𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐩

Chapter 3

Two - Cyrus
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Three Old Ladies knit the socks of death

  Cyrus was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than he could handle.

   For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on him. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr–a perky blond woman whom he'd never seen in his life until she got on their bus at the end of the field trip–had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.

  Every so often Cyrus would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if he could trip them up, but they would stare at him like he was psycho.

  It got so Cyrus almost believed them–Mrs. Dodds had never existed.

  Almost.

  His brother would always confirm remembering Mrs. Dodds, and her horrible punishments, not to mention, Grover couldn't fool him. When Cyrus mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist. But Cyrus knew he was lying.

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

  Cyrus didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake him up in a cold sweat.

  The freak weather continued, which didn't help Cyrus's mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in his dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events they studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.

  Cyrus started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. His grades slipped from Ds to Fs. He got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. He was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.

  Finally, when their English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked Cyrus for the millionth time why he was too lazy to study for spelling tests, he snapped and called him an Ass-hat. He wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.

  The headmaster sent Cyrus and Percy's mom a letter the following week, making it official: They would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

  Fine, Cyrus told himself. Just fine.

  He was homesick.

  Cyrus wanted to be with his mom in their little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if he had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.

  And yet... there were things he'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out his dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. He'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. He worried how he'd survive next year without them.

  He'd miss Latin class, too–Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that Cyrus and his brother could do well.

  As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test Cyrus studied for. He hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told him about this subject being life-and-death for him. He wasn't sure why, but he'd started to believe him.

The evening before his final, he got so frustrated he threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across his dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling his head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way he was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.