right here in the middle of the woods?” I thought about it. It did seem a little weird, but, I mean, donut shops weren’t real high on my list of sinister forces.

Charybdis and her sister Scylla.”

I tried to stay mad at her, but it wasn’t easy. We’d been through a lot together. She’d saved my life plenty of times. It was stupid of me to resent her.

Tyson loved horses, and I knew he’d love those fountains. I almost turned around to see the expression on his face before I remembered: Tyson was gone.

The guinea pigs squealed like they were hungry.

Men are pigs, Percy Jackson.

she looked good. Really good. I probably would’ve been tongue-tied if I could’ve said anything except reet, reet, reet

Before I could figure out how to apologize for being such an idiot, she tackled me with a hug, then pulled away just as quickly. “I’m glad you’re not a guinea pig.” “Me, too.” I hoped my face wasn’t as red as it felt.

“Come on, Seaweed Brain,”

How could music cause so many lives to veer off course? I mean, sure, there were some Top Forty songs that made me want to take a fiery nosedive, but still…What

They were about to start rumors flying around the sea about the son of Poseidon and some girl at the bottom of Siren Bay.

“No, Seaweed Brain. That’s hummus. Hubris is worse.” “What could be worse than hummus?”

‘If I could tear this all down, I would do it better.’ Don’t you ever feel that way? Like you could do a better job if you ran the world?” “Um…no. Me running the world would kind of be a nightmare.”

I made a silent promise to the gods that if we survived this, I’d tell Annabeth she was a genius. The frightening thing was, I knew the gods would hold me to it.

Nobody was going to swat down my friends like that! I mean…nobody, not Nobody. Ah, you know what I mean.

She saw Grover and said weakly, “You’re not…married?” Grover grinned. “No. My friends talked me out of

The guinea pig inside me wanted to bolt.

Which reminded me…I still owed the gods a debt. “You’re a genius,” I told Annabeth quietly.