Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods(40)

I wasn’t good at keeping a schedule. I was pretty sure I had a math quiz first thing Monday, but hey . . . surely I would be done with our monster encounter before school, right? And if the Minerva-feast thing on Olympus wasn’t until the following Sunday, that technically left us plenty of time to find the chalice and return it to Ganymede. . . .

“Okay,” I agreed. “Super-early o’clock on Monday. I’ll let Annabeth know. She’s coming to dinner tonight.”

“Cool,” Grover said, though he looked uneasy. “Do you think . . . ?” He didn’t seem able to finish his thought.

The satyr seemed so worried, I assumed about Juniper, that I wanted to give him a hug, wrap him in a warm fluffy blanket, and drive him to Camp Half-Blood myself. Since I didn’t have time to make the drive, and I also didn’t have a warm fluffy blanket, I racked my brain for helpful advice.

I remembered something Annabeth had told me months before, when I was trying to figure out what I could do to make up for disappearing our entire junior year.

“Look, man,” I told Grover. “Juniper will forgive you. She probably doesn’t want presents at all. She just wants you to be there for her. Listen to how she’s feeling. Be with her.”

From the pool, my coach yelled, “Jackson. You’re up again!”

It was time for me to get ready for the high dive.

“I should go,” I told Grover.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s just . . . I’ve been so stressed about me and Juniper, but honestly, we were fine until I started obsessing about her bloom-day present. What if that’s not what’s really bothering me? What if I’m worried about you and Annabeth leaving me next summer?”

Leaving him.

That hit me like a cold wave of Elisson water. I looked down at the contact sheets from Blanche’s photo shoots—all those images of Grover playing dead in a black-and-white landscape of despair.

“Ah, Grover . . .” I did give him a hug then. I felt a little awkward, since I was only wearing a swimsuit and I was still wet from my last event, but he didn’t seem to care. “We’re never leaving you, buddy. We’ll be back to visit. You’ll come see us in California. You’re like our life source, dude. We can only be away from you for so long before we start to wither, you know?”

Grover managed a faint smile. “Yeah . . . yeah, okay.”

My coach yelled for me again.

“Go,” Grover told me.

“You sure you’re good?”

“I’m good. I’ll see you Monday morning at Washington Square Park. You wanna say six thirty?”

I didn’t want to say 6:30 A.M., and I definitely didn’t want to be awake then. The thought of how early I’d have to get up to make it downtown by that time made me want to stick my head in the water and scream. But satyrs are morning people.

“Sounds great,” I told him.

Then I jogged off toward the diving board. I hadn’t practiced my dive at all, but I figured I’d spent so much of my life plummeting downward, I’d be a shoo-in for first place.





It takes strength and courage to bring dessert to my mom’s for dinner. My mom is a famously good dessert maker. Most people would be too nervous to bake anything for fear it wouldn’t hold up to comparison. Fortunately, Annabeth is both strong and courageous, which meant I got cupcakes.

“Sweetheart, these look amazing!” my mom said, accepting a tray of Annabeth’s latest creations.

Annabeth teared up with gratitude. I have seen her shrug off compliments from gods, but my mom’s praise really got to her. I guess it was because she’d grown up with Athena as her distant maternal figure.

Sometimes I wondered if Annabeth was open to the idea of marrying me someday only because she was excited about getting Sally Jackson-Blofis as her mother-in-law. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her.

Annabeth had started baking because she literally ran out of classes she needed to take for graduation. Despite having the same crazy demigod problems I did, despite having a miserable junior year while I was missing in action, despite being just as dyslexic and ADHD as I was, she had accumulated so many advanced-placement courses and made such good grades that the counselor at SODNYC suggested Annabeth just take a study hall for her seventh course.

Me, I would have said, Yes, please, and can I have a pillow with that?

But coasting was not in Annabeth’s nature. She’d signed up for the elective Beginning Culinary Design. So far, she’d only been working on cupcakes (which was totally cool with me), but I was pretty sure by the end of the year she’d be constructing bridges and skyscrapers out of angel food cake.

One thing Annabeth didn’t do, however, was make blue food. That was kind of an inside joke between my mom and me. Annabeth considered it sacred and off-limits. Her cupcakes today were green with purple sprinkles, for reasons known only to her.

While she and my mom chatted about frosting, I checked in with my stepdad, Paul, who was clearing stacks of student essays off the dining table. The dude worked nonstop, I swear. It almost made me feel bad I didn’t put more effort into my own homework. Almost.

“Hey, Paul.” I gave him a fist bump.

“Beat any good monsters lately?” he asked.

“You know. Just the usual.”

Paul chuckled. He was still in his work clothes: blue dress shirt, faded jeans, wildly colored tie with pictures of books on it. His gray-flecked hair had gotten grayer and fleckier over the last few years, and I tried not to think it was my fault. He worried for me, knowing my demigod history. He worried for my mom worrying for me. He was a great guy. I just preferred to think the teaching job was aging him rather than the constant life-and-death fights I went through. I tried to keep the worst details to myself, but Paul knew. As much as any mortal could, he had seen my world up close and personal during the Battle of Manhattan.