The Chalice of the Gods

Find someone who loves you the way my girlfriend pushes me off a cliff. Without hesitation. With full confidence in your abilities, with the rock-steady belief that your relationship can handle it, and with complete faith that when you come out of the water, assuming you survive, you will totally forgive them for the push. Almost certainly forgive them. Probably. Bonus points if you find someone with enough chutzpah to say Bon Voyage while they do it.

I am a guy of limited talents. If I can't kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, I am basically defenseless.

Are you kidding?” He grinned at Annabeth. “A chance to do quests, just the three of us? Like old times? The Three Musketeers!” “The Powerpuff Girls,” Annabeth suggested. “Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey,” I said. “Wait a minute,” Grover said. “I’m fine with this,” Annabeth said.

I imagined Annabeth with silver hair and wrinkles, chuckling as she called me Seaweed Brain for the four millionth time in our lives.

We spent a few minutes painting light graffiti. Grover wrote Pan 4ever. I wrote AC+PJ.

Cool.” I used my flashlight to draw a glowing smiley face on the wall. “How old are you?” Annabeth asked. “Eight just last week.

That afternoon, I did something unusual. I visited the library. Yeah, I know. I could almost hear that turntable needle scratch in your head as you tried to process that idea. If I told you I fell into Tartarus again, or got swallowed by a giant, or had to go bungee jumping in a volcano, you’d be like, Yeah, that makes sense. But Percy visiting a library? That’s way off brand.

Annabeth has this magic power where she can look into the future and figure out how long it will take to do certain things. She calls her power "scheduling," which directly overrules my magic power of procrastination.

It was like a job requirement for them: 1) become a god, 2) get a cool magic thing, 3) lose it, 4) ask a demigod to find it.

To his left was my buddy Hera, goddess of making Percy miserable.

Discreet is what we do,” said Grover, who had once blindly dive-bombed Medusa in a pair of flying shoes while screaming at the top of his lungs.

he hadn’t killed me yet, so I decided to keep talking. (This is a mistake I make a lot.)

She let the thought drift away into the Land of Half-Formed Thoughts About Things That Could Kill Percy Jackson. I spent a lot of my time in that land.

I believed everyone should have the right to ruin their own life without anyone else ruining it for them.

Sometimes it's the smallest waves that knock you off your feet. Tsunamis—everybody know's they're powerful. Tidal waves—big and impressive. But those small waves? They hold a lot of power. They prove what the ocean is capable of, even when no one is paying attention (...) I always keep an eye on you, Percy, mostly from a distance, it's true. I've watched you save the world multiple times, conquering enemies that would scare most immortals. But it wasn't till today that I realized how much of a hero you truly are (...) You risked your life for a cupbearer you barely know. Not for a letter. Not because the fate of the world was at state. But because that's just who you are. Today, you created a small wave, and you showed what the ocean is capable of.

You’d be amazed how many teachers, administrators, and other school staff are monsters in disguise. Or maybe you wouldn’t be amazed.

I asked myself, Percy, why are you doing that? I don’t know, I answered, because I am not very helpful when I talk to myself.

I kind of wish we had Luke’s flying shoes,” Annabeth said. Grover winced. “Too soon.

We have deep conversations like that.

I come preloaded with sarcasm.

Then he got up and wandered off in his bathrobe to pour more divine Kool-Aid.

Annabeth took out her purse and produced a five-dollar bill. Because of course, along with every other strange and archaic ancient tool that she might need, she carried cash.

Here’s a challenge: try to do a full day of school (actually, that could be the whole challenge by itself), and then, afterward, go on a quest to find a goddess, knowing that when you get home, if you get home, you’ll still have a couple of hours of math and science homework to do.

I glanced at Annabeth and Grover. We'd been through so much together. I imagined Annabeth with silver hair and wrinkles, chuckling as she called me Seaweed Brain for the fourth millionth time in our lives. I imagined Grover with tufts of white hair coming out of his ears, his back hunched as he leaned on a cane, bleating as he complained about his aching hooves, then maybe taking a nap on a bench in our beachside garden while I sat next to him, resting my aching bones as I watched the waves and smelled the sea air. Aching bones weren't hard for me to imagine. Actually, the rest wasn't hard to imagine, either. Gary expected me to wrestle him. And unless I died young, I couldn't beat Old Age. But what if I embraced him?

I realized everybody at the table was holding their breath. Maybe they were afraid I would make all the plumbing in the apartment building explode. Which, for the record, I only did that one time.

The last thing the world needed was boomers aging backward, like, We enjoyed monopolizing the planet so much the first time, we’re going to do it again!

I have a message for Annabeth Chase,” I said. “I love you.” I tried to give her a kiss, but it was difficult, because she started laughing.

I’d sworn off spaghetti, but pasta is like a best friend: you can’t stay mad at it forever.

Nostalgia is the doorway back to youth.

because any future that had us in it was a future I wanted to live through.