Collab. With flyleafandvampires8 (: I don't own anything, except Anna.
Anna's POV
I'm trying to focus. I swearI'm trying to focus. But math class and an extremely ADHD Anna do notmix well. Ms. Carver did have my attention at the beginning of class, but then she started to drone on and on about monomials and polynomials and how 'It's all review, children, you should know this by 9th grade!' I don't know about everyone else, but it makes me want to slap her when she drawls out the word 'children' so condescendingly.
Besides, this room is full of distractions. I was at one of the best schools in New York City, but it wasn't easy to forget that it was a school for kids with 'issues'. I'd never stayed in the same school for over a year, and between my dyslexia and ADHD, I definitely fit into that category. The kid next to me was drumming on his desk with two pencils, and the fluorescent light above me kept flickering on and off like it couldn't decide whether or not to just die already. Plus I was sitting right by the window, and I could see the blue sky reflecting off the glittering lake outside, and the beautiful leaves, changing color for fall.
"... plus 3x-2 equals...?"
It was a simple problem, and almost everyone's hand shot up. I, of course, genius I am, had not been listening.
So, as my luck would have it, Ms. Carver's beady eyes searched the room for the one hand that wasn't up. Mine.
"Ms. Jackson? Surely you know the answer to such an easy review problem?" She smirked. It was no secret that she hated me.
I glanced to the board where she had copied the problem for us, but it might as well have been written in Greek. Hahaha, I take that back, a mortalwould've thought it was written in Greek. It would've been easier for me to solve if it had.
"We're waiting, Anna." I jumped off of my randomly winding train of thought.
"Umm, I'm guessing it's not 42, right?" 42 was my go-to answer.
"Thank you, Ms. Jackson, for eliminating one of our millions of incorrect answers. Perhaps someone else was paying attention."
I spent a few minutes daydreaming of a minotaur ripping her head off, and then I felt better. Sadly, I was used to it. Teachers usually disliked me from the start.
I found myself drifting through my thoughts again, never learning the whole 'pay attention to the teacher' lesson. I absentmindedly sketched on the paper I was supposed to be working on, not sure of the design I was going for. Personally, I think that's how the best art starts- no planning, just free imagination.
I glanced at my paper.
Okay, so maybe free imagination with no boundaries was notalways a good thing.
The eyes staring up at me from the paper were disturbing at the least. And so was the diagram of the school next to it. The way I had drawn it, so detailed... but a whole floor was missing. Like a bomb had just come in and BOOM! Gone. The rest of the school completely untouched.
Now, before you think I'm a melodramatic freak, let me explain a thing or two. I've always loved art. Always. It's an escape from reality for me. I carry a sketchbook around at all times. Now, my mom thought it was amazing that I had such natural talent, although she claims I had to have inherited some of my skill from her. By the time I was six, she started to notice a strange pattern about my work, though. I drew places I had never been, never heard of, so well that people thought it was a photograph. From the crooked trees to the hot dog stands on the street corners. Not only this, but in every picture, something awful was happening. The first picture I drew like this was when I was four. Simple finger painting, but I drew a ten car pile-up in Los Angeles. We heard about it on the news the next day. My mom, trying to mask her horror at my 'talent' had asked what the little squiggles coming from the cars were.
"What are they, honey, smoke?"
"No, silly, the bodies are in the cars, those are the souls."
"Why are there so many souls, then?"
"Because, everyone went to heaven."
There were no survivors of that crash, none in all ten cars.
37 people, dead. More than half younger than 30. Since then, my mom told me not to show my 'special drawings' to anyone but her, or my twin brother, Percy.
So, basically, my art predicts tragedy. And I had just drawn a pair of monster eyes with a third of my school gone. And we're not talking your average high school, this was a 6-12th grade school, there were probably 600 people on the third floor.
Oh, Hades.
I'm, one of those 600.
I pulled out my emergency phone, getting ready to text Percy. I jumped as high as I could in a regulation school desk as thunder boomed outside.
Wait.
Thunder?
When I looked outside 10 minutes ago there wasn't a single cloud outside. Now there was a full blown storm, the type that could cause flooding.
Of course, I was the only one who found this odd.
I sighed mentally. It would be much harder to evacuate the school during a storm. The responsibility of being a demigod.
I glanced back outside, expecting to see nothing through the rain pelting the pavement, but instead, my sea-green eyes meet a pair of laughing, cruel ones on the other side of the glass, which registered in some part of my always-active brain as impossible, since I was on the third floor.
But these were the eyes from my picture.
I shrieked.
"Andromeda Jackson, are youtexting! I don't suppose you could explain why you're choosing to spend your time texting when you have a blank worksheet in front of you."
I automatically fell into the usual routine, trying to keep this as normal as possible. Distraction and drama.
"WELL, Ms. Carver, I'm actually very glad you asked. You see, I was working on this lovely assignment when all of a sudden, BOOM!, thunder claps through the sky. I must've jumped a mile. You see, I wasn't exactly expecting such awful weather. So, anyways, I jumped, right? And my pencil falls out of my hand and rolls across the floor. I know, it's horrible. And, you see, Percy accidentally put my pencil case in his backpack this morning, so I don't have an extra. I was trying to get his attention without disturbing the class, but he was working very hard on this, so I was forced to text him about the importance of supplying me with a writing instrument. But, I see I've interrupted the class despite my efforts. I am very sorry."
All of my teachers had learned by the third day of school not to ask me why I'm late for class. It usually takes a half hour explanation with the occasional catastrophe/explosion. The class usually loved these stories, though, and while Ms. Carver looked not-very-pleased, most of my classmates were trying to suppress their laughter.
"And, I suppose the whole time you were thinking through this plan, it didn't occur to you to get up and pick up the pencil?"
"No, ma'am. My mom says that I think outside the box."
Now I was pretty sure I could hear the entire class laughing.
"Ms. Jackson, I do nottolerate this behavior from a student-"
She was cut off by someone clearing their throat in the back of the room.
"Excuse me, Ms. Carver, but I think I'll take it from here."
I guess I kinda forgot that the vice principal was sitting in on our lesson.
"Ms. Jackson, Mr. Jackson, come with me, please."
"Mr. Melano, I'm sorry, but why do you need Percy?"
"Oh, this will be easier on all of you if you let them come quietly."
He was staring straight into Ms. Carver's eyes. I watched her gaze go out of focus. 'Let them come quietly?' Little alarm bells were ringing in my head. This did notsound good.
"Well... yes, I suppose... I suppose it won't be a problem, now will it? Go on, you two."
As we followed Mr. Melano, I locked eyes with Percy across the room, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.
Monster
R&R, no flames, pleaseee (:
