I swam up to the surface and found Annabeth and Grover, who’d been frantically watching the river looking for any sign of me.
“You’re alive!” said Annabeth.
“No thanks to those stupid one-eyed tourists,” I said.
“Percy, those weren’t tourists,” said Grover. “They were cyclopses, one-eyed creatures from Greek mythology.”
I admit that after all these weird incidents I was starting to question whether mythological creatures might indeed exist. But I was much more concerned with the fact that my quest to date Annabeth had completely stalled. We needed to get moving again.
“So, anyone have any idea how we’re gonna get to LA?” I said.
“I got nothing,” said Annabeth.
“Why don’t we just call Chiron and ask him what to do?” said Grover.
“Good thinking,” I said, and pulled out my phone. But Annabeth grabbed it away.
“Chiron said we can’t use our phones because monsters can track them, remember?” said Annabeth.
“Then how are we supposed to call him?” I said.
“There’s another way we can call,” said Grover. “We just need 75 cents.”
But we were completely broke.
Then I had an idea.
“SEE THE AMAZING GOAT THAT CAN DO MATH!” I shouted. “ONLY 75 CENTS!”
A little girl and her Dad came over.
“Can he really do math?” said the girl, pointing at Grover.
“Darn right he can!” I said. “Give him a problem.”
“Okay. What’s three plus five?”
“That’s easy, eight,” said Grover.
The girl’s jaw dropped, as did her dad’s.
“Ha ha, that was just me doing a little ventriloquism,” I said, and elbowed Grover hard in the shoulder. “But seriously, give him another problem.”
“All right,” said the girl. “What’s seven plus two?”
Grover began counting out with his hoof, and stamped the ground nine times.
“See, he got it right!” I said. The dad handed me a five and didn’t ask for change, and hustled the girl away. I think he was still in shock over seeing Grover talk.
Grover led us around the block to one of those self-serve car washes with the water hoses. He got change for the five, put 75 cents into a machine, and grabbed a hose and started spraying water into the air.
“Um, what are you doing?” I said.
“IMing,” he said.
I looked at Annabeth and made the “cuckoo” sign.
“‘IM’ stands for ‘Iris Messaging,’” she said. “The rainbow goddess Iris allows us to send messages through rainbows.”
I looked back at the spraying water and saw that a rainbow was forming in the spray. Inside the rainbow I began to see the familiar outline of the farmhouse at Camp Half-Wit. The scene gradually got clearer, and finally it was as if the farmhouse was right there next to us.
“Hello?” I said. “Chiron, can you hear me?”
A person appeared in front of the farmhouse and squinted at us, but it wasn’t Chiron. It was Luke.
“Percy, is that you?” said Luke.
“Hi Luke,” I said. “Is Chiron there?”
“He’s actually teaching a class at the moment,” said Luke. “Hey is that Annabeth next to you? It’s a bit hard to see. Can I say hi?”
“Sure!” I said. “I’ll hold the water closer to her so you two can talk.” I grabbed the nozzle from Grover and positioned the spray in front of Annabeth.
“Hey girl!” Luke said flirtingly.
Annabeth giggled. “Hiiiiii,” she said, blushing.
I started unsqueezing the nozzle trigger intermittently, so the water only came out in short bursts.
“Annabeth? Where’d you go?”
“Sorry Luke,” I said, “looks like we’re having an issue with the water pressure. ’Klaterbye!” I shut off the water completely and put the nozzle back in its holder.
“Great, we got no advice,” said Grover. “Now what?”
I tried to think of something, but all I could think about was how hungry I was. We hadn’t eaten forever.
“We still have $4.25,” I said. “Let’s grab lunch.”
My initial plan was to buy a sub sandwich we could split, but then I spotted this really cool brewpub with an outdoor terrace across the street, so we sat down there. I figured we could pay for our meal by having Grover do some more math, or even some movie trivia. But I’d forgotten about one small thing: the drinking age.
A waitress approached, eyeing us skeptically. “Are you guys 21?” she said.
“Uh…no, but this goat here can tell you 21 times 12,” I said.
“I don’t know multiplication!” said Grover.
“Out,” said the waitress, and pointed at the door.
We got up to leave, but then a motorcycle noisily pulled up on the sidewalk in front of our table and the rider shouted, “Stay put!” The guy looked like a bodybuilder, and was wearing red shades and a black leather jacket that said “Mount Olympus Customs.” His motorcycle was one of those tricked-out bikes you see on reality TV shows about custom cycles. It had flames painted all over it, and the body had been refabricated to make it look like the bike had muscles.
Although there were like a thousand reality shows about custom cycles, this was the first time I’d ever actually seen a custom cycle in person. That’s because the entire phenomenon of custom cycles was clearly just made up by reality TV executives so they could do reality shows about it. Think about it for a second: if someone had enough money to customize their motorcycle, why wouldn’t they just buy a car instead?
The biker guy got off his bike and approached our table. “These guys are with me,” he told the waitress, and sat down at our table without asking.
“Can I see your ID then?” the waitress said. “There needs to be at least one adult at every table.”
The biker guy grumbled and handed the waitress an ID. I looked over and saw that it was a Mount Olympus drivers’ license, and the date of birth on it was 1,200 B.C.
“I guess that makes you over 21,” said the waitress. “I’ll grab you some menus.”
The waitress walked away, and the biker guy looked at us and smiled. “I heard you kids could use a little cash,” he said.
“I heard you work in an entirely made-up industry,” I said, pointing at his Mount Olympus Customs jacket.
The guy’s eyes appeared to burn with flame.
Annabeth elbowed me. “Percy, don’t you know who this is? It’s—”
The guy held up his hand. “Save the mythology lesson for later, I only got a minute. Look twerps, I need a favor. I was on a little date recently with my girl at the water park, and things got so hot and heavy in the Tunnel of Love that I accidentally left my shield there. So I want you kids to fetch it for me.”
“Makes sense that you have a shield,” I said, “since you’re into other made-up things like custom bikes.”
The fire in his eyeballs glowed even hotter.
“Percy!” Annabeth said. She quickly turned to the biker guy. “We’ll do it,” she said.
“Hang on,” I said. “Why does he need us to get it for him? Why doesn’t he just get it himself?”
“Because I’m busy,” said the guy.
“Busy customizing bikes for nonexistent clients?” I said.
I swear I could now see smoke coming out his ears.
“You wanna know the real reason, punk?” he said. “It’s because things got so hot and heavy in the Tunnel of Love that the park banned me for life.”
“Nice!” I said, fist-bumping him. “Why didn’t you just say so? I’m happy to help a fellow bro out.”
“You twerps meet me back here in 24 hours,” the guy said. “No shield, no reward…and very possibly a tail whooping. Later, lame-os.” The guy got on his fake custom bike and drove off.
“Percy, are you crazy talking to him like that?” said Annabeth. “That was Ares, god of war!”
“Look, not everyone is a god or a monster, ok?”
“Well if he’s not a god, who is he?” said Grover.
“A guy who’s too ashamed of owning a shield to go back and pick it up himself,” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Annabeth. “I still think it was Ares.”
“Me too,” said Grover.
“Wonderful. Good for you,” I said. “The bottom line is, whether or not he’s a god—and he’s not—retrieving his stuff is the one way to save our quest.”
The waitress returned to the table. “You guys wanna order anything?” she said. “Your friend already took care of it.”
“Awesome, I’m famished!” said Grover. “I’ll have two large orders of garbage, please.”
