Chapter Text
Katniss wakes up in an air conditioned room, which is the first sign something is off. There are air conditioned buildings in District 12 but they’re few and far between. Not even the bakery was air conditioned. As far as Katniss knows, it’s just the Victor’s Village, the Mayor’s house, and the Justice Building that are fancy enough to have that.
When she opens her eyes to a window that lets her see the hundreds of feet below them, she knows she isn’t in District 12 anymore.
The room she’s in makes her feel like she’s on a mountain, that’s how high up she is. Down below, thousands of cars crowd the streets and pedestrians walk next to them like it’s nothing. A strange looking hovercraft flies by above her. It’s got a bunch of sticks moving a circle above it, and Katniss can’t help but wonder how that works.
This, Katniss knows, must be the Capitol. With a growing horror, she looks around the room and notices she isn’t alone.
Only they aren’t Capitolites. Or well, they aren’t all Capitolites. She recognizes Peeta Mellark from school. He wrestled every year at the school’s annual competition, and Katniss somehow always found herself there, watching him. They didn’t know each other very well outside of that. And, of course, outside of…
She recognizes Haymitch Abernathy, District 12’s only Victor next. He looks like shit, like he got too drunk and passed out. He always kind of looks like that though. That’s because he always gets too drunk and passes out.
And next to him is District 12’s escort, Effie Trinket. She’s wearing what must be nightclothes, but is still somehow a jarring color with plentiful ruffles. She's wig-less, though, which is an odd sight. Katniss is kind of happy she’s still asleep. She has the typical Capitol accent, and Katniss finds it very grating to listen to.
Johannah Mason, the victor from a couple of years ago is propped up strangely against the couch.
The last person she recognizes in the room is Finnick Odair, Capitol heartthrob and playboy.
Even without knowing everyone else in the group, Katniss knows this is one of the strangest collections of people she’s ever been in. They must be spread across a bunch of different districts (and the Capitol, she eyes Effie again). What were they doing there?
She sneaks over to the door to see if she can break out. Though she doesn’t know where she will go after that. She gets a flashback suddenly, of the girl and boy running through the woods outside of District 12. The boy had been killed by a Capitol hovercraft that found him and the girl stolen away to who-knows-what horror.
Still, she has to try.
She’s barely taken her first step by the time the rest of the people in the room start to rouse. Strangely enough, Haymitch is the first to fully wake. She didn’t think he had it in him.
“What the fuck?” he grouses.
A middle-aged woman Katniss couldn’t identify is the next to wake. “Haymitch?” she asks, looking confused
One-by-one, everyone in the room wakes up. Some react better than others—or maybe better isn’t the word. Some of the older individuals just look resigned to their fate. Like they're used to this.
Effie seems freaked out, but not about being in a strange room with strange people. Instead, she's stupidly worried about her missing wig. Her hands are on her head, rubbing her buzz-cut, looking horrified. "My hair!" she's crying. Katniss rolls her eyes at her antics.
Before Johanna can throw a chair at the window like she seems to be planning, the TV stationed in the corner of the room turns on, and words flash across the screen.
I HAVE CALLED YOU ALL HERE SO THAT YOU CAN READ ABOUT WHAT YOUR WORLD COULD BE. The TV reads.
ON THE COFFEE TABLE ARE FIVE BOOKS THAT DETAIL THE PAST OF SOMEONE YOU ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH. UNDERSTANDING HIS PAST IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR FUTURE.
YOU WILL READ THESE BOOKS. FOOD AND AREAS FOR REST WILL BE PROVIDED AS NEEDED.
YOU ARE CURRENTLY BEFORE YOUR TIME, IN NEW YORK CITY. THOUGH IT IS NOT THE NEW YORK YOU WILL READ ABOUT, IT IS SIMILAR.
YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE UNTIL YOU COMPLETE YOUR READING.
WHEN YOU ARE DONE, YOU WILL BE SENT BACK TO YOUR TIME. YOUR LOVED ONES WILL NOT HAVE NOTICED YOU MISSING, AS NO TIME WILL HAVE PASSED FOR THEM.
PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELVES TO ONE ANOTHER AND COMMENCE THE READING, BEST WISHES.
“What the fuck,” Haymitch says again, this time with feeling.
Katniss can’t help but agree.
Finnick walks over to a table—it must be the coffee table, though Katniss has never heard that term before—and picks up the first book on the stack.
“Percy Jackson,” he reads, voice full of grief.
The name is familiar to Katniss, though everyone in Panem knows him as Perseus Jackson. To her knowledge, he had only gone by that nickname once and never again.
“There’s no way we’re actually going to do this right?” Johanna asks, disbelievingly. Katniss agrees.
“How much choice do we have?” A middle-aged man replies.
Katniss thinks she might’ve seen him before, though she can’t place exactly where.
With a jolt, she realizes that some of the older individuals in the room are victors, like Johanna, Finnick, and Haymitch. Though strangely enough, Perseus Jackson, the man the books seem to be about, isn’t present.
“I vote that we at least check out the books,” a blonde man cuts in. He’s dressed in fine nightwear, like Effie, though his is slightly less… loud. “I,” he tells the room as a whole, “am Plutarch Heavensbee.”
He eyes the people gathered around the room, specifically Katniss and Peeta, before adding, “I’m from the Capitol.”
Effie is the next to comply with the TV’s demands, and Katniss wonders if there’s something about being from the Capitol that makes them just listen to the demands coming from someone they don’t even know. “Effie Trinket.” She says. “You might know me as District 12’s escort. I am, obviously, also from the Capitol.”
Haymitch rolls his eyes but is nonetheless the next one to introduce himself. “Haymitch Abernathy, District 12.”
“Finnick Odair, District 4, and this is Mags Flanagan. Also from District 4.”
“Beetee Latier, District 3.”
“Wiress Wright, District 3.”
“Peeta Mellark, District 12.”
“Marlin Smithson, District 4.”
“Marina Forks, District 4.”
And then it’s just Johannah and Katniss left, neither of which look eager to comply.
“That’s Katniss Everdeen,” Peeta breaks in after a long moment of tense silence. “She’s from District 12, too.”
“And Johannah Mason, District 7.” Finnick cuts in next, looking annoyed and already opening up the book. He's oddly eager to read it.
“Oh come on, there’s no way we’re in Old New York—” Johanna starts to say. And Katniss agrees. She doesn’t even know exactly where New York is, though she knows it was somewhere on the coast of the United States.
“We won’t know what it is until we start,” Finnick interrupts. “So save it. I’ll read first, and if we think it’s legit, we’ll continue. And if we think it’s not… we’ll figure it out then, okay?”
This time, he is met with no disagreements.
“Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief,” he starts. “Chapter 1, I accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher.”
“We are not off on a great start for believable,” Haymitch mutters.
Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.
If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.
But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it’s only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they’ll come for you.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
At some point in Finnick’s narration, everyone has settled into a seat somewhere. Katniss chose the one closest to the door.
She fiddles with the fabric of the chair as Finnick reads. She doesn’t know what a half-blood is, but the constant threat of death seems familiar.
Hadn’t there been rumors Perseus Jackson wasn’t even from Panem? Was this book going to confirm it?
Was he from somewhere worse? She struggles to imagine it. She doesn’t know how somewhere could get worse than Panem—worse than sending children to kill each other.
My name is Percy Jackson.
I’m twelve years old.
“Oh god,” Marlin groans.
Marina blinks, “how old was he when they pulled him ashore?”
“Seventeen,” Finnick says with no pause or hesitation. They must be close in age, Katniss guesses. Close in age and victors from the same district. They’re probably friends. Especially because District 4 is full of careers. They probably trained together.
“Five years before then, huh?” Haymitch mumbles to no one in particular.
Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.
“And there’s the mention of the New York we’re reading about,” Beetee points out. He gets up to walk over to the window. “Well, I’ll say this, it doesn’t look like any part of the Capitol or the Districts I’ve seen.”
He presses on the glass and Wiress joins him, examining the window with him in silence. “It doesn’t seem to be a projection or screen either,” she tells them.
