No!" Amy said. "Dan, you're lucky it was only concussive. You could've wiped out the whole Holt family." "And that would've been bad because...?

You never know!” Neith snapped. “The point is, I’ll survive the apocalypse. I can live off the land!” She jabbed a finger at me. “Did you know the palm tree has six different edible parts?” “Um—” “And I’ll never be bored,” Neith continued, “since I’m also the goddess of weaving. I have enough twine for a millennium of macramé!” I had no reply, as I wasn’t sure what macramé was.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

Frank imitated the voice of Vitellius: 'They're wimps! Back in my day, we died all the time, and we liked it!

It was if the city knew about Percy's dream of Gaea. It knew that the earth goddess intended on razing all human civilization, and this city, which had stood for thousands if years, was saying back at her: You wanna dissolve this city, Dirt Face? Give it a shot. In other words, it was the Coach Hedge of mortal cities- only taller.

A guy in Greek armor drew his sword and charged, but slipped in a puddle of pina colada.

It wasn't exactly like talking, but it went something like this: Could you give us a ride north, Percy asked, like as close to Portland as possible? Eat seals, the whale responded. Are you seals? No, Percy admitted. I've got a man satchel full of macrobiotic beef jerky, though. The whale shuddered. Promise not to feed me this, and I will take you north. Deal.