Percy Jackson The Complete Collection Read Online Free PDF

said evenly. ‘Your stepfather is just worried about money. That’s all. Besides,’ she added, ‘Gabriel won’t have to settle for bean dip. I’ll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works.’
    Gabe softened a bit. ‘So this money for your trip… it comes out of your clothes budget, right?’
    ‘Yes, honey,’ my mother said.
    ‘And you won’t take my car anywhere but there and back.’
    ‘We’ll be very careful.’
    Gabe scratched his double chin. ‘Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip… And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game.’
    Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.
    But my mom’s eyes warned me not to make him mad.
    Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I’m really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now.’
    Gabe’s eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.
    ‘Yeah, whatever,’ he decided.
    He went back to his game.
    ‘Thank you, Percy,’ my mom said. ‘Once we get to Montauk, we’ll talk more about… whatever you’ve forgotten to tell me, okay?’
    For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes – the same fear I’d seen in Grover during the bus ride – as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.
    But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.
    An hour later we were ready to leave.
    Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom’s bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking – and more important, his ‘78 Camaro – for the whole weekend.
    ‘Not a scratch on this car, brain boy,’ he warned me as I loaded the last bag. ‘Not one little scratch.’
    Like I’d be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn’t matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he’d find a way to blame me.
    Watching him lumber back towards the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can’t explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I’d seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movementtowards Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he’d been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out.
    I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.
    Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.
    I loved the place.
    We’d been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she’d met my dad.
    As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the colour of the sea.
    We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin’s windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.
    I guess I should explain the blue food.
    See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of herway to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the