I Do Obedience School is the sixty-seventh chapter of The Gift of a Best Friend. It was first published on July 27th, 2018.
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Chapter We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS. Underneath, stenciled on the glass doors: NO SOLICITORS. NO LOITERING. NO LIVING. It was almost midnight, but the lobby was brightly lit and full of people. Behind the security desk sat a tough-looking guard with sunglasses and an earpiece. Percy turned to us. “Okay. You remember the plan?” “The plan,” Grover gulped. “Yeah. I love the plan.” “What happens if the plan doesn’t work?” I asked. “Don’t think negative,” Percy said. “He’s right,” Jasmine agreed, and Toothless nodded with her, back as a baby dragon on her shoulder. “Right,” I said. “We’re entering the Land of the Dead, and I shouldn’t think negative.” Jasmine glared at me. Percy took the pearls out of his pocket, the five milky white spheres the Nereid had given him in Santa Monica. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Percy. You’re right, we’ll make it. It’ll be fine.” I gave Grover a nudge. “Oh, right!” he chimed in. “We got this far. We’ll find the master bolt and save your mom. No problem.” He looked at us each, looking grateful. He slipped the pearls back in his pocket. “Let’s whup some Underworld butt.” We walked inside the DOA lobby. Muzak played softly on hidden speakers. The carpet and walls were steel gray. Pencil cactuses grew in the corners like skeleton hands. The furniture was black leather, and every seat was taken. There were people sitting on couches, people standing up, people staring out the windows or waiting for the elevator. Nobody moved, or talked, or did much of anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them all just fine, but if I focused on any one of them in particular, they started looking . . . transparent. I could see right through their bodies. “Do you think Cassandra’s here?” Jasmine whispered to me. I haven’t thought about my sister until now. I really hope she wasn’t here. I looked around, but I didn’t see any familiar faces. The security guard’s desk was a raised podium, so we had to look up at him. He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-colored skin and bleached-blond hair shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his lapel under a silver tag name. I read the name tag. Percy did too, then looked at him in bewilderment. “Your name is Chiron?” He leaned across the desk. I couldn’t see anything in his glasses except my own reflection, but his smile was sweet and cold. “What a precious young lad.” He had a strange accent—British, maybe, but also as if he had learned English as a second language. “Tell me, mate, do I look like a centaur?” “N-no,” Percy said. “Sir,” he added smoothly. “Sir.” He pinched the name tag and ran his finger under the letters. “Can you read this, mate? It says C-H-A-R-O-N. Say it with me: CARE-ON.” “Charon.” “Amazing! Now: Mr. Charon.” “Mr. Charon,” Percy said. “Well done.” He sat back. “I hate being confused with that old horse-man. And now, how may I help you little dead ones?” Percy didn’t seem to know what to say. He looked at me for support. “We want to go to the Underworld,” I said. Charon’s mouth twitched. “Well, that’s refreshing.” “It is?” I asked. “Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No ‘There must be a mistake, Mr. Charon.’” He looked us over. “How did you die, then?” Percy nudged Grover. “Oh,” he said. “Um . . . drowned . . . in the bathtub.” “All four of you?” Charon asked. We nodded, though Jasmine did seem to agree that it was also ridiculous. “Big bathtub.” Charon looked mildly impressed. “I don’t suppose you have coins for passage. Normally, with adults, you see, I could charge your American Express, or add the ferry price to your last cable bill. But with children . . . alas, you never die prepared. Suppose you’ll have to take a seat for a few centuries.” “Oh, but we have coins.” Percy set five golden drachmas on the counter, part of the stash he’d found in Crusty’s office desk. “Well, now . . .” Charon moistened his lips. “Real drachmas. Real golden drachmas. I haven’t seen these in . . .” His fingers hovered greedily over the coins. We were so close. Then Charon looked at Percy. “Here now. You couldn’t read my name correctly. Are you dyslexic, lad?” “No,” Percy said. “I’m dead.” Charon leaned forward and took a sniff. “You’re not dead. I should’ve known. You’re a godling.” “We have to get to the Underworld,” Percy insisted. Charon made a growling sound deep in his throat. Immediately, all the people in the waiting room got up and started pacing, agitated, lighting cigarettes, running hands through their hair, or checking their wristwatches. “Leave while you can,” Charon told us. “I’ll just take these and forget I saw you.” He started going for the coins, but Percy snatched them back. “No service, no tip,” he said, his voice sounding a little fainter than usual. Charon growled again—a deep, blood-chilling sound. The spirits of the dead started pounding on the elevator doors. “It’s a shame, too,” Percy sighed. “We had more to offer.” He held up the entire bag from Crusty’s stash. He took out a fistful of drachmas and let the coins spill through his fingers. Jasmine didn’t seem to like what Percy was doing. Charon’s growl changed into something more like a lion’s purr. “Do you think I can be bought, godling? Eh . . . just out of curiosity, how much have you got there?” “A lot,” Percy said. “I bet Hades doesn’t pay you well enough for such hard work.” “Oh, you don’t know the half of it. How would you like to babysit these spirits all day? Always ‘Please don’t let me be dead’ or ‘Please let me across for free.” I haven’t had a pay raise in three thousand years. Do you imagine suits like this come cheap?” “You deserve better,” Percy agreed. “A little appreciation. Respect. Good pay.” With each word, Percy stacked another gold coin on the counter. Charon glanced down at his silk Italian jacket, as if imagining himself in something even better. “I must say, lad, you’re making sense now. Just a little.” Percy stacked another few coins. “I could mention a pay raise while I’m talking to Hades.” He sighed. “The boat’s almost full, anyway. I might as well add you four and be off.” He stood, scooped up our money, and said, “Come along.” We pushed through the crowd of waiting spirits, who started grabbing at our clothes like the wind, their voices whispering things I couldn’t make out. Charon shoved them out of the way, grumbling, “Freeloaders.” “Well, do you blame them?” Jasmine muttered. Charon escorted us into the elevator, which was already crowded with souls of the dead, each one holding a green boarding pass. Charon grabbed two spirits who were trying to get on with us and pushed them back into the lobby. “Right. Now, no one get any ideas while I’m gone,” he announced to the waiting room. “And if anyone moves the dial off my easy-listening station again, I’ll make sure you’re here for another thousand years. Understand?” He shut the doors. He put a key card into a slot in the elevator panel and we started to descend. “What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?” I asked. “Nothing,” Charon said. “For how long?” “Forever, or until I’m feeling generous.” “Oh,” I said. “That’s . . . fair.” “Uh, yeah,” Jasmine agreed with more sarcasm. Charon raised an eyebrow. “Whoever said death was fair, young miss? Wait until it’s your turn. You’ll die soon enough, where you’re going.” “We’ll get out alive,” Percy said. “Ha.” I got a sudden dizzy feeling. We weren’t going down anymore, but forward. The air turned misty. Spirits around me started changing shape. Their modern clothes flickered, turning into gray hooded robes. The floor of the elevator began swaying. I blinked hard. When I opened my eyes, Charon’s creamy Italian suit had been replaced by a long black robe. His tortoiseshell glasses were gone. Where his eyes should’ve been were empty sockets—like Ares’s eyes, except Charon’s were totally dark, full of night and death and despair. He saw Percy looking. “Well?” “Nothing,” Percy managed. I thought he was grinning, but that wasn’t it. The flesh of his face was becoming transparent, letting me see straight through to his skull. The floor kept swaying. “I think I’m getting seasick,” Grover said. When I blinked again, the elevator wasn’t an elevator anymore. We were standing in a wooden barge. Charon was poling us across a dark, oily river, swirling with bones, dead fish, and other, stranger things—plastic dolls, crushed carnations, soggy diplomas with gilt edges. I realized what this river was. “The River Styx,” I murmured. “It’s so . . .” “Polluted,” Charon said. “For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across—hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me.” Mist curled off the filthy water. Above us, almost lost in the gloom, was a ceiling of stalactites. Ahead, the far shore glimmered with greenish light, the color of poison. Panic closed up my throat. What was I doing here? These people around me . . . they were dead. I grabbed hold of Percy’s hand. Under normal circumstances, this would’ve been embarrassing and I probably wouldn’t have done it in the first place, but Percy didn’t seem to mind since he didn’t pull away. He seemed to also want reassurance that somebody else was alive on this boat. Jasmine noticed. I thought she might be hurt that I didn’t go to her since we’re best friends and sisters, but she just looked surprised. She held Toothless across her arm and caressed his head, giving him comfort. The shoreline of the Underworld came into view. Craggy rocks and black volcanic sand stretched inland about a hundred yards to the base of the high stone wall, which marched off in either direction as far as we could see. A sound came from somewhere nearby in the green gloom, echoing off the stones—the howl of a large animal. “Old Three-Face is hungry,” Charon said. His smile turned skeletal in the greenish light. “Bad luck for you, godlings.” The bottom of our boat slid onto the black sand. The dead began to disembark. A woman