“As crazy as it seems, the TV might not be lying.”
Johanna snorts, and Katniss hates how much she agrees with her. “What makes you think that?”
Beetee points somewhere out the window. “There are familiar landmarks from the evidence preserved of the old world. See, there’s the Empire State Building.” Katniss peers over to look out the window, but she can’t make out what he’s talking about.
And she’s fairly sure she’s never heard of the Empire State Building before anyway.
“We never learned anything about New York in school,” Peeta says. He had chosen the spot next to Katniss, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. It makes sense, she guesses. They’re both from the same district. He's probably the most comfortable with her, which is a novel realization for Katniss.
“Yes,” Beetee agrees, and Katniss thinks he almost looks a little sad. “District 3 is allowed to learn things other Districts aren’t.”
That makes sense, Katniss guesses. District 3 creates the technology for the Capitol. Of course their school would be better.
She almost wishes she felt more bitter about it, but she gets the feeling that District 3 isn’t that much better off than District 12. They aren’t even a career district—not like District 4—so they still get their kids ripped from them every year just like 12.
And she gets the feeling the Capitol wouldn’t let a bunch of smart District people run around freely. They must compensate for the extra schooling somewhere else. Less supplies, stricter curfews, more cameras…
Am I a troubled kid?
Yeah. You could say that.
Finnick’s jaw clenched as he pauses before continuing to read.
I could start at any point in my short, miserable life to prove it,
Katniss again wonders about this New York Perseus is apparently from. If he described his life as short and miserable, it can’t be any better than Panem…
But things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.
Then again, the only field trip District 12 takes is to the mines. There isn’t a museum of art in all of District 12. She’d be willing to bet most districts don’t have anything close to it. Except maybe District 1 who specializes in fine things. Though Katniss would be willing to bet all their fine art is quickly shipped out to the Capitol.
At her side, Peeta looks like he is thinking similarly to her.
Peeta doesn’t have any family who works in the mines. Katniss wonders what he thought of that field trip. She spent the whole time thinking about how her dad died. How she’d be likely to die down there soon, too.
I know—it sounds like torture.
“It sounds rather fun actually,” Plutarch says, and Katniss fights against showing her disgust on her face. She agreed that it didn’t sound like torture—not the same way the mines were—but the way Plutarch said it…
Most Yancy field trips were.
But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.
Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee.
Katniss had never had coffee before and didn’t know what it smelled like. There was some in District 12, if you knew where to look, but it was really expensive. She was pretty sure the only people who drank it regularly were the Peacekeepers and the government officials.
I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn’t get in trouble.
Boy, was I wrong.
See, bad things happen to me on field trips.
Field trips, plural? Katniss finds it hard to imagine Perseus’s life. It seems so different from hers.
Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim.
Finnick pauses for the briefest second, and his lips curl up into a half-smile before he seems to catch himself and move on.
And the time before that . . . Well, you get the idea.
This trip, I was determined to be good.
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.
“It’s crazy that she’s just wasting food like that,” Peeta comments.
Katniss looks at him, vaguely surprised. It was a thought she had had, but Peeta was the son of the baker. She was sure he had never had to miss a meal before. She hadn’t known he thought about food like that. Like she did.
She remembers him burning bread and the sound of a slap. Maybe she shouldn't be shocked.
There’s a couple of grunts in agreement, mainly from Haymitch, Johanna, and oddly enough Marina, but Effie just looks confused. Plutarch, surprisingly, ducks his head, like he was already aware of the District’s struggle with food. Katniss makes a note to keep an eye on him. She had grown up watching Effie be ridiculous on stage—she was stupid, but largely harmless. Katniss wasn’t sure she could say the same about Plutarch.
And something else about the paragraph Finnick just read sticks out to Katniss, too. The casual way he called his classmate a kleptomaniac. If you were caught stealing something in District 12, the punishment was… bad. She wonders how the girl managed to get away with it.
Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must’ve been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don’t let that fool you. You should’ve seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn’t do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.
“I’m going to kill her,” I mumbled.
Katniss mumbles under her breath, “he talks like a Victor.”
