Just Add Water

toil and trouble

It didn't take long for Percy to figure out that Yancy was a school meant for troubled children. The kids told him so, bragging about stealing and making teachers angry. He used to think that these kinds of things shouldn't be bragged about; maybe it was different here.

"Am I a troubled kid, then?" he had asked one of the boys, once. Andrew Finn. His teeth were crooked, and he liked to wear expensive watches—even if he couldn't read the time.

Andrew had shrugged. "Have you gotten kicked out of a school?"

He'd frowned at that. "I guess so. But Momma always said that they're just misunderstandings, and—"

"Then I guess you could say that."

"Could say what?"

"That you're a troubled kid."

He'd drifted away from everyone after that. Smelly Gabe had been right about that, at least. Attending this school was proof enough of how troubled he was. A burden, to his mother. Maybe that's why she'd sent him here.

It was easy to watch for water, he supposed, if he wasn't near anyone for him to get wet.

Until Grover, that is.

For the first month, Percy slept with no other company except his own. No roommates, no nothing. His mom had asked for it to be that way. But something made the board of directors change their mind. Grover was a late arrival, with a strange way of walking and an even stranger personality. He looked a bit older than Percy, yet he was always scared of something.

Grover had smiled at him nervously the first day, placing his things on his side of the room and awkwardly asking about Percy's day.

But by lunch time the next day, they'd immediately hit it off. There were many moments with Grover, in which Percy wondered if it were better to distance himself from Grover as well. How could her do that, though? Everything they did, they did it together. He was finally enjoying his time at Yancy, and keeping his secret, though important, fell to the farthest part of his mind.

The Dax Incident changed all that.

Like many of the students, Dax Wallace was a violent kid. He made weapons out of the simplest things: pencils, scissors, textbooks, glue sticks. But this time, he'd brought with him a water gun to English Language Arts.

Despite Percy having a hard time reading because of some stupid thing the teachers had addressed as dyslexia, Percy loved the class. It mostly had to do with the profesor, Mr. Bruner. He was a middle-aged man with graying hair that used a wheelchair for mobility. He always made the classes fun, especially once they reached the Greek mythology unit.

He winked at them the first time he wielded a sword on a November morning. "Now, don't tell your other profs that Mr. Bruner isn't teaching what's planned for the school year," he said. "Greek mythology is taught to sixth-graders, so, as well-behaved first-graders, I'm sure you'll keep this as our little secret."

Well-behaved.

Percy wanted to laugh. As if this school wasn't specifically meant for troubled kids.

It was monday when Dax brought the water gun with him. No one expected it—at least, not Percy or Grover—but Dax and his little group of friends seemed to have bored themselves with just the usual harassment. No one was sure how none of the teachers confiscated it from him in the first place, either.

He'd entered the classroom, grinning madly and pointing the water gun at the desks closest to the door when he and his crounies shouted elatedly, "WATER FIGHT!"

"Maybe privilege," Grover had replied after listening to Percy's frantic queries about how Dax had managed to posses a water gun, of all things.

"Grover, we have to hide!"