The Sea of Monsters Read Free

imagination.
    I wished Annabeth were here. She’d know what to make of my dream. I’d never admit it to her, but she was smarter than me, even if she was annoying sometimes.
    I was about to close my notebook when Matt Sloan reached over and ripped the photo out of the rings.
    “Hey!” I protested.
    Sloan checked out the picture and his eyes got wide. “No way, Jackson. Who is that? She is not your—”
    “Give it back!” My ears felt hot.
    Sloan handed the photo to his ugly buddies, who snickered and started ripping it up to make spit wads. They were new kids who must’ve been visiting, because they were all wearing those stupid HI! MY NAME IS : tags from the admissions office. They must’ve had a weird sense of humor, too, because they’d all filled in strange names like: MARROW SUCKER, SKULL EATER, and JOE BOB. No human beings had names like that.
    “These guys are moving here next year,” Sloan bragged, like that was supposed to scare me. “I bet they can pay the tuition, too, unlike your retard friend.”
    “He’s not retarded.” I had to try really, really hard not to punch Sloan the face.
    “You’re such a loser, Jackson. Good thing I’m gonna put you out of your misery next period.”
    His huge buddies chewed up my photo. I wanted to pulverize them, but I was under strict orders from Chiron never to take my anger out on regular mortals, no matter how obnoxious they were. I had to save my fighting for monsters.
    Still, part of me thought, if Sloan only knew who I really was . . .
    The bell rang.
    As Tyson and I were leaving class, a girl’s voice whispered, “Percy!”
    I looked around the locker area, but nobody was paying me any attention. Like any girl at Meriwether would ever be caught dead calling my name.
    Before I had time to consider whether or not I’d been imagining things, a crowd of kids rushed for the gym, carrying Tyson and me along with them. It was time for PE. Our coach had promised us a free-for-all dodgeball game, and Matt Sloan had promised to kill me.
    The gym uniform at Meriwether is sky blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts. Fortunately, we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn’t have to jog through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children.
    I changed as quickly as I could in the locker room because I didn’t want to deal with Sloan. I was about to leave when Tyson called, “Percy?”
    He hadn’t changed yet. He was standing by the weight room door, clutching his gym clothes. “Will you . . . uh . . .”
    “Oh. Yeah.” I tried not to sound aggravated about it. “Yeah, sure, man.”
    Tyson ducked inside the weight room. I stood guard outside the door while he changed. I felt kind of awkward doing this, but he asked me to most days. I think it’s because he’s completely hairy and he’s got weird scars on his back that I’ve never had the courage to ask him about.
    Anyway, I’d learned the hard way that if people teased Tyson while he was dressing out, he’d get upset and start ripping the doors off lockers.
    When we got into the gym, Coach Nunley was sitting at his little desk reading Sports Illustrated . Nunley was about a million years old, with bifocals and no teeth and a greasy wave of gray hair. He reminded me of the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood—which was a shriveled-up mummy—except Coach Nunley moved a lot less and he never billowed green smoke. Well, at least not that I’d observed.
    Matt Sloan said, “Coach, can I be captain?”
    “Eh?” Coach Nunley looked up from his magazine. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Mm-hmm.”
    Sloan grinned and took charge of the picking. He made me the other team’s captain, but it didn’t matter who I picked, because all the jocks and the popular kids moved over to Sloan’s side. So did the big group of visitors.
    On my side I had Tyson, Corey Bailer the computer geek, Raj Mandali the calculus whiz, and a half dozen other kids who always got harassed by Sloan and his gang. Normally I would’ve