Staring down a hurtling storm making its way towards me (Chapter 5) [Percy]

I was certain that Mrs. Dodds was a witch. I mean, all math teachers seem like witches when they're teaching you pre-algebra, but I was certain there was something else up with her.

Of course, I couldn't exactly point fingers, since I had no explainable reason for what I could do. Last Friday I had been making my pen disappear and reappear out of boredom in her class, and Mrs. Dodds had suddenly started sniffing- like actually sniffing the room as she strode in my direction. I was certain she'd send me to the principal's office, or worse, ask me to solve the equation on the board. But at the last moment, her scrunched up face literal inches from mine, she'd hissed "Be careful, honey" and walked back. Grover looked up at me from his bed where he was studying some notes. "Perce, you all right?" I realized I'd been staring off into space and shook myself. "Yeah, I'm fine… just tired" I lied, not sure what to tell him. Grover frowned like he didn't completely believe me, but didn't say anything. I wished I could show him my vanishing trick, but I wasn't sure how I'd bring it up or explain it. With my track record, one report from Grover about my mental health and I'd be sent to an institution faster than you can say "misunderstanding". Outside, lighting flashed occasionally with cracks of thunder. I had nothing against storms, but Grover seemed peeved out and honestly the weather was being pretty weird ever since Christmas.

"Hey, is there any way to skip tomorrow's field trip?" I knew my Latin grades definitely depended on it, but I'd take bad grades over the weird stuff that kept on happening to me during field trips any day. "Uh, I don't think so," Grover replied. "Mr. Brunner will be there, though, just keep away from Dodds and you'll be fine." Easier said than done, I thought. The woman watched me like a hawk. I didn't know what I had done to piss her off, because she treated Nancy Bobofit like an angel. Another person I'd have to avoid tomorrow, I thought. My probation was still on. I sighed and opened up my Latin textbook – we had phrases and cultural appreciation this unit, hence the field trip to the Met, and walls of unfamiliar text in a book didn't do my brain any favors. I gave up after an hour by the end of which the letters had started to float off the pages and pirouette in front of my eyes. Seeing Grover was already asleep, I turned off the lights and closed my eyes, trying to get some sleep despite the thunder still rumbling.

I had never been to an open-air restaurant, let alone one as fancy and picturesque as the one I found myself in. There were polished wooden couches and tables with a patterned umbrella on top, surrounding a large marble fountain with a statue of some muscular Greek guy in the middle. It was high up in the hills somewhere, with only a single road leading down and a cliff on one side. Somehow, I knew the cliff overlooked the Gulf of Naples. Wait, what? I'd never been to Italy-oh. I realized it was a dream, then. Made sense why this place was empty instead of packed with tourists. I wondered why this dream felt so vivid and real, as I could even hear the water splashing in the fountain. "Adonis didn't get his happy ending, you know", a soft voice said from behind me. "Not like your namesake, Perseus." Huh. My dreams could make up people now, cool. I turned and saw the outline of a woman in a flowing pastel blue gown, her features blurred by the harsh sunlight. I blinked and said, "I go by Percy." Her laugh was musical, and I found myself smiling too. "Of course, Percy. Tell me, do you know the tale of Adonis?" I racked my brain and remembered Mr. Brunner mentioning that name in Latin class. "Yeah, he had two goddesses trying to date him… and uh something happened and then he died, right?"

"Yes… that's quite correct, actually. He remains one of my favorites still, quite a few of the statues in Italy are based on him, you know." Something about what she said seemed odd, but I couldn't figure what it was. Dreams are weird, you know? And I'd never consciously been in one before now. I turned back to the fountain and then made the connection. "Oh, so that's him?" She walked up to where I was standing, sat down on one of the couches beside me and then nodded. We both watched the fountain in silence for a while.