Finnick looks over at her, annoyed. Katniss hadn’t even realized he could hear her that well. She had thought Peeta would be the only one to hear her. “How would you know what us Victors are like? Been talking to good ole Haymitch?”
Katniss frowns, but doesn’t say anything back. It’s not worth the trouble. She has nothing to prove to him.
Grover tried to calm me down. “It’s okay. I like peanut butter.”
He dodged another piece of Nancy’s lunch.
“That’s it.” I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.
“You’re already on probation,” he reminded me. “You know who’ll get blamed if anything happens.”
Katniss wonders what the school punishments in New York were. She wonders how they compare to the school in District 12. Their school never used physical violence, at least.
Looking back on it, I wish I’d decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would’ve been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.
Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.
He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.
Katniss couldn’t picture the image Perseus was describing. It sounded too big, too grand. The only building in District 12 that had marble was the Justice Building. Peeta is the only other one that looks as overwhelmed as she does, though.
She abruptly realizes they're the only two people in the room who have never seen the Capitol.
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.”
Marvin’s eyes squint, and he hesitantly says, “is she… a muttation? Do you think the old country was able to make human muttations?”
Beetee leans forward, looking suddenly very interested in the conversation. “We’ve never learned about it,” he says, “but it’s certainly possible. A lot of history was destroyed in the World War, and even more was destroyed in the Dark Days. Though if they did have that technology, the Capitol has been unable to replicate it.”
Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
“What’s Greek?” Peeta asks suddenly.
Katniss had been wondering the same thing, but there was absolutely no way she was about to voice her question aloud. She was grateful Peeta had, though.
“It’s an old country,” Plutarch tells them. “They are specifically talking about Ancient Greece, which is an even older country from thousands of years ago. A lot of Capitol culture and names are derived from Ancient Greece and Rome—another similar civilization. My name comes from Rome. Perseus is a Greek name, from Greek Mythology.”
“...Greek mythology?” Peeta hesitantly asks.
“Yes, old gods and heroes and monsters and such.” Plutarch says, “if you want, I can tell you more about it during a break. I find it rather fascinating, but I think for now we should continue with the reading. It’s not very relevant to us anymore, except maybe from a literary standpoint.”
Katniss stares blankly at Plutarch, wondering how many books he thinks District 12 has access to. The banned book list is a mile long, and books aren’t cheap in the first place. No one in 12 could afford to be interested in literary standpoints. Except for maybe Haymitch, but he was much more interested in the bottom of a liquor bottle.
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.”
Something about the interaction reminds Katniss of Prim, even though Prim would never tell anyone to shut up. Maybe it was the image of a child blushing after being chastised. It’s strange to think Persues Jackson, who fought a bear and a wild boar with no weapons and walked away unscathed, was once a kid.
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?”
Plutarch looks surprised. “Maybe I’ll have to give you all that mythology lesson sooner rather than later.”
Katniss’s eyes are wide, wondering just what was happening in Greek mythology that made someone eat his own kids.
“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—”
“I’m sorry,” Johanna interrupts. “But what the hell is this?”
Finnick looks annoyed. It’s odd, seeing Victors she had seen kill people in such a relaxed, normal state. “If you let me finish reading, it might explain it.”
“Or it might just suppose we already have background knowledge in this—mythology—stuff. Maybe that guy,” she points, and somehow Katniss knows the gesture, plus not saying Plutarch’s name, is meant to be offensive, “should go ahead and explain it to us.”
“Well, Finnick,” Plutarch says Finnick’s name with a level of familiarity that surprises Katniss, and she cuts in before she can think better of it.
“Did you two know each other? Before this?”
Johanna cackles and it’s a mad, angry sound. It reminds Katniss of the Hyenas from the 68th games. “Oh, they know each other well. They spend a lot of time together."
If Finnick looked annoyed before, he’s furious now, “Johanna!” He says, voice laced with bitterness, anger, and hurt all at the same time. Katniss doesn’t know what’s happening.
“Finnick,” Plutarch interrupts before a fight can start, “does the book explain the myth?”
