DESTINY ↳ WILL SOLACE

1. I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher

Anyway, with Mr Brunner leading this trip, she hoped that it would be more interesting than it would've usually been. Besides, Percy liked history, which was a bit surprising, but she supposed the reason she liked it the most was because it was taught by Mr Brunner, and Mr Brunner's class was worth dragging herself over the textbook despite her murderous dyslexia. However, she knew she shouldn't get her hopes up, because it wasn't just Mr Brunner chaperoning the trip. Mrs Dodds was also supposed to be keeping order, and... to say that Mrs Dodds didn't like her was an understatement.

Mrs Dodds was a mean, little math teacher who had come from Georgia apparently, and she had taken a special delight in torturing Percy. She always wore a leather jacket, even though she must've been at least fifty years old. She had come to Yancy after their last teacher had had a nervous breakdown and had to leave, and from the first day of school, she had decided she hated Percy and loved Nancy. When she would point her crooked finger at her and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, Percy knew she was going to get after-school detention for a month. Once, she had made her erase answers out of old math textbooks until midnight, and she had joked to Grover that she didn't think Mrs Dodds was human. His response had been... terrifying, to put it nicely.

Anyway, she tried to ignore the way Mrs Dodds was glaring at her evilly, and focus instead on the cool artifacts. Percy doubted that she would be able to look at the stuff in there for at least a very long time. Her mother had to work almost every day, and it wasn't like Gabe was about to take her to the museum. Much to her surprise, she actually really liked the museum. It might have sounded stupid, but she felt as though she were at home among all the art and sculptures. Like she finally had a place where she belonged.

Yeah, she definitely sounded insane.

What made the trip annoying was the fact that everybody around her kept talking. It was aggravating. None of them, save for a handful, seemed particularly interested in anything. Percy supposed that made sense, although it was still annoying. All their parents were wealthy, and they probably thought that they would never need to know any of the things Mr Brunner was pointing out. Hell, they probably could've bought out some of the artifacts if they really wanted to. But that didn't mean that they had to ruin the trip for everybody else, like Percy, who actually found the stuff interesting and wanted to listen to what Mr Brunner was saying. She found herself giving the evil eye to anybody who talked, but they didn't notice it.

Finally, when Nancy Bobofit snickered something to her "friends" about the naked guy on the stele, Percy lost it. She turned around and snapped harshly, "Will you shut up?"

Unfortunately, it had come out way louder than she had meant for it to. Her face went pink when Mr Brunner stopped his lecture, and everybody in the class turned to stare at her, although most of them laughed. Mrs Dodds was giving her the evil eye, but Percy didn't back down, still glaring defiantly at Nancy who was only smirking back at her.

"Miss Jackson," Mr Brunner said, making Percy redden even more as she slowly turned around to face the Latin teacher, "did you have a comment?"

"No, sir."

He then gestured at the stele. "Perhaps you'll be able to tell us what this represents, then?"

She glanced at the stele, and a small smile of relief tugged at her lips, because she actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right? So there was this prophecy that said Kronos would be overthrown by his kids. And Kronos was the king titan. But he ate all his kids, except for Zeus. Zeus overthrew his father with the help of his siblings by freeing them by making Kronos barf up all his kids. Then there was this big battle, and the gods won."

"Nerd," someone muttered, and Percy had to inhale sharply to keep herself from turning around and smacking whoever said that.

"Like we're ever gonna use this in real life," Nancy muttered from behind her. "Like our job applications are going to say, 'Why did Kronos eat his kids?'"