A/N: Please R&R guys! PLEASE! AND BRYAN BURKHAM YOU WILL READ THIS

I ran up to him, my best friend in the whole wide world, Percy Jackson, and stuck my tongue out at him. We were both twelve at that time. Our sixth-grade class was taking a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I know—sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so we both had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he was. He was also the only teacher that didn't put Percy to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once we wouldn't get in trouble, Percy and I.

See, bad things happen to us (mainly Percy) on field trips. Like at our fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, he had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. He supposedly wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course we got expelled anyway (I usually got dragged into it whether it included me or not, just because they saw us as siblings, even though we weren't). And before that, at our fourth-grade school, when we all took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, the idiot hit a lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. I was mad at him for months after that. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea. Bad things tend to happen.

Nancy Bobofit, a freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, kept on hitting Percy's new (since he only met him that year) best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of gross sandwich. He was an easy target. He was scrawny; he cried when he got frustrated. He was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin; frankly, I found it kind of creepy. On top of that, he was a cripple. He had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but you should'a seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew Percy and I couldn't do anything back to her because we were both already on probation (for what is a whole 'nother story; all I can say is that the girl deserved it 'cause she was a jerk). The headmaster had threatened us both with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened this time.

"I'm going to kill her," Percy mumbled.

"Can I help?" I asked hopefully.

"Be my guest."

Grover tried to calm us down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

He dodged another piece.

"That's it." Percy started to get up, but Grover pulled him back to the seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminded Percy. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

"Yeah. Both of us. But still. Can I just smash her skull in a little?" I asked.

They both looked at me like I was insane. "No," they said at the same time. I rolled my eyes.

Later in the day, when we got there, we found out that Mr. Brunner was leading the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old pottery.

I could just tell from one look at his face that it blew Percy's mind that this stuff had survived for thousands of years. I shook my head and rolled my eyes at him.

Mr. Brunner gathered us around a 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. Percy was zoning out because of everyone talking, but when either him or me tried to shut 'em up, Mrs. Dodds glared at us. For some reason, she really unsettled Percy, but not as much as she unsettled Grover; the dude was freaking scared of a cat, let alone a scary teacher.

You see, Mrs. Dodds was this 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 Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured Percy and I were both devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at us and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew we were going to get after-school detention for at least a month.

One time, after she'd made Percy erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, he told Grover and I that he didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at Percy like he was really serious and said, "You're absolutely right." And I said, "She's creepy." Yup. I know. So insightful.

Back at the museum, Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and Percy, sick of it, turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

I have a feeling he didn't mean it to come out that loud.

The whole group laughed at him and Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

His face was red as a tomatoe. He said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele we were then looking at. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

He looked at the carving. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, pretty obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because..."

"Well... Kronos was the king god, and—"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan. And...he didn't trust his kids, who were the 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 us. I looked at her and gave her the evil eye and she quieted up fast.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans, and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind us, Nancy 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," Grover muttered. I smirked at Nancy.

"Shut up," she hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had freaking radar ears... Unfortuantely, that meant that I got caught most of the time, too.

Percy shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed for some reason. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, 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 to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that 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 and acting like doofuses ('cause they were).

All of us were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson, Miss Angelos."

I knew that was coming, as I'm sure Percy did, too.

Percy told Grover to keep going. Then we both turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?" Percy asked.

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 everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told us.

"About the Titans?" Percy asked.

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh," I said. Well that's no fun.

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson. And the same to you, Jessicah Angelos."

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed us 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 had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected both of us to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that we both have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I know for a fact that Percy had never made above a C- in his life (okay, I had, but that was because I'm awesome).

No—he didn't expect us to be as good; he expected us both to be better than the others. And neither of us could just learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

Percy mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told us to go outside and eat our lunches.

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'd ever seen over the city. I figured Percy had this stupid idea that maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas (and he could just be a dope like that sometimes). We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, and wildfires from lightning strikes. I actually wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else besides Percy and I seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Us three sat 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 (even though we were).

