Bolt: Chichi, do you know what this is?

ChiChi: You're going to tell me.

Bolt: It's our FIRST FANFIC! Yay! As such, please do not flame. All flames will be given to our favorite pyromaniac with your name and address.

ChiChi: By the way, we don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. If we did, the world would be in great peril.

I hated school.

Bad enough that teachers automatically decided I was cheating when I got a good grade on a test. Bad enough that I couldn't raise my hand without them shooting me dirty looks. Bad enough that I had absolutely no friends.

And that was before my cousin started going crazy.

Let me back up a bit.

My cousin and I went to Yancy Academy. It was a snobby, private school in upstate New York for 'difficult' children with rich parents. We both fit into the difficult standard, but our parents were most definitely not rich.

Well, his parent. Singular. During the holidays, we both lived in New York City with his mom, who was my aunt, and her husband, who was a jerk. But he made enough money to send us to schools like Yancy, while Aunt Sally struggled to make ends meet for herself.

Why did we have to go to private school? Like I said, we're difficult. Neither of us had lasted more than a year in one school. We always got kicked out by June, for different reasons. In fact, Percy and I had become sort of infamous in the New York private school system. Percy and Quinn Jackson, the bane of teachers everywhere.

Percy is actually pretty smart, and teachers try to encourage him sometimes. But he's dyslexic, and ADHD, so they eventually get frustrated and give up on him. He's also kind of accident-prone. For some reason things always seem to blow up around him. Literally. One time he exploded our school bus by accidentally shooting a cannonball at it.

And me? I'm not dyslexic, or ADHD, and I don't blow up school busses. But there's something strange about me. I don't know what. But whenever I got a good grade, teachers would suspect that I'd cheated, not believing me when I explained how hard I'd studied for the test. Whenever anything went wrong, I was the one who was blamed. Percy said that there was something about my eyes, dark and almond-shaped, that made me look like a troublemaker. But teachers didn't care. They always found some trivial reason to expel me in the end.

That's why I was so happy on our field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. School was almost over, and we'd both managed to avoid expulsion…so far. Percy wasn't as optimistic.

"Come on!" I smiled at him as we sat on the edge of the fountain in front of the museum with his friend Grover. Technically Grover was my friend too, but I always got the feeling that he didn't like me that much. He always cringed whenever I went near him.

"We've almost made it, Percy!" I encouraged him, pulling at my dumb Yancy uniform skirt. "One more month and we've lasted the whole school year!"

"Easy for you to say, Quinn" Percy muttered, running his fingers through his shaggy black hair. "You've got two teachers that like you."

I shook my head. "Uh-uh. Bruner doesn't like me nearly as much as he likes you." Our Latin teacher, who was currently sitting in his wheelchair by a table, reading a book, did like Percy a lot. He was nice to me, too, but I could always see some of the instinctive mistrust teachers have for me in his eyes.

It was weird, I decided, that the only teacher who actually liked me was the one I couldn't stand. Mrs. Dodds, our pre-algebra teacher, was butt-ugly and totally nasty to everyone except for me. For some reason she thought that I was a perfect angel and that Percy was devil spawn.

Percy sighed. "I wish Bruner would stop putting so much pressure on me," he grumbled. "I mean, I'm not a genius."

I glanced at Grover, who was oddly quiet. I mean, he's a quiet guy in general, but now he seemed especially silent. Then he glanced at Percy and said, "Can I have your apple?" My cousin shot the other boy an exasperated look before nodding.

I heard a whine coming from my feet. I glanced down to see a large black and tan face staring back at me, obviously looking for a scratch behind the ears. I willingly complied, and his tail thumped happily against the ground.

"See, Percy?" I smiled. "Pinkie believes in you." Pinkie barked in agreement, and Percy smiled a little.

Pinkie followed me everywhere, which was a little weird, because I'd seen girls at Yancy get in trouble for hiding a Chihuahua in their rooms. But Pinkie was a 110 pound German Shepard, and for some reason no one said anything about him. He'd been following me around ever since we got him when I was six. Literally. If I walked out of the room, Pinkie followed me. I don't think he'd let me out of sight once in his life, except when I shut him out of the bathroom. And even then, he'd lay down right in front of the door. But most people just acted as if he wasn't even there.

"Nice going back there, dyslexia!" I groaned and turned to see Nancy stalking towards us, a smirk on her fat, freckled face. She was talking about how Percy had blanked on a question Bruner had asked him in the museum.

"It's called dyslexic." Percy snapped. "And I'd rather be here for trouble with reading than because I'm a chronic shoplifter, klepto-girl."

She just smirked wider, flipping her red hair over her shoulder. "I steal things because I like to. Do you like having mush for brains?"

Percy jumped up, his hands balling into fists.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Grover cried, standing up and trying to force his way between Percy and the redhead. "Let's just calm down!"

"Percy…" I warned, standing up as well. The principal had specifically told him that if he got in any trouble during this trip he'd make sure he was expelled. Pinkie growled.

For a second, I thought Percy was going to sit down, but then Nancy started talking again. "Face it reject." She rolled her eyes and sneered. "You'll always be a loser."