Finnick’s lips purse, and he reluctantly turns his attention back to the book, skimming ahead. “Yes,” he says, “it does.”
“Great, then why don’t you continue reading for now.”
Finnick clears his throat, and Johanna lets out a huff, falling back into her seat.
“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.’”
Plutarch frowns, like he deeply disagrees with what the girl just said, but after the near-fight they avoided earlier, he chooses to stay silent on the matter.
“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.”
“Of course,” Johanna scoffs, “because that makes perfect sense.”
“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?”
“Is that all it says about the myth?” Plutarch asks.
Finnick skims the page again, “yeah.”
“Well, I’ll just add a bit of context then. Kronos had received a prophecy that his children would overthrow him the same way he had overthrown his own father. He ate his children to avoid it being fulfilled."
“Thanks,” Johanna says sarcastically, “it all makes so much more sense now.”
“Oh!” Effie cuts in, “I actually am familiar with that myth.”
Plutarch raises an eyebrow, and Effie blushes red, which surprises Katniss. Normally she’s wearing so much makeup, you wouldn’t be able to see a reaction like that. With her buzzcut and bare face, she almost looks like she could be from the Districts.
“Sorry,” Effie tells Plutarch, “I wasn’t as into the classical studies and literature as you are. I was much more interested in fashion.”
Finnick continues before Plutarch can respond, clearly as uninterested in the direction the conversation was taking as Katniss.
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.”
“Has he always gone by Percy?” Marina asks.
“Seems so,” Haymitch says. “It’s not that surprising.”
Everyone looks over at him. He’s picking at a loose thread on his shirt. He looks up, feeling everyone’s eyes on him, “what?”
"Why's it not surprising?”
Haymitch throws his head back, annoyed, “think about it,” he starts. “What is this book implying?”
He waits a moment for someone to answer. Wiress is the one who finally says something, “that he had a whole life before he came to Panem.” Her tone is has a singing quality to it, like she isn't all here. Katniss wonders if that's a side effect of being in the games.
Haymitch snaps his fingers, “Bingo. According to this book he lived in Old New York. So suddenly, when he’s somehow dragged to Panem, of course he doesn’t want to go by the same name. It’s a way of shedding his past, becoming a new person with a new life.”
Katniss eyes Haymitch, surprised. His analysis showed a level of empathy and knowledge she hadn’t known he was capable of.
Everyone else seems to be doing the same. “Don’t look at me like that,” Haymtich gruffs out.
Finnick goes back to reading.
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 worshiped."
Katniss starts at the casual reference to religion. Mythology was one thing, but worshiping gods was quite another.
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.
“What’s dyslexia and attention deficit disorder?” Peeta asks.
Unsurprisingly, Plutarch is again the one who answers, “they’re antiquated diagnoses from before the Dark Days.”
“Why are they antiquated?”
Plutarch looks uncomfortable. “The government doesn’t think they exist.”
Something about the way he says that makes a heavy weight sink in Katniss’s stomach, though she doesn’t precisely know why.
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.
Finally, something in this story Katniss understands. They had learned extensively about Climate Change in their history class. It was one of the many driving points for the World War, and it certainly hadn’t helped in the Dark Days.
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.
Mags says something, but Katniss can only make out the word for, “school.” She has a heavy District 4 accent and seems to be struggling with words in general. Katniss thinks she might’ve had a stroke.
“Yeah, Mags,” Finnick says, “I guess they do have specialty schools here.”
Now that's he's pointed it out, Katniss does realize that's different from home. District 12 had only one school for everyone to go to. If you couldn't "make it" there, you just didn't go to school.
“Detention?” Grover asked.
“Nah,” I said. “Not from Brunner. I just wish he’d lay off me sometimes. I mean—I’m not a genius.”
Grover didn’t say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, “Can I have your apple?”
I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.
Katniss can picture Prim and her in a similar situation. Of course, Prim never explicitly asked for food, but Katniss could always tell when she was still hungry, and did her best to keep her fed and happy.
In the fall, there were a bunch of apple trees just past the fence. Prim and her would go together to pick apples. It was nice.
I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom’s apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn’t seen her since Christmas.
“What’s Christmas?” Peeta asks.
This time instead of directing his question to the room at large, he turns directly to Plutarch to ask it.
Plutarch hums, “an old religious holiday. I don’t know a whole lot about it. All of the old religious stuff is very heavily censored.”
Katniss doesn’t know why she’s surprised that things would be censored even in the Capitol. It makes sense, logically. She guesses she just always thought so many problems were district-specific.
I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She’d hug me and be glad to see me, but she’d be disappointed, too. She’d send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn’t be able to stand that sad look she’d give me.
Katniss wonders what it would be like. To have a mom like that. Someone who takes care of you.
Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.
I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she’d gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover’s lap.
“Oops.” She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.
Peeta opens his mouth, and Plutarch preemptively says, “I don’t know what Cheetos are.”
Peeta closes his mouth.
I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, “Count to ten, get control of your temper.” But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.
I don’t remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, “Percy pushed me!”
Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.
Some of the kids were whispering: “Did you see—”
“—the water—”
“—like it grabbed her—”
I didn’t know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.
Johanna’s face does something funny. “What, are they all hallucinating?” Secretly, Katniss was thinking something similar.
Marvin shrugs, and Finnick continues.
As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I’d done something she’d been waiting for all semester. “Now, honey—”
“I know,” I grumbled. “A month erasing workbooks.”
That wasn’t the right thing to say.
“Come with me,” Mrs. Dodds said.
“Wait!” Grover yelped. “It was me. I pushed her.”
I stared at him, stunned. I couldn’t believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.
“What is the punishment going to be, that he’s that scared for his friend?”
They all looked around at each other, uncomfortable with the direction the book was taking. Everyone here—except for maybe Plutarch and definitely Effie—had strong survival instincts. They knew this Mrs. Dodds was no good.
She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Underwood,” she said.
“But—”
“You—will—stay—here.”
Grover looked at me desperately.
“It’s okay, man,” I told him. “Thanks for trying.”
“Honey,” Mrs. Dodds barked at me. “Now.”
Nancy Bobofit smirked. I gave her my deluxe I’ll-kill-you-later stare.
At her side, Peeta shivered.
“What?” Katniss asked in a whisper.
“Nothing,” Peeta whispers back. “It’s just—his glare is scary. You remember the 70th games right?”
The answer is sort-of. That had been the first game since her father died. She paid some attention because she had to, otherwise she’d get in trouble with the Peacekeepers, but most of it was a blur. She remembers Perseus killing Andromeda very well though. She could imagine his glare being terrifying.
“I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it,” Peeta finishes. Katniss hums in agreement.
Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn’t there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.
How’d she get there so fast?
“Wait,” Johanna interrupts. “Perseus Jackson thinks someone else was freakishly fast? The guy who outran a bear?”
Effie looks confused. “Is it that hard to outrun a bear?”
“Is it—” Johanna looks like she might be passing a kidney stone. “Yes,” she says, voice cutting. “It is very hard to outrun a bear running at full speed.”
“Oh.”
I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I’ve missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.
I wasn’t so sure.
I went after Mrs. Dodds.
Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.
“What is she going to do?” Marvin mutters to himself.
I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.
Okay, I thought. She’s going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.
Perseus seems very casual about that punishment, Katniss thinks. If she was forced to buy someone something as a punishment, it would put her family back days, if not weeks, even with the profits from her hunting.
Katniss would prefer the whip, she thinks. At least then her sister would still eat, as long as she could still shoot.
But apparently that wasn’t the plan.
I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.
Except for us, the gallery was empty.
Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.
“The muttation theory is looking likely,” Beetee nods to himself.
A couple of the Victors look uncomfortable with this statement, “What?” Katniss asks, sure she’s missing something. “Why are you all acting like that?”
When it looks like no one else is going to respond, Beetee speaks up, “There is a theory amongst a lot of us that Perseus is a mutt.”
“What?”
“Well, like Johanna mentioned earlier, he does feats people shouldn’t be able to do, and he showed up out of nowhere,” Finnick says. “It’s a fairly common theory in district 4. They think the Capitol sent him to spy on us. Like they don’t already have people doing that for free out of fear.”
Katniss is shocked, she couldn’t imagine everyone thinking you’re a genetically engineered mutt made by the Capitol and sent to the districts as a plant.
Peeta is the one who responds. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he have gotten reaped if he was a mutt?”
Beetee shrugs and gestures for Finnick to start reading again. Hesitantly, he does.
Even without the noise, I would’ve been nervous. It’s weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it . . .
“You’ve been giving us problems, honey,” she said.
I did the safe thing. I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. “Did you really think you would get away with it?”
The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.
She’s a teacher, I thought nervously. It’s not like she’s going to hurt me.
Johanna snorts bitterly. Katniss wonders what happens at the schools in District 7.
I said, “I’ll—I’ll try harder, ma’am.”
Thunder shook the building.
At her side, Peeta leans forward. Katniss eyes him, wondering why he’s so obviously invested in the story. She still isn't sure it's even real.
“We are not fools, Percy Jackson,” Mrs. Dodds said. “It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain.”
“What did he do?” Marina asks, and no one answers. Mrs. Dodds is odd to say the least. There are few things that would warrant a reaction like this from a teacher.
Did he hurt someone? Commit treason?
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
All I could think of was that the teachers must’ve found the illegal stash of candy I’d been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they’d realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.
District 12 had never had a literature class, and to hear it discussed so casually was odd. If Katniss had ever been “forced” to read a book, she’s not sure she would enjoy it, but she would admire the ability to read an uncensored book enough that she wouldn’t complain.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Ma’am, I don’t . . .”
“Your time is up,” she hissed.
Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn’t human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.
“Mutt,” multiple people chimed in at once.
“But how would you pull that off?” Beetee asked. Wiress whispered something to him, and he nodded along before suddenly shaking his head. “No, no, that wouldn’t work.”
Before they can get into a full debate about how to make someone turn into a bat-monster, Finnick cuts them off.
Then things got even stranger.
Mr. Brunner, who’d been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.
“What ho, Percy!” he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.
Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.
With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn’t a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner’s bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.
More quiet muttering from the District 3 pair.
Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.
My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.
She snarled, “Die, honey!”
And she flew straight at me.
Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.
Haymitch snorts, “No wonder he won.”
Internally, Katniss agrees.
The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!
Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan.
What an odd comparison, Katniss thinks. She isn't even entirely sure what a sand castle is, but unlike Peeta, she doesn't want to ask. The less attention on her, the better.
She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.
I was alone.
There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.
Mr. Brunner wasn’t there. Nobody was there but me.
“Wait,” Peeta says, “did he just hallucinate that?”
“I,” Finnick starts before staring down at the page in confusion. “Don’t know.”
“Mutts don’t turn into powder,” Beetee says, pointlessly. “That’s… scientifically so far out of our reach.”
Silence settles amongst the group, everyone lost in thought.
My hands were still trembling. My lunch must’ve been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.
Had I imagined the whole thing?
I went back outside. It had started to rain.
Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, “I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt.”
“This is getting so weird,” Peeta mutters.
I said, “Who?”
“Our teacher. Duh!”
I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.
She just rolled her eyes and turned away.
I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.
He said, “Who?”
But he paused first, and he wouldn’t look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.
Katniss frowned, wondering why Grover was messing with Perseus. Was someone watching them? Did he need to lie to protect himself?
He had seemed to know Mrs. Dodds was… whatever she was.
“Not funny, man,” I told him. “This is serious.”
Thunder boomed overhead.
I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he’d never moved.
I went over to him.
He looked up, a little distracted. “Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson.”
“If he hallucinated it all, how did he get the pen?” Effie asks. Katniss is vaguely surprised she was paying enough attention to pick up on that.
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?”
Finnick stares down at the book. “That’s it,” he says, “that’s the chapter.” No one knows what to say after that. This book was weird—weird enough for Katniss to think it was all some elaborate prank, though why anyone would want to pull a prank like this was beyond her imagination.
Plutarch is the one who finally speaks, “So, are we going to read the next chapter then?”