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," Percy said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me and Jess sometimes. I mean—we're not geniouses."

"Speak for yourself. I mean, about the genious thing," I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

Percy glared at me. "Smart alec."

"Idiot."

"Jerk."

"Moron."

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give Percy some deep philosophical comment to make him feel better, like he usually does, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

Percy didn't look very hungry any more and let him take it.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a book. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table. I tried hard to keep in my laughs from that.

Percy was about to unwrap his sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of us with her stupid goons (they said they were her friend, but I didn't believe them, so I called them goons)—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at Percy and I with her crooked teeth, trying to provoke us. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I could just tell that Percy was tring to keep his cool, as was I. The school counselor had told us a million times (or more), "Count to ten, get control of your temper." It wasn't working for me.

Next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy and Jessicah pushed me!" I didn't even remember touching her.

Mrs. Dodds suddenly materialized next to us.

I could hear some of the kids whispering: "Did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that we were in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on us. There was triumphant fire in her eyes, as if we'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"

"I know," Percy grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say, the idiot.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her. Not them."

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for us. What the heck? Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But—"

"You—will—stay—here."

Grover looked at Percy desperately.

"It's okay, man," he told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Honeys," Mrs. Dodds barked at us. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

Percy gave her his deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare; I gave her one look that said You're Dead. Then we 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 for us 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 fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me and Percy this was part of the ADHD, our brains misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure that's what it was.

We went after Mrs. Dodds. Halfway up the steps, Percy glanced back at Grover. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. She's going to make us buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.

Apparently not. We followed her deeper into the museum. When we finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. 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.

Percy, of course, did the safe thing. He said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt us.

He said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Percy Jackson, Jessicah Angelos," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you two will suffer less pain."

"What?" I asked, totally confused.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

I didn't know what she was talking about at all. All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy we'd been selling out of the dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized Percy and I got our essays on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away our grades. Or worse, they were going to make us read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't..." Percy started.

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

I screamed and hid behind Percy. What? Why am I hiding behind him? Why do I feel like he can protect me from this...this thing.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute 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 lunged at us.

Percy yelped and dodged, taking me with him; I felt talons slash the air next to my ear. Percy snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit his hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spun toward us with a murderous look in her eyes. She snarled, "Die, honey!"

And flew straight at us.

Absolute terror ran through my body, and I screamed again.

Then a 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 on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching us. Percy was holding a sword, the one that made Mrs. Dodds into a stinking beach with no water.

Then we were alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in Percy's hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but us.

My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

"W-what just happened?" I asked Percy shakily.

No answer. He was staring at the pen.

"P-Percy?"

He turned to me. "Hm?"

"I'm scared."

His eyes softened and he pretended not to be freaked out for a moment, for my sake. He went over and hugged me. "It's okay now. She's gone." He was trying to comfort me.

I hugged him back and cried into his shirt for a moment, then sucked it up and stopped. I got my face out of his shirt so it could dry before we went back out. "Thanks, Perce." (A/N: She calls him this a lot, actually. It's not a typo; she calls him Perce for a nickname instead of Percy, even though Percy is already a nickname.)

"No problem, Jess," he said, smoothing out my hair and wiping the tears from my eyes, just like a big brother would do.

I smiled at the thought of him being my brother and went back outside with him once his shirt was dried and no traces of me crying were left behind.

It had started to rain. So letting his shirt dry was basically useless.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw us, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butts."

Percy said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. Percy asked Nancy what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

Percy then asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at either of us, so I thought he was messing with us.

"Not funny," I told him. "This is serious. She's freaking me out. I gotta know where she is, Grover."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved. We 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. And Miss Angelos, why do you follow him everywhere? You know what, nevermind. I've decided I don't really want to know."

Percy handed Mr. Brunner his pen, as if he hadn't even noticed it was still in his hand.

"Sir," Percy said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

Brunner stared at him blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher," I tried to clarify.

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, Jessicah, 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 all right?"