"What's wrong with that?"
Her multicolored eyes seemed to search inside me. "I think you know, Percy. I think you're enough like me to understand. If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. I can't let a god take care of me ... or my son. I have to ... find the courage on my own. Your quest has reminded me of that."
We listened to the sound of poker chips and swearing, ESPN from the living room television.
"I'll leave the box," I said. "If he threatens you ..." She looked pale, but she nodded. "Where will you go, Percy?"
"HalfBlood Hill."
"For the summer ... or forever?"
"I guess that depends."
We locked eyes, and I sensed that we had an agreement. We would see how things stood at the end of the summer.
She kissed my forehead. "You'll be a hero, Percy. You'll be the greatest of all." I took one last look around my bedroom. I had a feeling I'd never see it again. Then I walked with my mother to the front door.
"Leaving so soon, punk?" Gabe called after me. "Good riddance." I had one last twinge of doubt. How could I turn down the perfect chance to take revenge on him? I was leaving here without saving my mother.
"Hey, Sally," he yelled. "What about that meat loaf, huh?" A steely look of anger flared in my mother's eyes, and I thought, just maybe, I was leaving her in good hands after all. Her own.
"The meat loaf is coming right up, dear," she told Gabe. "Meat loaf surprise." She looked at me, and winked.
The last thing I saw as the door swung closed was my mother staring at Gabe, as if she were contemplating how he would look as a garden statue.
22 THE PROPHECY
COMES TRUE
We were the first heroes to return alive to HalfBlood Hill since Luke, so of course everybody treated us as if we'd won some reality-TV contest. According to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in our honor, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burn the burial shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence. Annabeth's shroud was so beautiful—gray silk with embroidered owls—I told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me and told me to shut up.
Being the son of Poseidon, I didn't have any cabin mates, so the Ares cabin had volunteered to make my shroud. They'd taken an old bedsheet and painted smiley faces with X'ed-out eyes around the border, and the word LOSER painted really big in the middle. It was fun to burn.
As Apollo's cabin led the sing-along and passed out s'mores, I was surrounded by my old Hermes cabinmates, Annabeth's friends from Athena, and Grover's satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand-new searcher's license he'd received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called Grover's performance on the quest "Brave to the point of indigestion. Hornsand-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past." The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose poisonous looks told me they'd never forgive me for disgracing their dad.
That was okay with me.
Even Dionysus's welcome-home speech wasn't enough to dampen my spirits. "Yes, yes, so the little brat didn't get himself killed and now he'll have an even bigger head. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be no canoe races this Saturday...." I moved back into cabin three, but it didn't feel so lonely anymore. I had my friends to train with during the day. At night, I lay awake and listened to the sea, knowing my father was out there. Maybe he wasn't quite sure about me yet, maybe he hadn't even wanted me born, but he was watching. And so far, he was proud of what I'd done.
As for my mother, she had a chance at a new life. Her letter arrived a week after I got back to camp. She told me Gabe had left mysteriously—disappeared off the face of the planet, in fact. She'd reported him missing to the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him. On a completely unrelated subject, she'd sold her first life-size concrete sculpture, entitled The Poker Player, to a collector, through an art gallery in Soho. She'd gotten so much money for it, she'd put a deposit down on a new apartment and made a payment on her first semester's tuition at NYU. The Soho gallery was clamoring for more of her work, which they called "a huge step forward in super-ugly neorealism."
But don't worry, my mom wrote. I'm done with sculpture. I've disposed of that box of tools you left me. It's time for me to turn to writing.