The Lightning Thief

night.
    We camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.
    We’d taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em’s, but we didn’t dare light a fire to dry our damp clothes. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough excitement for one day. We didn’t want to attract anything else.
    We decided to sleep in shifts. I volunteered to take first watch.
    Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.
    “Go ahead and sleep,” I told him. “I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.”
    He nodded, but still didn’t close his eyes. “It makes me sad, Percy.”
    “What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?”
    “No. This makes me sad.” He pointed at all the garbage on the ground. “And the sky. You can’t even see the stars.
    They’ve polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr.”
    “Oh, yeah. I guess you’d be an environmentalist.”
    He glared at me. “Only a human wouldn’t be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast . . . ah, never mind. It’s useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I’ll never find Pan.”
    “Pam? Like the cooking spray?”
    “Pan!” he cried indignantly. “P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher’s license for?”
    A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and muck. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might’ve once been in these woods. Suddenly I was nostalgic for something I’d never known.
    “Tell me about the search,” I said.
    Grover looked at me cautiously, as if he were afraid I was just making fun.
    “The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago,” he told me. “A sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the shore, ‘Tell them that the great god Pan has died!’ When humans heard the news, they believed it. They’ve been pillaging Pan’s kingdom ever since. But for the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden, and wake him from his sleep.”
    “And you want to be a searcher.”
    “It’s my life’s dream,” he said. “My father was a searcher. And my Uncle Ferdinand . . . the statue you saw back there—”
    “Oh, right, sorry.”
    Grover shook his head. “Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But I’ll succeed. I’ll be the first searcher to return alive.”
    “Hang on— the first? ”
    Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. “No searcher has ever come back. Once they set out, they disappear. They’re never seen alive again.”
    “Not once in two thousand years?”
    “No.”
    “And your dad? You have no idea what happened to him?”
    “None.”
    “But you still want to go,” I said, amazed. “I mean, you really think you’ll be the one to find Pan?”
    “I have to believe that, Percy. Every searcher does. It’s the only thing that keeps us from despair when we look at what humans have done to the world. I have to believe Pan can still be awakened.”
    I stared at the orange haze of the sky and tried to understand how Grover could pursue a dream that seemed so hopeless. Then again, was I any better?
    “How are we going to get into the Underworld?” I asked him. “I mean, what chance do we have against a god?”
    “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But back at Medusa’s, when you were searching her office? Annabeth was telling me—”
    “Oh, I forgot. Annabeth will have a plan all figured out.”
    “Don’t be so hard on her, Percy. She’s had a tough life, but she’s a good person. After all, she forgave me. . . .” His voice faltered.
    “What do you mean?” I asked. “Forgave you for what?”
    Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes.
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth has been at camp five years. She wasn’t . . . I mean, your first assignment that went