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I know what you're thinking. "Percy, how did you end up in this situation? You had it all under control." Yeah, Well I used to, until I met him.If you're thinking I'm talking about Luke Castellan and how he almost tried to kill me, then you are wrong.Anyways, this so-called situation isn't a necessarily bad one. It is how I found my soulmate (proved by Aphrodite matching our zodiac signs, moons aligning, well, you know what I mean, I won't go into further detail) and how we got together and other things that will happen. I think that I should start just about when we met, but that's not long of a story, so I'll be starting from when I found out I was a half-blood.Oh, I forget to mention I'm a half-blood, or half-god half-mortal. And I'm the son of Poseidon, one of the big three, which makes my life more dangerous than it would be if I wasn't. I would still be in danger, but not as much. I also never asked or wanted to be a half-blood, it just happened.Even though they aren't together, my parents love each other a lot. My mom is Sally Jackson, and she is by far the best person in the world to me. I also have a step-dad who is the worst and who my mom married when I was two to mask my scent from monsters. A while later she remarried to a nicer guy and then I got a half-sister but I can talk about them later.
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I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher Look, I never, ever wanted to be a half-blood.If you're reading this and you think you are one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mother or father told you about your birth and try and live a normal life.Being a half-blood is really dangerous. Like 75% death chance dangerous. Real brutal and nasty deaths.If your a normal kid, and reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this had ever happened.But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring up inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time until they sense it too, and they'll come for you.Don't say I didn't warn you.My name is Perseus Jackson. Or Percy for short.I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Accdemy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.Am I a troubled kid?Yeah. You could say that.I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things started getting really bad last May, when our sixth grade class took a field trip to Manhattan-twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at Ancient Greek and Roman stuff.I know-it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading the trip, so I had high hopes. Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had his awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.I hoped this trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.Boy, was I wrong.See, bad things always happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that...Well, you get the idea.This trip, I was determined to be good.All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, red headed kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Cittie in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.Cittie, short for Citrus, (yeah I know, who would name their kid after a fruit) was an easy target. She was...how do I put this without being rude...Well, she was a bit overweight and always got teased for it and was really shy except around me. She cried when she got frustrated or bullied. She must've been held back several grades, because she was the only sixth grade girl with acne and had already gotten her period. On top of all that, she was crippled. She had a note excusing her from PE for the rest of her life because she had some sort of muscular disease in her legs. She walked funny, like every step hurt her but don't let that fool you.You should've seen her run when it was pizza day in the cafeteria.Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in her curly dirty-blonde hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster threaten me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip."I'm really going to kill her this time," I mumbled.Cittie tried to calm me down. "It's okay, really. I like peanut butter. And ketchup. But not together in a sandwich. Nancy doesn't know good food at all." She stuck out her tongue and made a gagging sound which made me chuckle.She dodged another piece of Nancy's sandwich."That's it, I've had enough of her." I started to get up, but Cittie pulled me back into my seat."You're already on probation," She reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."Looking back on it, I wished I decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into. Mr. Brunner lead the museum tour. He rolled up in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, pass marble statues and glass cases full of really old black and orange pottery.Blew my mind that all the stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.He gathered us around a 13 foot tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to pay attention to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody kept talking around me, and everytime I told them to shut the fuck up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was like fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a literal Harley straight into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown. (And...um...after all this, Cittie told me it was her doing but that's for another time)From her first day here, Mrs. Dodds loves Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, Honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get an after-school detention for a month.One time, after she'd make me erase answers out of old math books until midnight, I told Cittie I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. She looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and whispered as loud as I could, "Will you shut the fuck up?"It came out louder than I meant it to.The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped telling his story."Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?""Yes," Mr. Brunner said, Obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because...""Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god and-""God?" Mr. Brunner asked."Titan," I corrected myself. "And...he didn't trust his kids, who were gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-""Eeew!" Said one of the girls behind me."and so there as this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."Some snickers fromthe group.Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'""And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?""Busted," Cittie muttered."Shut up crippy." Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red then her hair.At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who caught her saying or doing anything wrong. He had radar ears. I thought about his question and shrugged. "I don't know, sir." "I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon, who of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him into pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On the happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?" The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around like doofuses.Cittie and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr Jackson."I knew that was coming.I told Cittie to keep going. Then I turned towards Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go-intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen anything (which I called his "thousand year old" stare). "You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me."About the Titans?""About real life. And how your studies apply to it.""Oh.""What you learn from me." he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will only accept the best from you Percy Jackson."I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard. I mean sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who has ever lived, and their mother, and what God they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everyone else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and had never made above a C- in my life. No-he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he's been at this girl's funeral.He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I've seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been worried since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchable crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.Cittie and I sat at on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school-the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere. "Detention?" Cittie asked."Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wished he'd let off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not a genius."Cittie didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought she was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, she said, "Can I have your chips?"I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let her take them.I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of us with her ugly friends-I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dump her half-eaten lunch in Cittie's lap."Oops, Prissy." I hated that nickname. She called me it to bully me. Just because I was gay. I wish she'd get that there's nothing bad with being gay.She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if someone had spray-painted her her face with liquid Cheetos. I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain her clothes somehow steaming like she was being boiled, the water seeming to actually be boiling, screaming, "Percy pushed me!" Mrs Dodds materialized next to us. Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see-""-the water-""-like it grabbed her-"I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt as the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant for win her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-""I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."That wasn't the right thing to say."Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said."Wait!" Cittie yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."I stared at her, stunned. I couldn't believe she was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Cittie to death.She glared at him so hard her chin trembled."I don't think so, Miss Hayes," she said."But-""You-will-stay-here."Cittie looked at me desperately."It's okay, dude," I told her. "Thanks for trying."Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."Nancy Bobofit smirked. I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.How'd she get there so fast?I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece had fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was a part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.I wasn't so sure.I went after Mrs. Dodds.Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Cittie. She was looking pale, cutting her eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like she wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.Okay, I thought. She's bound to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.But apparently that wasn't the plan.I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.Except for us, the gallery was emptyMrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it..."You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am." She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you could get away with it?"The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.She's a teacher, I though nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.I said, "I'll-I'll try harder, ma'am."Thunder shook the building."We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."I didn't know what she was talking about.All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I've been selling out of my dorm 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."Well?" she demanded."Ma'am, I don't...""You're time is up," she hissed.Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into very sharp talons. Her leather jacket melted into large, leathery wings. I was right, she wasn't human. She was a shriveled old hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me into ribbons.Then things got even stranger.Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a moment before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand."What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.Mrs. Dodds lunges at me.With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it fell into my grasp, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword-not any sword, Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.Mrs. Dodds spun towards me with a murderous look in her eyes. My knees felt like jelly. My hands were shaking so much I almost dropped the sword.She snarled, "Die, honey!"And she flew straight at me.Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came to me naturally; I swung the sword.The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized right on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur, a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.I was alone.There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.Had I imagined the whole thing?I went back outside.It had started to rain.Cittie was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over her head, as if she were a afraid that if the water touched her, she would melt. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr beat your ass."I said, "Who?""Our teacher. Duh!"I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.She just rolled her eyes and turned away.I asked Cittie where Mrs. Dodds was.She asked, "Who?"But she paused first, and she wouldn't look at me, so I thought she was messing with me."Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious.Thunder boomed overhead.I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never move.I went over to him.He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it."Sir," I said, "Where's Mrs. Dodds?"He stared at me blankly. "Who?""The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."He frowned and say forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?"
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Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks Of Death I was used to the ocasional weird experience, but usually it was over quickly. This 24/7 hallucination was way more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing a stupid trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—A perky blonde woman whom I’d never seen in my life until she got onto our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would just stare at me like I was a psycho.It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.Almost.But Cittie couldn’t fool me. When I mentioned the name Mrs. Dodds to her, she would hesitate, then claim she never existed. But I knew she was lying.Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.I didn’t have much time to think about it during the day, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.The freak weather continued, which didn’t at all help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of our current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.I started feeling really cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the like millionth time why I wasn’t studying for spelling test, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn’t even completely sure what it meant, but it sounded good.The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.Fine, I told myself. Just fine.I was homesick.I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker games.And yet…there were things I’d miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I’d miss Cittie, who’d been a good friend, even if she was a little strange. I worried how she’d survive next year without me.I’d miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner’s crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for—at least, the best I could do. I hadn’t forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn’t sure why, but I started to believe him.The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. The words had started swimming off the pages, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to be able to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.My breathing became labored. Was this what having a panic attack felt like? All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry, cry until things got better. But of course, things wouldn’t ever get better. During my panic attack, I remembered Mr. Brunner’s serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.I took a deep breath to steady myself. I picked up the mythology book with shaky hands.I’d never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me a few pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fucking F I was going to score on his exam. I didn’t want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn’t tried.I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner’s door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.I was three steps away from the door handle when I heated voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Cittie’s said “…worried about Percy, sir.”I froze.I’m not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.I inched closer.