The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan Page B

bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. I strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, I will not go into that. I won’t.
    Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse’s grip on my hair loosened. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.
    I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt. The water stayed on her like the spray from a fire hose, pushing her backward into a shower stall.
    She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her. But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.
    As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water shut off as quickly as it had started.
    The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn’t been spared. She was dripping wet, but she hadn’t been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly the same place, staring at me in shock.
    I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn’t have one drop of water on my clothes. Nothing.
    I stood up, my legs shaky.
    Annabeth said, “How did you . . .”
    “I don’t know.”
    We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse’s hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred. “You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead.”
    I probably should have let it go, but I said, “You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth.”
    Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.
    Annabeth stared at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.
    “What?” I demanded. “What are you thinking?”
    “I’m thinking,” she said, “that I want you on my team for capture the flag.”

MY DINNER GOES UP IN SMOKE
    Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.
    She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn’t get to the top fast enough.
    Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.
    “I’ve got training to do,” Annabeth said flatly. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall.”
    “Annabeth, I’m sorry about the toilets.”
    “Whatever.”
    “It wasn’t my fault.”
    She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I’d made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn’t understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.
    “You need to talk to the Oracle,” Annabeth said.
    “Who?”
    “Not who. What. The Oracle. I’ll ask Chiron.”
    I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.
    I wasn’t expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage