Deadly Waters | Percy Jackson

2. A Punnet of Strawberries

Percy was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. The twenty- four/seven hallucination was more than he could handle. Pez had watched as, for the rest of the school year, Jackson became convinced the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on him. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr-a perky blond woman – whom neither friend had ever seen in their lives until she got on their bus at the end of the field trip – had been their pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.

Every so often Pez watched in amusement as Jackson 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.

It got so bad that Jackson almost believed them – Mrs. Dodds had never existed. Almost.

But Underwood couldn't fool him. When Jackson mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist. But they both knew he was lying.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.

Pez, of course, agreed with Percy.

A fact that seemed to terrify Underwood.

In the surrounding weirdness that had occurred during and after the field trip to the museum, Percy, not quite trusting Grover, had turned to the only other person that might believe him.

He had spent the entire buss ride looking nervously at everything they passed, anxiously shifting every second. The moment they had rolled to a stop, Percy had leaped out of his seat and snatched a sleeping Pez's wrist, dragging her off the bus and to his dorm room before Grover could shout 'Enchilada'.

He told her everything.

And when he started hyperventilating, for the first time since Percy had met her, Pez voluntarily reached forward and initiated contact.

She had held him in a loose – albeit awkward – hug, occasionally patting his back.

"We'll figure it out, Jackson." She had whispered. "We'll figure it out."

Yeah, not her proudest moment.

Ew, caring.

The two had become much closer after that – which basically meant that Jackson spent more time with her, and Pez tolerated his presence a bit better than before.

If she were to be completely honest – a phenomenon in itself – Pez was really worried. While she didn't have much time to think about it during the days, at night, when she knew visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake Jackson up in a cold sweat, she would spend all night thinking.

She thought about a lot of things.

The freak weather that had mysteriously continued since mid-winter; One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in her dorm room and a few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy.

Mrs Dodds; Jackson's odd account of the museum incident with the combined fact that nobody seemed to remember her. Pez had never explicitly confirmed to Jackson (or Underwood, the untrustworthy rat) that she remembered the woman, but she did. She remembered everything – things that not even Jackson knew about.

There was also the matter of the museum incident the itself; the anxious moods surrounding Underwood and Mr. Brunner, the strange behaviour – read freaky fucked up horror movie behaviour – of the students and, of course, Jackson's sci-fi experience with the bat hag of a Math teacher.