"𝚟𝚒𝚡𝚎𝚗" | 𝚙. 𝚓𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚜𝚘𝚗

𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚝𝚠𝚘, 𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎

Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death

or

Percy Does NOT Win Friend of the Year

third person omniscient

-

PERCY 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 and Stelle.

The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom they'd never seen in their lives until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip - had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas. 

Estella wasn't handling this fever dream any better either. She could almost always tell when people were lying, but everyone seemed to be truthful about Mrs. Kerr.

"It's impossible." She insisted. "I know we weren't imagining it, Perce."

Every so often Percy 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.

He wasn't falling for it. Estella was insistent that it was real.

One surefire way of knowing was Grover.

He'd claim Mrs. Dodds didn't exist, but he was a terrible liar. He shifted a lot, stammered, and refused to look people in the eye.

Something was going on.

Percy 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. 

When he told Stelle, she admitted to having similar dreams. Estelle dreamt of shifting walls, three bat things that looked like Mrs. Dodds, and the freaky weather wrecking New York City.

They agreed not to tell Grover.

The terrible weather continued, which didn't help their moods. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in Percy's dorm room. Estella brought him extra blankets from home, much to Percy's delight (they were high-quality and comfortable).

A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. Estella bitterly wished it had wrecked the school.

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.

He remembered that class. While Estella took notes for the both of them, rain pelted the windows of the school. It was kind of calming.

The school had a 'no gum' rule, but he and Stelle hid the blue raspberry gum under their tongues when the teacher was looking. Percy had snuck in more blue candy, so their tongues were cobalt by the end of the period.

When they got busier and exams started coming around, Percy started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time.

His grades slipped from Ds to Fs. Stelle's father wouldn't allow that, though. Stelle kept acing her tests with 95s and lied about getting bad marks to make Percy feel better. It worked, even when he knew she was lying.

Maybe because Stelle had gotten on her (really) bad side, but Nancy mocked Stelle about her English grades. It was the only thing that held her back. Percy was practically out for blood. He got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends.