Percy Jackson, Son of Aphrodite

3 - Mr Brunner is scared of storms?

I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher. "

 

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"

 

 

I found out on the bus ride back, that apparently this Mrs Kerr was a perky blonde woman, whom I'd never seen in my life. The rest of the school seemed to believe she had been my pre-algebra teacher since Christmas, but I wasn't so sure.

Grover was the only one who helped me keep my sanity. I'd mention Mrs Dodds name, and he would hesitate. But then he would claim she didn't exist. But he hesitated;

The rest of the school year was average. I wouldn't be coming back to school the next year, after calling my English teacher an old sot.

I mean, he was an old sot, and his breath stunk.

School seemed to drift by, until exams came. I only really bothered for Latin. I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.

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

I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.

I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.

I picked up the mythology book.

I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried. Cause I had, I really had.

Mr Brunner was the only teacher who didn't immediately act uneasy when he taught me. I'd asked students why other teachers got uneasy around me, and they'd look at the ground and mutter something about looks.

Surely I wasn't that ugly?

Anyway, I needed Mr Brunner's help.

I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor. That was oddly suspicious to me, but I shrugged it off. Couldn't be that bad.

I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said "... worried about Percy, sir."

I froze. Holy shit. What was he talking about

I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult. Especially when you don't know what they're talking about. For all I know, Grover could be spilling my deep dark secrets to Mr Brunner. I wanted to know what he was saying