I pictured my mom, alone in our little apartment on the Upper East Side. I tried to remember the smell of her blue waffles in the kitchen. It seemed so far away.

Otrera stayed dead the second time," Kinzie said, batting her eyes. "We have to thank you for that. If you ever need a new girlfriend...well, I think you'd look great in an iron collar and an orange jumpsuit." Percy couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. He politely thanked her and changed seats.

Sanchez looked at me and we locked eyes a second too long. There was nothing I could do about it. The signal went out. A moment of clear, silent hostility passed between us as hotly charged and unintentional as a thousand-volt arc through a squirrel.

Wow," Thalia muttered. "Apollo is hot." "He's the sun god," I said. "That's not what I meant.

My brother broke into a toothy grin. "Yay! Your brain works!

That's it, cupcake. You're going down.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms 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.