I was used to having a weird experience from time to time, but they usually ended quickly. But this permanent hallucination, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, was unbearable. For the rest of the school year, I had the impression that everyone at the boarding school was pulling our leg. The students all behaved as if they were absolutely convinced that Mrs. Kerr - a vivacious young blonde woman I'd never seen before she boarded our school bus at the end of the field trip - had been our math teacher since Christmas.

Sometimes, Percy would hint that he was betraying the prank we were undergoing, but in the end he looked at him as if he were crazy.

I almost came to believe that Dodds didn't exist.

Almost.

Grover could fool us. Every time we mentioned Mrs. Dodds, he'd hesitate and then say she didn't exist. But we both knew he was lying.

Something was going on. Something had happened in the museum.

I didn't have time to think about it during the day, but at night Mrs Dodds haunted my nightmares with wings and claws.

The weather continued to go haywire, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm shattered my window panes. I already had a phobia of lightning and thunderstorms, so I was really scared.

A few days later, the strongest tornado ever recorded in the Hudson Valley passed within eighty kilo meters of Yancy. Among other topical phenomena, we had studied in class the unusual number of small planes that had crashed into the Atlantic in a sudden gust of wind during the year.

My notes have remained more or less the same.

As for Percy, he wasn't so lucky: his grades went from D to F, and he was more often than not thrown out of class.

Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked him for the millionth time why he was too lazy to study spelling tests, he cracked. And called him an old sot . The following week he received a letter from Yancy saying he wouldn't be taking him on for the following really made me sad to think that Percy wouldn't be here next year.

I tried to reassure her, but I felt it wasn't working.

The end-of-year exam week was approaching, so I spent my time revising, I concentrated on my Latin subject for some reason it seemed important, after hours of revision I went for a walk, most of the teachers' desks were empty but there was one that lit up dimly that of Mr. Brunner, I approached and saw Percy listening at the door, he was holding his mythology book in his hand.

"What are you doing here" I whispered to him.

He put his finger in front of his mouth to tell me to be quiet and gave me a "listen" sign in the direction of the door. Of course I listened.

"Alone this summer," Grover said.

"I mean, a Kindly One in school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too..."

"We'd only be making things worse by rushing them," said Brunner." These kids need to mature more. "

"But they may not have the time. The summer solstice deadline..."

"Will have to be resolved without them, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can. "

"But they've seen her, sir..."

"Their imaginations," insisted Mr. Brunner. The Mist on the students and teachers will be enough to convince him of that. "

After a moment Grover spoke again.

"K.C, do you really think she's..."

He was talking about me now, really now it was getting interesting.

"I don't know Grover but we've been living in troubled times for the last few years, anything becomes possible, "he replied.

"Sir, I...I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean. "

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said gently.

"I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's get on with keeping Percy and Kassi alive until next fall..."

The mythology book fell from Percy's hands and hit the floor with a thud.

Mr. Brunner fell silent.

My heart was beating a thousand miles an hour. Suddenly Percy picked up his book and took my hand in his, and we stepped back. A shadow passed in front of the glass panel of Brunner's Office door. The shadow of a creature much larger than my wheelchair-bound teacher. Holding in his hands what looked suspiciously like a bow.

He opened the first door and we slipped into the room.

A few seconds later I heard a slow w clop-clop-clop and the sound of an animal snorting like...a horse? There was a tall, dark shape that stopped in front of the glass panel, then moved away.

Somewhere in the corridor Mr. Brunner spoke up.

"Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither," replied Grover. But I could have sworn...

"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day ofexams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The light went out in the teacher's office and Percy and I waited in the dark for like forever after a long while I realized, I was still holding his hand a little awkwardly I asked him to let go of me which he did instantly, awkward really. Finally we slipped out into the corridor and without a word headed for our dormitories.

One thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me and Percy behind our backs. They thought we were in danger.

The next afternoon, as Percy and I left the three-hour Latin exam, I felt rather proud of myself, as I felt I had done a good job. However, I couldn't say the same for Percy. Even to this day, he still seemed to have all the Greek and Roman names he'd misspelled in his head. Then Mr. Brunner called Percy back inside. For a moment, I was afraid he'd discovered our eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Go ahead," I said, "I'll wait for you outside."

He gave me a smile and said:

"ok"

I waited for him in the hallway to go to lunch.

"Thank you," I heard Percy croak from inside the classroom. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me"

"Percy... "to call Mr. Brunner but he had already left.

I glared at our teacher with the angriest look I had in stock and ran after Percy. (I never thought I'd look at a teacher like that one day).

On the last day of term, I put my clothes in my suitcase and I can say it was the heaviest suitcase in history, my things had been brought to me by my uncle's men and now I realized how heavy it was.

Luckily I met Percy on the stairs and he helped me get my suitcase down.

"So anything planned this summer," I asked him as we descended.

He shrugged. "New York and odd jobs like dog walking or selling magazine subscriptions."

With most people, Percy would be ashamed to say this, it had to be said Yancy's students were troublemakers, but also star kids, executives, ambassadors, like me, they were rich. Percy in all this could be described as nothing, but note that the difference here was that I was Percy's rich best friend.

"What about you?" he asked.

"I'll probably accept one of the three thousand activities my uncle offers me, have you ever tried dancing, or even violin? The greatest tortures of my life Percy."

"You really make it sound like you're tortured every summer," says Percy.

"Not every summer karate was cool but..."

"But..."

I tell him, "Last year he sent me to piano lessons, you should have seen the huge wart on the lady's nose."

We looked at each other and for no reason at all laughed as we went on our way. We met Grover.

"Hi guys." Grover greeted.

Percy and I said. "Hey!"

"Let's get going. We wouldn't want to keep the bus waiting."

Percy turned to me. "Wait, I thought your uncle was picking you up? I sighed.

"He was supposed to, but he got called in for a board meeting. I have to take the bus to Manhattan, where our driver will pick me up, to take me home."

I had booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same route Percy and Grover had, so we were together again. The whole bus ride I sat behind Percy and Grover, and I couldn't help noticing that ever since we got on the bus, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle at the other passengers, as if he expected something bad to happen. Like every time we left Yancy, in fact.

Percy snapped and said, "Looking for Kindly Ones."

I slapped my hand over my face, "really subtle Percy, really." (Correction sometimes Percy was really useless).

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat.

"What do you... what do you mean? "We confessed that I'd walked in on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover blinked.

"What did you hear?" he asked me.

"Oh, nothing much. What is it, the Summer Solstice deadline?"

He winced.

"Look, Percy k.C... I was worried about you, that's all, you understand? You know, with your demon math teacher hallucinations..."

"Grover..."

-And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were hyper-stressed or something, because there never was a Mrs. Dodds, and...

"Grover, you're a very, very bad liar. Percy said.

I rolled my eyes, "The worst in history, Grover, we could see you were lying a thousand miles away."

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he extracted a shabby business card.

"Take this, will you? In case you need it from me this summer."

The card was printed in convoluted script, which was lethal to my dyslexic eyes, but I eventually deciphered something along the lines of:

Grover Underwood, Guardian

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800)009-0009

"What's Half..."

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "It's, uh... my summer address."

A summer address, I never thought grover could have been as rich as me or the rest of Yancy.

"Okay," he said glumly. "Like, if I want to visit your mansion."

He nodded:

"Or... or if you need me or even you K.C."

"Why would we need you?"

I said this more bluntly than I would have liked. Grover blushed all the way to his Adam's apple.

"Look, Percy, the truth is, I... I'm supposed to protect you, sort of."

I stared at him.

Percy had been fighting all year with the boys who wanted to take it out on him. And here he was, pretending it was him defending us. (The joke)

"Grover," he said, "what exactly are you protecting me from?"

A shrill creak sounded beneath our feet. The dashboard began to smoke. A nauseating smell invaded the bus. The driver swore, then after a little while told us we had to get off.

We were literally nowhere, an uninteresting place of just maple trees and garbage, but on the other side was an old-fashioned fruit stall.

The merchandise looked delicious - I had the impression that all the fruit on display was unaltered by time or some other inconvenience - but even with such merchandise the customers were non-existent, just three old ladies making a Viking-sized sock.

They had split the work into three, left and right each knitting a sock and the one in the middle holding a huge basket of yarn.

They were old and wrinkled, their white hair held in a bandana each, and their arms gaunt in their faded cotton dresses. For my money, these women could have been blown away at any moment.

The strangest thing was that they were watching me and Percy.

I turned my head to warn him but noticed that Grover had turned livid white as a sheet.

"Tell me she's not looking at you...they're looking at you, aren't they?"

"Yeah, oddly enough she's looking at us."

"Do you think the socks would fit me," asked Percy.

"That's not funny at all Percy, not funny at all," grover replied.

"They wouldn't fit you anyway, you're not a Viking."

He looked at me like, "What are you talking about?" We went back to the old ladies, the one in the middle grabbed a gigantic pair of scissors, they were made of gold and silver and looked like garden shears.

"Let's get back on the bus," Grover said, "Come on."

"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."

"Come on! " He forced open the door and climbed inside, but Percy and I stayed outside.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching us both. The one in the middle cut the wires, and I swear I heard the click-clack despite the four lanes of traffic. His two friends rolled up the electric blue socks and the changing turquoise, green, royal blue and purple socks, leaving me to wonder who they might be for... Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the coach, the driver snatched a large piece of smoking metal from under the hood. The bus shook and the engine came back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" shouted the driver. ( He slapped the bus with his hat.) "Everybody back on board!"

Once we started, I felt a little fever like the beginning of a flu.

Grover didn't look much better. He was shaking and his teeth were chattering.

"Grover? " I said, my voice as calm as possible.

"Yeah?"

"What aren't you telling us? "

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

"K.C, Percy, what did you see at the fruit stand? "

"You mean the old ladies? " I asked. " What is it about them, man?" said Percy.

"They're not like...Mrs. Dodds, are they?" His expression was hard to read, but I had the impression that the fruit merchant ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds.

He said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The one in the middle got out her scissors and cut the wires." I nodded in agreement. He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might have crossed, but didn't. It was something else, something almost... older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. So? But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.

"This is not happening" Grover mumbled. He started chewing his thumb. ""I don't want this to be like the last time."

Percy leaned forward. "What last time? "

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth grade."

"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me, "what are you talking about?"

"Let me take you home from the bus station. Promise me."

"But the driver's coming to pick me up," I replied.

"Then let me come with you after I take Percy home," he insisted.

It seemed an odd request, but I promised him he could walk me home.

"Is this like a superstition or something? "I asked him.

No answer.

"Grover... that sliced wire. Does it mean someone's going to die?"

He looked at us sadly, as if already choosing the flowers I'd most like for my coffin.

Hello everyone I hope you enjoyed the first chapters of the story, this is my first fanfiction and I really hope you will follow me in this adventure my friends