"My love rarely grants people a happily ever after", she said after a while. "Despite my best efforts, some of my children share my curse." Not able to quite follow, I let out a soft "Huh?" She turned and gave a soft laugh again. "Oh, don't worry, my dear. There's no need for you to worry about that for now." I still had no idea what she was on about, but I stayed silent and watched birds fly over the gulf. This place was beautiful. I suddenly let out a yelp as a man in a white coat walked straight through me with a plate in his hand. "Un raviolo pasta, ma'am" the waiter said, setting the plate down before her. "Qualcos'altro?" She flashed him a dazzling smile, and said "Un Fiano al calice, grazie." This dream had officially reached weird territory, because that sounded like actual Italian, and I didn't know a bit of the language.

"Who are you?", I asked her once the waiter had left. She seemed embarrassed by my question, and her eyes darted upwards. "Oh, I don't think Zeus would like-" Soft thunder rolled across the clear sky, almost as if in response to her words. That's impossible, I told myself. But then again, this was a dream, so maybe not?

I looked at the woman then, and with the umbrella above now shielding her, her face was a lot clearer – she looked a lot like Silena, and a bit like this one news reporter from tv, and something about her eyes reminded me of my mom. "You can admire me later, Perseus. It is time for you to wake now" She winked, gesturing at me with her fork and slowly the dream dissolved just as I felt my cheeks heat up. I woke with a blush and a stupid smile on my face staring up at an impatient Grover, who was stamping his feet weirdly demanding I get up as we'd be late for the field trip.

I'd already known avoiding Nancy wasn't an option since she loved getting in my face, but I hadn't expected it to be this bad, I thought, catching yet another piece of peanut butter covered bread in midair and tossing it out the window. The food was part of Nancy's lunch and had been aimed at Grover, who kept muttering "Ignore her, Percy" and "Don't start a fight, Percy" at regular intervals. How he knew I was itching to do just that when I had a poker face on was beyond me. "I'm going to kill her", I mumbled. Ordinarily, one of the teachers at Yancy would've stopped her by now, but Mr. Brunner had fallen asleep with a book on his head, and I wasn't about to try and get Mrs. Dodds' attention. Grover reminded me of my fate if anything weird, bad, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip. I wish I'd ignored him and decked Nancy back then. Death-by-in-school-suspension was bad, but it would've been loads better than what I got myself into after.

"Hey, you don't mean that, come on"

"Well ok I would've gone crazy eventually, If I never found out-"

"I get it, though, constant mortal danger is so not fun"

"Yeah, exactly."

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour, with Mrs. Dodds trailing behind our group like an ominous shadow. We gathered on the steps leading into the Met's Eighty-Second Street entrance, where Mr. Brunner paused and started pointing here and there. "The exterior itself draws on elements of Greco-Roman architecture." He then walked over to one of the columns and said "Corinthian. One of the three classical orders, all three of which we've discussed in class." Had we? I had no clue. The columns were large and made of limestone, and well... they looked like columns. "The classic Roman arch, which you must have seen in a number of other places and…", Mr. Brunner continued but I wasn't listening.

Seeing Grover had moved up a bit, I followed him, casting a look around the place. The window at the entrance was kinda cool. "Think we can go on ahead?" Grover asked me. I was about to nod, but as soon as I raised my head, I saw Mrs. Dodds staring straight at me, as if daring me to break a rule. "Uh, better not" Grover agreed, and we stood, staring at the three windows, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up. "Ah, Mr. Jackson. Fascinated by the tripartite windows, I see?" Oh, was that what they were called? "Oh, uh yeah, they're cool", I replied lamely. Mr. Brunner thankfully just chuckled and nodded along, as if I'd praised the window appropriately. "Also called Venetian windows, they are yet another example of ancient Roman influence on modern architecture, you should be writing these down, by the way!" There was a loud rustling as we all dove into our bags to get notebooks out.

