Chapter 2: Chapter 2
It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three
thousand years.
He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx
on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl
about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to
listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody
around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other
teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.
Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a
black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean
enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy
halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous
breakdown.
From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was
devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now,
honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a
month.
One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks
until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He
looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."
Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the
stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"
It came out louder than I meant it to.
The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.
"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"
My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."
Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll
tell us what this picture represents?"
I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually
recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"
"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this
because…"
"Well…" I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and
—"
"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.
"Titan," I corrected myself. "And…he didn't trust his kids, who were the
gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave
Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his
dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"
"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.
"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I
continued, "and the gods won."
Some snickers from the group.
Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use
this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain
why Kronos ate his kids.'"
"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's
excellent question, does this matter in real life?"
"Busted," Grover muttered.
"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.
At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.
I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."
"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson.
Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made
him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods,
had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's
stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own
scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the
Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you
lead us back outside?"
The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each
other around and acting like doofuses.
Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr.
Jackson."
I knew that was coming.
I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"
Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go—intense brown eyes
that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.
"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.
"About the Titans?"
"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."
"Oh."
"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to
treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."
I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.
I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up
in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, sword-
point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman
person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped.
But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the
fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made
above a C– in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected
me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less
spell them correctly.
I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one
long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.
He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.
The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch
the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.
Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever
seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something,
because the weather all across New York state had been weird since
Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from
lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane
blowing in.
Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons
with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something
from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.
Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We
thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from
that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.
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