“…alone this summer,” Cittie was saying. “I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too—““We would only make matters worse by rushing him,” Mr. Brunner said.“We need the boy to mature more.”“But he may not have time. The solstice deadline—““Will have to be resolved without him, Citrus. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can.”“Sir, he saw her…”“His imagination,” Mr. Brunner insistiese. “The Mist over the students and staff with be enough to convince him of that.”“Sir, I…I cant fail in my duties again.” Cittie’s voice was choked with emotion. “You know what that would mean.”“You haven’t failed, Citrus,” Mr. Brunner said kindly. “I should have seen her for what she was. Now let’s just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—“The mythology book dropped out of my hands and hit the floor with a solid thud.Mr. Brunner went completely silent.My heart was hammering against my chest. I picked up the book and backed down the hall.A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner’s office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheel-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer’s bow.I opened the nearest door and quietly slipped inside.A few seconds later, I heard a slow clop-clop-clop and the sound of metal hitting the ground, like footsteps, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. “Nothing,” He murmured.“My nerves haven’t been right since the winter solstice.”“Mine neither,” Cittie said. “But I could have sworn…”“Go back to the dorm,” Mr. Brunner told her. “You’ve got a long day of exams tomorrow.”“Don’t remind me.” Then I could hear the metal footsteps walking away, then turning back to normal, and in the direction of our dorm.The lights went out in Mr. Brunner’s office.I waited for what seemed like forever.Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back to the dorm.Cittie was lying on her bed, studying her Latin exam notes like she’d been there all night.“Hey,” She said, bleary-eyed. “You ready for this test?”I didn’t answer.“You look awful”. She frowned. “Is everything okay?”“Just…tired.”I turned so she couldn’t read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.I didn’t understand what I’d heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I’d imagined the whole thing.But one thing was clear: Cittie and Mr. Brunner we’re talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger. The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam (yes, it took that long), my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I’d misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.For a minute, I was worried he’d found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn’t seem to be the problem.“Percy.” He said. “Don’t be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It’s…it’s for the best.”His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing their tests could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.I mumbled, “Okay, sir.”“I mean…” Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “This isn’t the right place for you. It was only a matter of time.”My eyes stung.Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn’t handle it. After saying that he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.“Right,” I said, trembling. I’ve never felt this emotional. Maybe it was hormones and all that shit, but it really was freaking me the fuck out.“No, no.” Mr. Brunner said. “Oh, confound it all. What I’m trying to say…you’re not normal, Percy. That’s nothing to be—““Thanks.” I blurted. “Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me.““Percy—“But I was already gone.On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.They asked me asked me what I’d be doing this summer and I told them that I was going back to the city.What I didn’t tell them was that I’d have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I’d go to school the next fall.“Oh,” one of the guys said. “That’s cool.”They went back to their conversation like I never existed.The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Cittie, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to. She’d booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, heading into the city.During the whole bus ride, Cittie kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers like one of them was armed with a gun or something. It occurred to me, that every time we left Yancy, she was always nervous and fidgety, like something bad was about to happen. Before, I’d always assumed she was worried about getting teased, but everyone was minding their own business right now.Finally I couldn’t take it anymore.I said, “Looking for the Kindly Ones?”Cittie nearly jumped out of her seat. “Wha—what do you mean?”I confessed about eavesdropping on her and Mr. Bruner the night before the exam.Cittie’s eye twitched. “How much did you hear?”“Oh…not much. What’s the summer solstice deadline?”She winced. “Look, Perc…I was just worried for you, you see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers…”“Cittie—““And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and…”“Cittie, you’re a really, really bad liar.”Her ears turned pink.From her jean’s pocket, she fished out a grubby business card. “Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.”The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made something out like:Cittie HayesCamp GoddessHalf-Blood HillLong Island, New York(800) 008-0009 “What’s Half—““Don’t say it aloud!” she yelped. “That’s my, um…summer address.”My heart sank. Cittie had a summer home. I’d never considered that her family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.“Okay.” I said glumly. “So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion.”She nodded. “Or…or if you need me.”“Why would I need you?”It came out harsher than I had intended it to.Cittie blushed right down to her collarbone.“Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kinda have to protect you.”I stared at her.All year long, I’d gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from her. I’d lost sleep worrying that she’d get beaten up next year without me. And here she was acting like she was the one who defended me.“Cittie,” I said. “what exactly are you protecting me from?”There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the road.After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we’d all have to get off. Cittie and I filed outside with everybody else.We were on a stretch of country road—no place you’d notice if you didn’t break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of bloodred cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I’d ever seen.I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.I looked over at Cittie to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from her face. Her nose was twitching.“Cittie?” I said. “Hey, man—”“Tell me they’re not looking at you. They are, aren’t they?”“Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?”“Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all.”The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Cittie catch her breath.We’re getting on the bus,” he told me. “Come on.”“What?” I said. “It’s a thousand degrees in there.”“Come on!” He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.The passengers cheered.“Darn right!” yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. “Everybody back on board!”Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I’d caught the flu. Cittie didn’t look much better. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering.“Cittie?”“Yeah?”“What are you not telling me?”She dabbed his forehead with her shirt sleeve.“Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?”“You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They’re not like…Mrs. Dodds, are they?”Her expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. She said, “Just tell me what you saw.”“The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn.”She closed her eyes and made a gesture with her fingers that might’ve been crossing himself, but it wasn’t. It was something else, something almost— older.She said, “You saw her snip the cord.”“Yeah. So?” But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.“This is not happening,” Cittie mumbled. She started chewing at her thumb.“I don’t want this to be like the last time.”“What last time?”“Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth.”“Cittie,” I said, because she was really starting to scare me. “What are you talking about?”“Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me.”This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised she could.“Is this like a superstition or something?” I asked.No answer.“Cittie—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?”She looked at me mournfully, like she was already picking the kind of flowers I’d like best on my coffin.