We passed through a lot of big echoey galleries after that, each of which I prayed Mr. Brunner wouldn't stop and lecture us about. Luckily, he ignored most of the glass cases, statues, and only gave us a few notes on the black-and-orange pottery. I couldn't believe some of this stuff was almost three thousand years old. Finally, Mr. Brunner made us sit in a half-circle around a stone column with a sphinx at the top and began telling us what it represented. I was trying to focus on what he was saying, cause the story of a girl poor age being honored by a stone carving was kinda cool, but flashes of my dream came back to me, and I could feel something like a pressure in the air – like something huge was about to happen. It felt like when I could focus and hide stuff, but somehow stronger. "...Archaic style" I tried to focus on Mr. Brunner but the woman's voice from my dream cut in. "Love rarely grants people a happily ever after" and then her voice deepened again, and I heard "Attican girl, and as you can see the engravings..."

For a moment, the world shifted and there was a bat-like monster with red eyes where Mrs. Dodds had been sitting and the sphinx at the top was glowing gold and- "Mr. Jackson, would you care to join us in the waking world?" I blinked and realized I had dozed off. My face reddened. Behind me I could hear other students snickering and whispering. "I-yes, sir. I'm awake, I mean." I said, blushing furiously now. Mrs. Dodds was still staring directly at me, and I could almost imagine her as an actual scary bat-monster-thing. Mr. Brunner looked a bit disappointed that I'd fallen asleep and that made me feel bad too. He was the coolest teacher I'd ever had. "Would you care", he said, "to tell us what this picture represents?" I turned to the carving he was standing beside and felt a flush of relief. "That's Kronos eating his kids, sir." He stared at me, clearly not satisfied with just that. "Kronos was the king of the Titans and he uh he got a prophecy that his kids would kill him, so he ate them, right?" Mr. Brunner finally nodded, a small smile on his face. "Indeed, Mr. Jackson. It is nice to know you did pay some attention to our earlier classes." Behind me, Nancy Bobofit was whispering to her friends about this stuff being useless in real life. "Shut up!" I hissed at her. Mr. Brunner looked at me again. I was expecting him to tell me off, but he just said "Miss Bobofit raises an excellent question, Mr. Jackson. How do these tales of eons past matter in real life?" I thought about his question, but nothing came to mind. There had been a big fight between the titans and the gods, and the gods had won. Nothing to do with real life, though…I shrugged. "I guess don't eat your kids is the moral?" Mr. Brunner looked disappointed with that too. "Half-credit, Mr. Jackson. And I expect an answer to this question when we regroup after lunch." He turned to Mrs. Dodds. "If you would lead us outside?" The group followed her out, and I was about to go too when I stopped. "Just a minute", I told Grover who'd stopped to look at me. I went and looked at the sphinx on top of the stele again. I was wide awake, but somehow, I could feel it glowing and humming if I concentrated. Almost as if it was waiting for something to happen.

Suddenly there was a hissing noise behind me, and I turned quickly. Mrs. Dodds stood there but her eyes were glowing red, just as I'd imagined. I got the feeling something was very wrong here. "You should confess now", she said slowly. Her wrinkled face began to turn into scales as they elongated. I did the safe thing. I said, "Of course, ma'am." Her leather jacket began to look less like a jacket and more of actual leathery skin. "Did you think you would actually get away with it?"