holding a little girl’s hand. An old man and an old woman hobbling along arm in arm. A boy no older than me, shuffling silently along in his gray robe. “I’d wish you luck, mate,” Charon said. “But there isn’t any down here. Mind you, don’t forget to mention my pay raise.” He counted our golden coins into his pouch, then took up his pole. He warbled something that sounded like a Barry Manilow song as he ferried the empty barge back across the river. We followed the spirits up a well-worn path. The entrance to the Underworld looked like a cross between airport security and the Jersey Turnpike. There were three separate entrances under one huge black archway that said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance had a pass-through metal detector with security cameras mounted on top. Beyond this were tollbooths manned by black-robed ghouls like Charon. The howling of the hungry animal was really loud now, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. The three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was supposed to guard Hades’s door, was nowhere to be seen. The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY, and one marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along. The other two were crawling. “What do you figure?” Percy asked me. “The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields,” I said. “No contest. They don’t want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them.” “There’s a court for dead people?” “Of course there is,” Jasmine said. “Have you not heard of Heaven and Hell? Who do you think decides where they go? Not themselves.” “Right,” I said. “For the Underworld, there are three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare—people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward—the Fields of Elysium. Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Asphodel Fields.” “And do what?” “Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas,” Grover said. “Forever.” “Harsh,” Percy said. “Yeah,” Jasmine agreed. “Not as harsh as that,” Grover murmured. “Look.” A couple of black-robbed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk. The face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar. “He’s that preacher who made the news, remember?” Grover asked Percy. “Oh, yeah,” he said. I remembered too. He was this annoying televangelist from upstate New York who’d raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught spending the money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an indoor putt-putt golf course. He’d died in a police chase when his “Lamborghini for the Lord” went off a cliff. “That bastard,” Jasmine said. “What’re they doing to him?” Percy asked. “Special punishment from Hades,” Grover guessed. “The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Fur—the Kindly Ones will set up an eternal torture for him.” “But if he’s a preacher, and he believes in a different hell. . . .” Grover shrugged. “Who says he’s seeing this place the way we’re seeing it? Humans see what they want to see. You’re very stubborn—er, persistent, that way.” We got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Then, about fifty feet in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster. I hadn’t seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid. And it was staring right at us. Percy’s jaw hung open. “He’s a Rottweiler.” Cerberus was about twice the size of a woolly mammoth. The dead walked right up to him—no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even crouching. “I’m starting to see him better,” Percy muttered. “Why is that?” “I think . . .” I moistened my lips. “I’m afraid it’s because we’re getting closer to being dead.” The dog’s middle head craned toward us. It sniffed the air and growled. “It can smell the living,” Percy said. “But that’s okay,” Grover said, trembling next to him. “Because we have a plan.” “Right,” I said, my voice sounding small. “A plan.” The only one of us who wasn’t nervous at all was, of course, Jasmine, and only because Cerberus was a dog. She would die if it means she gets to pet him. “Come on, guys,” she said. We moved toward the monster. The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled. “Can you understand it?” Percy asked Grover. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can understand it.” “What’s it saying?” “I don’t think humans have a four-letter word that translates, exactly.” “Uh, not really,” Jasmine said. Percy took the big stick out of his backpack—a bedpost he’d broken off Crusty’s Safari Deluxe floor model. He held it up, and tried to smile. “Hey, Big Fella,” he called up. “I bet they don’t play with you much.” “GROWWWLLLL!” “Good boy,” Percy said weakly. He waved the stick. The dog’s middle head followed the movement. The other two heads turned their eyes on Percy, completely ignoring the stick. He had Cerberus’s undivided attention. That may or may not have been a good thing. “Fetch!” Percy threw the stick into the gloom, a good solid throw. I heard it go splash in the River Styx. Cerberus glared at him, unimpressed. His eyes were baleful and cold. So much for the plan. Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three throats, growls I recognized. “Um,” Grover said. “Percy?” “Yeah?” “I just thought you’d want to know.” “Yeah?” “Cerberus? He’s saying we’ve got ten seconds to pray to the god of our choice. After that . . . well . . . he’s hungry. “Wait!” I said, coming up with a backup plan. I started rifling through my pack. “Five seconds,” Grover said. “Do we run now?” I produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. I raised the ball and was about to walk up toward Cerberus until Jasmine stopped me. “Wait,” she said. “What?” I asked with annoyance. “There’s three of them. They should each have one.” “I only have one.” “Let me take care of that.” She took the ball from my hands, closed her eyes and concentrated. Her hands glowed white, and when she separated them, there were two exact duplicate balls in her right hand and the original in her left. She gave me the original and a duplicate and she kept the other one. We both marched straight up to Cerberus. “See the ball?” I shouted to him. “You want the balls, Cerberus? Sit!” Cerberus looked stunned. All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated. “Sit!” I called again. I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to listen to me, but Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who’d been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissipated. “Good boy!” Annabeth said. She threw Cerberus two of the balls and Jasmine threw him the other. He caught them in each of his mouths. It was barely big enough for him to chew. “Drop it!” I ordered. Cerberus’s heads looked at me. The ball was wedged between each of his two teeth. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the balls, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at mine and Jasmine’s feet. “Good boy,” we both said. We picked up the balls, ignoring the dog drool all over them. I turned toward Percy and Grover, who were both stunned. “Go now. EZ DEATH line—it’s faster.” “You go, too, Toothless,” Jasmine said. He nodded and flew off her shoulder and onto Grover’s. “But—” Percy said. “Now!” I ordered, in the same tone I used with Cerberus. Grover and Percy inched forward warily. Cerberus started to growl. “Stay!” I ordered him. “If you want the balls, stay!” Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was. “What about you guys?” Percy asked us as they passed. “I know what I’m doing, Percy,” I muttered. “At least, I’m pretty sure. . . .” “Don’t worry,” Jasmine said. “If you don’t, I do.” Percy, Grover, and Toothless walked between Cerberus’s legs. They made it through. “Good dog!” Jasmine and I both said. We held up the tattered red balls, and I could tell that we both came to the same conclusion—if we rewarded Cerberus, there’d be nothing left for another trick. We threw the balls anyway, but we threw them at only one head, the left one. It immediately snatched them up, only to be attacked by the middle head, while the right head moaned in protest. While Cerberus was distracted, Jasmine and I walked bristly under its belly and joined Percy, Grover, and Toothless at the metal detector. “How did you do that?” Percy asked us, amazed. “Obedience school,” I said breathlessly, but I started to cry. “When I was little, at my dad’s house, we had a Doberman. . . .” “Never mind that,” Grover said, tugging at Percy’s shirt. “Come on!” We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths. I stopped. I turned to face the dog, which had done a one-eighty to look at us. Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red balls in pieces in a puddle of drool at its feet. “Good boy,” I said, but my voice sounded melancholy and uncertain. Cerberus’s turned his heads sideways, as if worried about me. “I’ll bring you another ball soon,” I promised faintly. “Would you like that?” He whimpered. “Good dog. I’ll come visit you soon. I—I promise.” “Me too,” Jasmine said. Then she gave me a comforting rub on my shoulder. I turned toward Percy and Grover. “Let’s go.” Percy and Grover pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. “Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!” Cerberus started to bark. We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld. A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies. “Well, Percy,” Grover murmured, “what have we learned today?” “That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?” he said. “No,” Grover told him. “We’ve learned that your plans really, really bite!” I kind of agreed. But monsters need attention too. Jasmine gave me a comforting hug and I wiped a tear from my cheek as I listened to the mournful keening of Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend, just like I had done to Rufus more than once so many years ago. Aww. I really liked this chapter. I wonder if Annabeth ever repaid Cerberus a visit. Please review here. |
Character Appearances[]
Main Characters[]
Minor Characters[]
- Grover Underwood
- Charon
Pets[]
- Toothless
- Cerberus