“I’ll keep exercising,” I promised. “Do a bunch of crossword puzzles.”
Gary curled his lip. “We were having a nice moment. Don’t ruin it.” He snapped his fingers, and the chalice of the gods appeared, floating and gleaming in the air between us. All it needed was an angelic chorus to complete the effect.
“Take it,” Gary said. “I suppose it should stay on Mount Olympus, among those fools who have already turned their backs on Old Age. You give me hope, Percy Jackson, that not everyone is like them.” He sniffed before grumbling, “Crossword puzzles . . .”
Then he poofed into a gray cloud of talcum powder.
I managed to catch the chalice just before it hit the pavement. It felt as heavy as a bowling ball, which did not do wonders for my aching arms.
“Ow,” I said.
“You did it!” Grover did a little goat dance of relief. “Hugging him? That was really risky!”
“It was perfect,” Annabeth said. She marched up and kissed me. “You know what? I think you’ll make a handsome old man. I hope one day we’ll get the chance to find out. But I’m glad that isn’t today.”
I smiled. The smell of Gary lingered on my clothes. I was weary and sore and felt like I’d aged a few decades. But those mental pictures also lingered . . . the images of growing older with the people I loved, with my best friends. And that made me feel like I could handle the aches and pains. Maybe the trade-off was worth it.
“So, you think we can send Ganymede an Iris-message?” I hefted the chalice. “I don’t want to keep this in my locker until Sunday.”
Annabeth looked like she was about to say something, but just then, a Hula-Hoop fell out of the sky.
It was pink with blue stripes and sparkles baked into the plastic. It hit the pavement with a jolly rattling whack, bounced twenty feet into the air, then came down again and rolled across the playground, wobbling to a stop like a flipped coin.
Even in a weird morning, this seemed weird.
“Um . . .” I said.
Annabeth walked over to the hoop. She nudged it. When it did not explode or turn into a monster, she picked it up. She looked at the clouds, but no other objects fell from the sky.
“This is a symbol of Ganymede,” she said.
“The Hula-Hoop?” Grover asked.
“Well . . . the hoop. It’s been a kids’ toy for thousands of years. It’s a symbol of his eternal youth.”
I shuddered. “Yeah, that doesn’t make Zeus’s abduction of him one bit less creepy. And you think what, Ganymede tossed the hoop off Mount Olympus?”
Since these days Olympus hovered over the Empire State Building, it wasn’t such a crazy idea. A good godly throw could probably reach Washington Square Park, no problem. But why?
Annabeth examined the hoop more closely. “Hold on.”
She found a section of paper wrapped around one part of the hoop. I had assumed it was a label or something, but Annabeth peeled it off and started to read.
“It’s a distress call,” she announced. “Ganymede says he’s stuck on Olympus, and he needs the cup immediately. He says . . .”
Her face fell. “Oh, gods. Zeus isn’t waiting for Sunday to have a feast.”
I gulped, remembering what Ganymede had said about Zeus being unpredictable. “So . . . what, he’s having one tonight?”
“Worse than that,” Annabeth said. “Zeus is having his mom over for a family get-together right now. They’re having brunch.”
Is there anything more terrifying than brunch?
It’s an abomination among meals, a Frankenstein hybrid of clashing food choices. It evokes nightmares of soft jazz bands, kids in itchy dress clothes, ladies in strange hats, lipstick smears on champagne glasses, and the smell of croque monsieur. I am sorry. I don’t eat food with a name that translates as Mr. Crunchy.
Even the word brunch gives me the willies. （See, I almost said heebie-jeebies, but we don’t use that term anymore in this household.） Brunch is the most non-elegant term for something that is supposed to be elegant. It’s like saying, Let’s get all dressed up and go to a quack-splat. Like . . . why?
But now I had found something even worse than a mortal brunch: a brunch among the gods. On a Monday morning, no less. And during regular breakfast hours, but, oh, no, they had to make it a brunch anyway.
Also, Zeus was having his mom over? I’d never met Rhea, the Titan queen, and I wasn’t anxious to find out what the gods served her for her special morning meal. Probably poached demigod on toast with demigod-tear mimosas.