I had no clue what she was on about. "I'll uh try harder, ma'am." She screeched at that – a loud birdlike sound. And then… this can't be real, this is not happening, I thought. Two bat-like wings rose behind her and suddenly there was a flaming whip in her hand. "Confess now!", she screamed at me, raising the whip. I ducked behind the stone column. Her whip came crashing down on it, and there was a bright flash of light and the stone sphinx started glowing even brighter. Mrs. Dodds, or whatever she was, blinked at it and raised the whip again, when the sphinx suddenly flapped its wings, and with a bang! Mrs. Dodds shot across the gallery. I turned and ran the other way and into another empty gallery with a marble frieze at one end. I leaned against the wall. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest – and flowing water – in pipes? What? Suddenly there was a whoosh! behind me and Mrs. Dodds appeared out of nowhere. Her jacket was steaming now, and her wings had gone away but she still looked like a monster – red eyes, and a flaming whip in her hand. I yelped and threw one of the pots at her. She flicked the whip and cut it cleanly in half, both parts scattered uselessly on the floor. She smiled and snarled, "Time to die, honey." I could feel the pressure in the water pipes as she raised the whip again, and her nails turned into long curved talons. There was a knot in my stomach and suddenly I let out another scream, terrified, and the sprinklers roared to life overhead, spraying us both with water. Another pipe burst somewhere, and a high-powered jet of water hit her squarely in the chest. There was a burst of steam, but I could see things more clearly now. I was backing up slowly trying to figure a way out past her when Mr. Brunner appeared behind her in his wheelchair. "Take this!" he yelled, tossing something small at me. I caught it out of instinct. It was a ballpoint pen- wait. The pen in my right hand morphed as I watched, turning into a two-foot-long bronze blade.

I lowered it, and was about to ask Mr. Brunner what the hell when I saw Mrs. Dodds was no longer covered in the steam cloud and was standing above me, furious. Her whip had fallen to the side, smoldering. She lunged at me, talons extended, and I did the normal thing in that scenario. I sliced the blade upwards. As soon as the blade sliced through her neck, she started disintegrating. Her skin, talons, all started to crumble. Within a few seconds, only sand was left on the ground. The whip was still lying on the floor, smoke rising from it. There was a bronze sword in my hand. Mr. Brunner had been joined by Grover at the door, and they both were looking worriedly directly at me.

"What the fuck", I said slowly, "just happened?"

For what felt like a very long time, no one said anything. Mr. Brunner just seemed to be deep in thought, as if an actual monster from the depths of hell hadn't just attacked me and trashed two of the Met galleries in broad daylight. Grover, at least, looked appropriately shocked. He kept glancing at the still smoldering whip and muttering something about "Kindly ones" and a solstice?

Finally, Mr. Brunner spoke. "May I have my pen back, Mr. Jackson? I try not to make a habit of lending my writing instruments to students." I stared at him, hoping my was this guy serious? face got the message across. "Sir, that pen just transformed into a sword", I said slowly. "You did see that, right?"

Mr. Brunner sighed and nodded. "Yes, Percy, I did. I just thought the Mist might have…" He trailed off and shook his head. "It was a foolish hope. I should've known, after what happened at your house, that they wouldn't "

"Wait, what?" I cut in, even more alarmed. "What happened at my house? Is my mother alright?"

"Yes, she is on her way here actually. There was some kind of gas leak in your apartment while she was at work and a fire broke out. Your stepfather Gabe Ugliano and another man were inside. Neither made it out."

I stumbled onto the floor in shock. What was going on? A gas explosion at-how? Gabe was dead? I wasn't sure if I should feel sad or relieved. I never liked him, true, but I would never wish for him to die in a fire.

"Mr. Brunner what the hell is going on?" I screamed, reeling from both what had just happened and what he told me had happened back home.

"Perce- I, we, we can't talk about this here", Grover said quickly. "There is a- a safe place, where I've got to take you"

"What? I'm not going anywhere with you! Where is my mother? And will either of you give me a straight answer about what just happened?"

"Percy, what he means is that we cannot give you answers here- you need to go with Grover. That is why I asked your mother to come here instead of putting up at a hotel. Neither of you are safe outside. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to help Mrs. Kerr explain the situation to the authorities." He snapped his fingers with a soft crack and a soft burst of wind flew throughout the room. I stared, dumbfounded as Mr. Brunner rolled out in his wheelchair and a dejected-looking Grover came and sat on the floor beside me.

