Mr. Brunner was a middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had finding hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smell like coffee. "Definitely Chiron." everyone said, Percy and Grover confirmed it with a nod. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. "Games? In class?" said a disgusted Athena, Apollo rolled his eyes and ended up with a sword tip at his throat.
He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep. "SLEEP. IN. CLASS?!" Athena thundered (a/n I know that's zeuses thing but I'm running out of 'said loudly' options.) "THAT IS, EVEN MORE, DISGRACEFULL THAN GAMES AS SOON AS THIS IS OVER PERSEUS JACKSON I SHALL SMITE YOU AND ALL YOU LOVE AND YOU WILL BURN ETERNALLY IN HELL FOR SUCH A FOUL!" Annabeth looked ready to start raging at her mother but before she could Hades stepped in. "okay so, one, if you murder Percy, Poseidon, will hate you, there will be a war, all the gods will have to pick sides,, Zeus will probably be on your side, I'll have to pick sides, and I really don't want to annoy Zeus,' "wait, what?" "and b (yes Athena I did that just to annoy you) from what my son has told me, the majority of sleeping students is because inadequate teachers not bad students." silence "see? Everyone is shocked when a non-Athena person gives a good response!" fumed hazel. "I apologize Perseus my anger got the best of me.'' Katie cleared her throat and the reading continued.
I hope the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble. "You're Percy Jackson, good luck with that.'
Boy was I wrong. "Called it.'
See, lot of things happened to me on field trips. Like at my 5th-grade school, when we went to that Saratoga Battlefield, I had this accident with the Revolutionary War Cannon. "Well, at least you didn't hit the school bus or something." I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course, I got expelled anyway. "Oh gods no, my boyfriend thinks like prissy." and before that, at my fourth-grade school, we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, "haha, this can only go badly!" "shut up pinecone head. I sort of had the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim "oh gods, I can't breath!' gasped thalia rolling on the floor and laughing she wasnt the only one though. and the time before that... Well, you get the idea "nooooooooo," the Stolls wailed "Percy! We want to hear more!"
This trip, I was determined to be good. "Lame-o."
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, Grover groaned, "I hate her." the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich. Oh my gods, that is disgusting."
"You have no idea.'
Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. "Gee thanks perce.' grover said sarcastically, but he was grinning. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. "Way to not blow your cover goat boy." Grover grinned sheepishly (a/n yes that was intentionall.)
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death "WHAT!'' by in-school suspension "oh." if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip. "Nooooo, that's so boring."
"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled. 'Yes, do it!" ares and clarrise yelled
Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter." "in your hair?" "I was trying to calm him down."
He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.
"That's it." I started to get up, "YES!" but Grover pulled me back to my seat. 'nooo!'
"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."
Looking back on it, I wish I'd 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. "Foreshadow much?"
Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.
He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. 'Really old is an understatement.
It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years. "Oh way longer." "yea, I realize that now."
He gathered us around a thirteen-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 listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut 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 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. "Percy." "Yeees?" "was the nervous breakdown your fault?" "yeees." laughing all round
From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. "No that's nico."She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month. Nico and Hades both started to pale
One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right." "oh my gods, grover!"
Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, "I'm not telling what she said connor." Percy said before he could even start. and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"
It came out louder than I meant it to. "Damn you, Percy, you just lost me ten drachmas." thalia complained. "What can you even bet on there?" Percy asked. " well, I thought you would say it louder than you meant it to and everyone would hear it, and Thalia thought that only mrs. Dodds and Nancy would hear it." "oh.'
The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped 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?" all the gods flinched.
"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?" Zeus yelled in outrage. "Calm yourself brother I'm sure Chiron will correct him."
"God?" Mr. Brunner asked. "see?"
"Titan," I corrected myself. "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. Thalia and Jason started laughing, "either Kronos is really stupid, or zeus looks alot like a rock.' everyone, even the gods started to laugh. 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. "Try being there." demeter grumbled.
"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won." 'the war of a century in a sentance"
Some snickers from the 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."
"Busted," Grover muttered.
"Pinecone head, you think like goat boy."
"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair. "Is that possible?" mused Apollo.
At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears. "Naw, he's got horse 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, 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. "Do they ever not?" "no m'lady."
Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."
I knew that was coming.
I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward 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 everything. 'Probably have."
"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 accept only 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 had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. 'Even I can't do that." Annabeth said, everyone gave her a look "okay maybe greek but definitely not roman." But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C– in my life. "really? never?" "nope." No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected 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'd been at this girl's funeral. "Wait a second did the stele say παιδί του ήλιου?" asked Athena. ''Yeah, why?" "He was at her funeral."
