The Sea of Monsters

last name “Stoll,” but the only time I mentioned it to Travis and Connor, they both stared at me blankly like they didn’t get the joke.
    As soon as the last campers had filed in, I led Tyson into the middle of the pavilion. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. “Who invited that ?” somebody at the Apollo table murmured.
    I glared in their direction, but I couldn’t figure out who’d spoken.
    From the head table a familiar voice drawled, “Well, well, if it isn’t Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete.”
    I gritted my teeth. “ Percy Jackson . . . sir.”
    Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. “Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever .”
    He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with black socks. With his pudgy belly and his blotchy red face, he looked like a Las Vegas tourist who’d stayed up too late in the casinos. Behind him, a nervous-looking satyr was peeling the skins off grapes and handing them to Mr. D one at a time.
    Mr. D’s real name is Dionysus. The god of wine. Zeus appointed him director of Camp Half-Blood to dry out for a hundred years—a punishment for chasing some off-limits wood nymph.
    Next to him, where Chiron usually sat (or stood, in centaur form), was someone I’d never seen before—a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner’s jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at me; his eyes made me nervous. He looked . . . fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time.
    “This boy,” Dionysus told him, “you need to watch. Poseidon’s child, you know.”
    “Ah!” the prisoner said. “That one.”
    His tone made it obvious that he and Dionysus had already discussed me at length.
    “I am Tantalus,” the prisoner said, smiling coldly. “On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble.”
    “Trouble?” I demanded.
    Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table—the front page of today’s New York Post . There was my yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep. It was hard for me to make out the headline, but I had a pretty good guess what it said. Something like: Thirteen-Year-Old Lunatic Torches Gymnasium .
    “Yes, trouble,” Tantalus said with satisfaction. “You caused plenty of it last summer, I understand.”
    I was too mad to speak. Like it was my fault the gods had almost gotten into a civil war?
    A satyr inched forward nervously and set a plate of barbecue in front of Tantalus. The new activities director licked his lips. He looked at his empty goblet and said, “Root beer. Barq’s special stock. 1967.”
    The glass filled itself with foamy soda. Tantalus stretched out his hand hesitantly, as if he were afraid the goblet was hot.
    “Go on, then, old fellow,” Dionysus said, a strange sparkle in his eyes. “Perhaps now it will work.”
    Tantalus grabbed for the glass, but it scooted away before he could touch it. A few drops of root beer spilled, and Tantalus tried to dab them up with his fingers, but the drops rolled away like quicksilver before he could touch them. He growled and turned toward the plate of barbecue. He picked up a fork and tried to stab a piece of brisket, but the plate skittered down the table and flew off the end, straight into the coals of the brazier.
    “Blast!” Tantalus muttered.
    “Ah, well,” Dionysus said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. “Perhaps a few more days. Believe me, old chap, working at this camp will be torture enough. I’m sure your old curse will fade eventually.”
    “Eventually,” muttered Tantalus, staring at Dionysus’s Diet Coke. “Do you have any idea how dry one’s throat gets after three thousand years?”
    “You’re that spirit from the Fields of Punishment,” I said. “The one who stands in the lake with the fruit tree hanging over you, but you can’t eat or drink.”
    Tantalus sneered at me. “A real scholar, aren’t you, boy?”
    “You must’ve done something really horrible when you were alive,” I said, mildly impressed. “What was it?”
    Tantalus’s eyes narrowed. Behind him, the satyrs were shaking their heads vigorously, trying to warn me.
    “I’ll be watching you, Percy Jackson,” Tantalus