"Who on earth is Mrs. Kerr?", I asked him. Grover gave me a furtive glance and said "U-uhm the-the math teacher, you know? She came with us on the field trip." I'd always known he was a bad liar, since the school cafeteria incident, but I now realized he was actually a terrible liar. "Cut the crap, Grover", I said. He made a sound that sounded like a snort and a cough rolled into one. "She doesn't exist", he told me. "Excuse me? What do you mean she-"

"Look, Mr. Brunner has some... abilities, alright? Mrs. Kerr is a Mistform – he made her up so that his story sounds believable. He can't exactly get Mrs. Dodds back." I stared at him, wondering if my friend had lost it, and then his last words hit me. "I killed her", I said, staring at my hands. The pen-sword was in my pocket now, but I remembered swinging it- and hitting her. "I killed a teacher, Grover." What had I done? It was going to be worse than expulsion this time- I'd probably be sent to juvie. "She isn't dead", Grover said. "What?" "Well, she's dead now but Hades-" Thunder rumbled overhead. I heard the sound of rain outside. "Look, just wait until we get to where Mr. Brunner said we need to go okay? I really shouldn't say anything out here." Grover seemed so anxious that I actually believed him.

"He's supposed to be my Latin teacher, G-man", I spoke softly, overwhelmed and tired by everything. "And now you just want me to leave school before finals just cause he said so.." Grover didn't say anything, just looked sorrowfully ahead.

"Where are we going anyway?", I asked a bit later. In response, he rummaged through his pocket and gave me a card. The card was in a fancy script, and my dyslexic eyes started screaming and doing backflips in protest, but I managed to make it out.

Grover Underwood, Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800)009-0009

"What on earth is Half-"

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's where we are going, me, you, and your mom. Mr. Brunner will join us there too, later." "Is this like…a safe house?"

Grover shrugged, and said "It's a bit bigger than a house, but sure. Something like that."

Eventually, we heard arguing voices and saw Mr. Brunner followed by - "Mom!" I screamed, rushing to her. She gave me a shaky smile and hugged me, turning back to Mr. Brunner. "I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson,"

"Wait, like the song?"

"Dude. I was in the middle of something! What!?"

"Why the fuck did you interrupt Percy when-"

"You know… I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson, I am for real Never meant to make your daughter cry"

"Do you guys even listen to hip-hop?"

"Di Immortales."

"Where was I? Oh, right."

"You know of the Camp itself, I presume?"

"Yes, but…isn't there any other way."

"Percy." I blinked, extracted myself from my mother's embrace and looked at Chiron. "Yeah?"

"Would you please describe the creature that attacked you here half an hour ago?"

"Sure…Uh, she looked like Mrs. Dodds at first and then her eyes started glowing, and she had talons and bat-like wings, and…"

My mother let out a soft gasp and closed her eyes.

"Wait", I said suddenly. "Mom, you know what that was?"

"Percy I- Mr. Brunner is right, we need to go where he says."

"What? No, our apartment just got burnt down, Gabe's dead - We need to find out what- Mom, at least tell me what is happening? Who was- What was that?"

She looked like she was going to cry, but finally said, "This… this is about your father, Percy. I can't tell you anything else here either. But trust me, we need to go where Mr. Brunner asked us to right now."

Until then, I had never heard my mother sound scared. Angry, tired, sad, worried, yes…but never scared; and I think that's what convinced me to go along.

"Mom, just…please tell me what's going on."

"I'll be with you and explain everything once we get to the camp, honey" my mother said softly, pulling me into another hug. "But now we really have to go." She tried to sound reassuring, but I could hear her voice shaking.

My father. I didn't know much about him. My mother just said they'd been together for a summer, and he'd gotten lost at sea. Vague, I know. She wouldn't even tell me his name. The fact that he'd left mom to go to sea, and simply talking about him made her sad pissed me off. I don't know if he'd meant to hurt her, but-

"Never meant to make your daughter cry… I apologized a trillion times…I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson, ohh"

"….."

"Tas!"

"MBMMNNNNNF"

"Keep your trap shut, and I'll untie you after a few hours."

"Thanks for that, Sadie."

"No problem, Sils."