The Sea of Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page A

Pick-on-Big-and-Ugly-Kids Day?
    “Extra pay,” Annabeth promised. “Three more drachma on arrival.”
    “Done!” the woman screamed.
    Reluctantly I got in the cab. Tyson squeezed in the middle. Annabeth crawled in last.
    The interior was also smoky gray, but it felt solid enough. The seat was cracked and lumpy—no different than most taxis. There was no Plexiglas screen separating us from the old lady driving . . . Wait a minute. There wasn’t just one old lady. There were three, all crammed in the front seat, each with stringy hair covering her eyes, bony hands, and a charcoal-colored sackcloth dress.
    The one driving said, “Long Island! Out-of-metro fare bonus! Ha!”
    She floored the accelerator, and my head slammed against the backrest. A prerecorded voice came on over the speaker: Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I’m out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!
    I looked down and found a large black chain instead of a seat belt. I decided I wasn’t that desperate . . . yet.
    The cab sped around the corner of West Broadway, and the gray lady sitting in the middle screeched, “Look out! Go left!”
    “Well, if you’d give me the eye, Tempest, I could see that!” the driver complained.
    Wait a minute. Give her the eye?
    I didn’t have time to ask questions because the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming delivery truck, ran over the curb with a jaw-rattling thump , and flew into the next block.
    “Wasp!” the third lady said to the driver. “Give me the girl’s coin! I want to bite it.”
    “You bit it last time, Anger!” said the driver, whose name must’ve been Wasp. “It’s my turn!”
    “Is not!” yelled the one called Anger.
    The middle one, Tempest, screamed, “Red light!”
    “Brake!” yelled Anger.
    Instead, Wasp floored the accelerator and rode up on the curb, screeching around another corner, and knocking over a newspaper box. She left my stomach somewhere back on Broome Street.
    “Excuse me,” I said. “But . . . can you see?”
    “No!” screamed Wasp from behind the wheel.
    “No!” screamed Tempest from the middle.
    “Of course!” screamed Anger by the shotgun window.
    I looked at Annabeth. “They’re blind?”
    “Not completely,” Annabeth said. “They have an eye.”
    “One eye?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Each?”
    “No. One eye total.”
    Next to me, Tyson groaned and grabbed the seat. “Not feeling so good.”
    “Oh, man,” I said, because I’d seen Tyson get carsick on school field trips and it was not something you wanted to be within fifty feet of. “Hang in there, big guy. Anybody got a garbage bag or something?”
    The three gray ladies were too busy squabbling to pay me any attention. I looked over at Annabeth, who was hanging on for dear life, and I gave her a why-did-you-do-this-to-me look.
    “Hey,” she said, “Gray Sisters Taxi is the fastest way to camp.”
    “Then why didn’t you take it from Virginia?”
    “That’s outside their service area,” she said, like that should be obvious. “They only serve Greater New York and surrounding communities.”
    “We’ve had famous people in this cab!” Anger exclaimed. “Jason! You remember him?”
    “Don’t remind me!” Wasp wailed. “And we didn’t have a cab back then, you old bat. That was three thousand years ago!”
    “Give me the tooth!” Anger tried to grab at Wasp’s mouth, but Wasp swatted her hand away.
    “Only if Tempest gives me the eye!”
    “No!” Tempest screeched. “You had it yesterday!”
    “But I’m driving, you old hag!”
    “Excuses! Turn! That was your turn!”
    Wasp swerved hard onto Delancey Street, squishing me between Tyson and the door. She punched the gas and we shot up the Williamsburg Bridge at seventy miles an hour.
    The three sisters were fighting for real now, slapping each other as Anger tried to grab at Wasp’s face and Wasp tried to grab at Tempest’s. With their hair flying and their mouths open, screaming at