I didn't really see what happened next. But something must have, because there was a big splash, and then Nancy was sitting in the fountain, wailing, "Percy pushed me!"

"I did not!" he yelled. "You must have tripped or something- "

But it was too late, because just then a voice that grated like metal yelled, "Percy Jackson!"

We all turned to see Mrs. Dodds stalking towards us, a scowl on her wrinkled, century-old face. "I want to talk to you right now!"

"It was me!" Grover suddenly yelped, which surprised me, because he was terrified of Mrs. Dodds. "I pushed her- " And that I doubted, because for one thing, his voice was trembling like mad, and for another, Grover was Mr. Uber-pacifist.

"Enough, Mr. Underwood!" Mrs. Dodds snapped at him. "Now, Mr. Jackson!"

"Hey, nice try G-man," Percy sighed, his shoulders slumping as he turned and trudged after Mrs. Dodds, who was leading him back into the building. Grover whimpered as they left, for some reason staring at Mr. Bruner.

I sat back down at the fountain and sighed. Grover did too, although he still seemed anxious. For a while, nothing happened. All around us, spoiled rich juvenile delinquents laughed and pickpocketed random tourists. I ate my lunch. Mr. Bruner closed his book and went inside. Pinkie yawned and went to sleep.

Then suddenly, I got one of my headaches. "Argh…" I moaned, clapping my hands onto my head as the buzzing in my ears started. This was common for me; the doctor had diagnosed me with having chronic migraines. Usually this was just a low-grade pressure around my forehead and a small buzzing in my ears. But this one was killer. Grover suddenly froze, his eyebrows furrowed like he was in deep concentration.

Then my headache was gone. Or, at least, back to normal. I sat up, and Grover turned to me. I glanced at him, surprised. He usually tried to avoid speaking to me as much as possible.

"Listen Quinn," he said, and his voice was strangely urgent. "Mrs. Dodds never existed."

I stared. "What?"

"When Percy comes out, he'll ask about Mrs. Dodds. No one will know who he's talking about. Pretend that you don't either. For as long as he keeps asking. She. Never. Existed." He placed uncharacteristic emphasis on the last three words.

I hesitated, unsure of what to do. But just then, Percy came out of the building, followed by Mr. Bruner. Mrs. Dodds wasn't with them. I saw Nancy say something to Percy, which seemed to confuse him. On impulse, I decided to do what Grover had said.

Percy walked straight up to us. "Where's Mrs. Dodds?" he asked me.

"Who?" I glanced up at him and brushed my brown bangs out of my eyes. I kept my brow furrowed and my voice questioning. I always was a good liar.

Percy stared at me for a moment, like he was trying to detect a falsehood in my face. But then he turned to Grover. "Grover, where's Mrs. Dodds? Our pre-algebra teacher?"

Unfortunately, Grover wasn't as good a liar as me. He hesitated for a split second before asking, "Percy, what are you talking about?" And he wouldn't look Percy in the eye, which made me want to sigh. He'd give the game away. As Percy glared at us once more and turned to go question other Yancy kids, I leaned over to Grover and whispered, "You owe me." He just cringed again.

"I wonder where Mrs. Dodds went."

I suppressed an urge to roll my eyes at the ceiling. In the week since our field trip, Percy had taken to springing the question on random people at random times.

Instead, I sighed and flipped onto my stomach, staring over his pillow at him. "Percy, how long are you going to keep this up?" I asked, making my voice sound concerned. "Did you hit your head or something when you went back into the museum?"

"No, I…" He hesitated, and then shook his head. "If I told you what actually happened, you'd think I was insane."

"I already do." Pinkie barked agreement.

Percy shrugged. "Alright then, nothing left to lose. Mrs. Dodds started yelling at me and turned into a crazy bat lady, then Mr. Bruner threw me a pen that became a sword, and I sliced Mrs. Dodds in half and she exploded."

I stared at him. "You are crazy." This time, I wasn't lying.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, so everyone tells me." Just then, Grover walked in.

Percy immediately turned to face the taller boy. "Grover, was there ever a Mrs. Dodds?"

As usual, Grover hesitated for an instant before saying, "Percy, you really need to stop playing this game." Quite honestly, I was pretty sure that it was Grover's fault Percy hadn't given up yet.

Grover glanced at me and cringed, as usual. "Uh, Quinn…"

I sighed and slid off of Percy's bed. "Yeah, yeah, I know, it's after curfew, I'll get killed if they find me in the boy's dormitory, yada yada yada…" I gave Percy a quick hug and then waved to Grover before leaving, Pinkie close on my heels.

As I thought about it that night though, lying in my bed while my roommate's snores filled our dorm, I wondered why Grover had started this game in the first place. Really, to me, it was just a game. I didn't see any point in lying to Percy.

But what was really strange was that everyone else seemed to be in on it too. I'd seen Percy ask other people about Mrs. Dodds, and none of them knew who he was talking about. We had a new pre-algebra teacher, and people just acted like she'd been here forever.

It was all very strange, I decided as I fell asleep.

If only I'd known exactly how strange things were going to get…