Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods

She hurried off with her wheel o’ prize tickets.

I looked at Annabeth and Grover. “Are we really going to search out a karaoke bar . . . like, on purpose?”

“You can duet with me on ‘Shallow,’ ” Annabeth offered.

“You don’t want that,” I promised.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She pinched my arm lightly. “Might be romantic.”

“I’m just going to keep walking,” said Grover.

Which was probably the wisest choice.

We found the diving cliff: a two-story wall of fake rock where you could jump off into a suspiciously murky pool of water. A couple of kids were doing it on a loop, splashing down, clambering out, and racing back up to the top, while their parents stood nearby, engrossed in a game of Space Invaders.

I am a son of Poseidon, but you couldn’t have paid me enough to jump into that pool. Any enclosed body of water where little kids have been playing? No thanks. Nevertheless, I took note of where the pool was, just in case I needed some H2O to throw around.

I am a guy of limited talents. If I can’t kill it with water, a sword, or sarcasm, I am basically defenseless. I come preloaded with sarcasm. The pen-sword is always in my pocket. Now I had access to water, so I was as prepared as I could ever be.

We passed the henhouse . . . which I’d thought might be a nickname for a private event space or something, like where you’d have hen parties. But no. It was an actual henhouse. Right in the middle of the arcade stood a red shack on stilts, surrounded by a chicken-wire fence. On the floor around it, about a dozen hens and some little yellow chicks were pecking at feed, clucking, and basically being chickens.

“Why?” I asked.

“Hebe’s sacred animal,” Annabeth said. “Maybe we should move along.”

I didn’t argue. The chickens were staring at us with their beady black eyes as if thinking, Dude, if we were still dinosaurs, we would tear you to pieces.

At last, we found the karaoke bar. It was partitioned off from the rest of the amusement center by a set of sliding mahogany doors, but that didn’t stop the music from seeping through. Inside, half a dozen tables faced a sad little stage, where a squad of old folks belted out a song that sounded vaguely Woodstock-ish. The stage lights pulsed a sickly yellow color. The sound system crackled.

That didn’t seem to bother the boomers, who threw their arms around one another and waved their canes, their bald heads gleaming as they wailed about peace and sunshine.

“Can we leave now?” Grover asked.

Annabeth pointed to a booth against the far wall. “Look over there.”

Sitting in the booth, tapping her feet to the music, was a girl about my age. At least, that’s what she appeared to be. But I could tell she was a goddess because immortals always make themselves a little too flawless when they appear in human form: perfect complexion, hair always photo-shoot ready, clothes far too crisp and colorful for mere mortals. The girl in the booth wore a pink-and-turquoise minidress with white go-go boots but somehow managed to make it look hip and not like a retro Halloween costume. Her hair was a dark beehive swirl. It occurred to me she was channeling a fashion that would remind the boomers of their own childhoods.

We approached the booth.

“Lady Hebe?” I asked.

I figured that was the safest way to address her. I was guessing her last name wasn’t Jeebies.

The goddess raised a finger to silence me, her eyes still fixed on the geriatric singers. “Don’t they seem happy? So young again!”

The boomers did seem happy. I wasn’t sure about young, but maybe young meant something different back in the day.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “We were just wondering—”

“Please, sit.” The goddess waved her hand, and three chairs appeared on the outside of the booth.

Then Hebe issued one of the most terrifying threats I had ever heard from a god: “I’ll order us some pizza, and we can talk while the old folks sing protest songs.”





It was the pizza that got me.

I don’t mean with food poisoning. I mean with nostalgia.

The cheese slice looked like a triangle of melted vinyl, garnished with three sad flecks of basil and served on a paper plate limp with grease. I had no intention of eating it—not after Sparky’s mold comment—but the smell took me right back to third grade.

Wednesdays were pizza days. I remembered the burnt-cheese smell in our basement cafeteria, the cracked green plastic chairs, the feverish conversations I used to have with my friends about trading cards, the history teacher who was our lunch monitor, Mr. Christ. (No kidding, that was his actual name. We were too scared to ask what his first name was.)

Now, looking at (and smelling) Hebe Jeebies’s glistening plastic pizza, I felt eight years old again.

“Wow,” I said.

Hebe smiled, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Wonderful, isn’t it? Feeling young again?”

Okay, maybe she didn’t know exactly what I was thinking. Being in third grade for me had not been wonderful. Neither had the pizza. But it was still a rush, being pulled back in time by nothing but a smell.

Grover dug in, devouring his pizza slice, his paper plate, and my napkin. I had learned to keep my hands away from him when he was in grazing mode or he might have started gnawing on my fingers.

Annabeth remained focused on the karaoke boomers. They were now belting out a slow, sad song about where all the flowers had gone. I wanted to shout, I don’t know. Why don’t you go outside and look for them?

“What a fabulous generation,” Hebe said, admiring the geriatric singers. “Even now, they refuse to accept growing old.” She turned to me. “And you, Percy Jackson, I assume you’ve come to ask a favor. Perhaps you’re starting to regret turning down immortality?”

Here we go, I thought.

Every time the gods brought up my rejection of Zeus’s offer, they treated it as a sign of stupidity—or worse, as an insult to godkind. I hadn’t figured out a great way to explain it to them. Like, maybe if you all promised to claim your demigod children sooner, so your kids weren’t living their whole lives not knowing who they were or where they came from, that would be a win for everyone?

I must have looked like I was about to bust out the sarcasm, because Annabeth intervened.

“He made the selfless choice,” she said. “Because of that, your kids got their own cabin at Camp Half-Blood. You finally got the respect you deserve.”

Hebe narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps. Still, Percy Jackson, turning down eternal youth? You can’t really want to grow old. Don’t you understand how terrible that will be?”

There didn’t seem to be a right answer to that.

Honestly, I’d spent most of my life wishing I could be older, so I could get to college, get out of the target years when monsters were trying to kill me every other day.

I didn’t want to contradict the goddess, though, so I tried a careful answer. “I mean, I guess getting older is part of life—”

“This pizza is great!” Grover interrupted, probably in an attempt to save me from god-level zappage. “And the music . . .” He frowned at the boomers. “Wait a minute. . . . Are they actually getting younger?”

He was right. The changes were subtle, but their hair didn’t seem so gray now. Their postures were straighter. Their voices sounded more assured, though still terrible.

“They come here to remember the old days.” Hebe gestured around her. “Nostalgia is the doorway back to youth. I’m just showing them how to open it.”

A shiver ran across my shoulders. 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!

“That’s . . . nice of you,” Grover tried. But from the slight tremor in his voice, I could tell he was not liking this place anymore, no matter how good the licorice ropes were.