"Eros and I are betting 5 Poseidon" Psyche said and Eros nodded.
"2 on Aphrodite" Hephaestus said.
"Any more bets?" Hermes asked.
"Then all betting for Percy's parent is now closed" Apollo said.
"Now for a new update. 2 on Aphrodite. 3 on Apollo, Demeter, and Hephaestus. 5 on Dionysus, Hades, and Zeus. 6 on Athena. 10 on Ares, and 30 on Poseidon" Hermes read from a list he wrote as they were betted. Athena started reading again.
"This trip, I was determined to be good.
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich."
"Grover?" asked Zeus, who was very mad now.
"I'm sure it's not the same one" said Hera trying to calm him down, but in the background you could hear thunder.
"Athena keep reading" said Demeter also trying to calm down Zeus.
"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 (More thunder). 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 him fun when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.
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?" yelled Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes, Hestia, Demeter, Psyche and Aphrodite. Athena just kept reading.
"by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip."
"Well that not fun" said Hermes.
"No fun at all" said Apollo.
"Are they going to start fighting soon?" asked Ares. No one answered him.
"'I'm going to kill her,' I mumbled.
Grover tried to calm me down. 'It's okay. I like peanut butter.'
He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.
'That's it.' I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.
'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."
"Do it. Do it" Ares chanted.
"Shut up, Ares" Athena said then started reading again.
"Yes, Ares, do shut up" Aphrodite said.
"In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.
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.
It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years." Athena read.
"Its been much longer then that" said Zeus.
"Yes it has been" said Hestia, the oldest of the gods and goddess.
"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 side. 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 chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye."
"She was giving him 'the evil eye' because he was trying to learn" said Athena. The other gods and goddesses nodded in agreement with Athena, except Hades knowing who 'Mrs. Dodds' was.
"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 out of your locker."
"No ones meaner then me" Ares said.
"Ares, shut up" said Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Hestia, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Demeter, and Hades at the same time. Then Athena started to read again.
"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 I was devil spawn."
"HEY" Hades yelled, "He's not mine"