The Lightning Thief

dry spot in the whole room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn’t have one drop of water on my clothes. Nothing.
    I stood up, my legs shaky.
    Annabeth said, “How did you . . .”
    “I don’t know.”
    We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse’s hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred. “You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead.”
    I probably should have let it go, but I said, “You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth.”
    Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.
    Annabeth stared at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.
    “What?” I demanded. “What are you thinking?”
    “I’m thinking,” she said, “that I want you on my team for capture the flag.”

MY DINNER GOES UP IN SMOKE
    W ord of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.
    She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn’t get to the top fast enough.
    Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.
    “I’ve got training to do,” Annabeth said flatly. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall.”
    “Annabeth, I’m sorry about the toilets.”
    “Whatever.”
    “It wasn’t my fault.”
    She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I’d made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn’t understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.
    “You need to talk to the Oracle,” Annabeth said.
    “Who?”
    “Not who. What. The Oracle. I’ll ask Chiron.”
    I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.
    I wasn’t expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.
    I didn’t know what else to do. I waved back.
    “Don’t encourage them,” Annabeth warned. “Naiads are terrible flirts.”
    “Naiads,” I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. “That’s it. I want to go home now.”
    Annabeth frowned. “Don’t you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us.”
    “You mean, mentally disturbed kids?”
    “I mean not human . Not totally human, anyway. Half-human.”
    “Half-human and half-what?”
    “I think you know.”
    I didn’t want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.
    “God,” I said. “Half-god.”
    Annabeth nodded. “Your father isn’t dead, Percy. He’s one of the Olympians.”
    “That’s . . . crazy.”
    “Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they’ve changed their habits in the last few millennia?”
    “But those are just—” I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron’s warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth. “But if all the kids here are half-gods—”
    “Demigods,” Annabeth said. “That’s the official term. Or half-bloods.”
    “Then who’s your dad?”
    Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I’d just trespassed on a sensitive subject.
    “My dad is a professor at West Point,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history.”
    “He’s human.”
    “What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female