Chapter 4

The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out,

I didn’t have to. He’d booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had,

so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle,

watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he’d always acted nervous and

fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I’d

always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease

him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I said, “Looking for Kindly Ones?”

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. “Wha—what do you mean?”

I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the

exam.

Grover’s eye twitched. “How much did you hear?”

“Oh ... not much. What’s the summer solstice dead-line?”

He winced. “Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean,

hallucinating about demon math teachers ...”

“Grover—”

“And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or

something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ...”

“Grover, you’re a really, really bad liar.”

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. “Just take this,

okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I

finally made out something like:

Grover Underwood

Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800) 009-0009

“What’s Half—”

“Don’t say it aloud!” he yelped. “That’s my, um ... summer address.”

My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I’d never considered that his

family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

“Okay,” I said glumly. “So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion.”

He nodded. “Or ... or if you need me.”

“Why would I need you?”

It came out harsher than I meant it to.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam’s apple. “Look, Percy, the truth is, I—

I kind of have to protect you.”

I stared at him.

All year long, I’d gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I’d lost

sleep worrying that he’d get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting

like he was the one who defended me.

“Grover,” I said, “what exactly are you protecting me from?”

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the

dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed

and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver

announced that we’d all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody

else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place you’d notice if you didn’t

break down there.

On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing

cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat,

was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of bloodred cherries and

apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice . There were

no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple

tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I’d ever seen.

I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The

lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady

in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.

All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather,

silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton

dresses.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.

I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had

drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

“Grover?” I said. “Hey, man—”

“Tell me they’re not looking at you. They are, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?”

“Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all.”

The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver,

long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.

“We’re getting on the bus,” he told me. “Come on.”

“What?” I said. “It’s a thousand degrees in there.”

“Come on!’“ He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the

yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends

balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be

for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out

of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

“Darn right!” yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. “Everybody

back on board!”

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I’d caught the flu.

Grover didn’t look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were

chattering.

“Grover?”

“Yeah?”

“What are you not telling me?”

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “Percy, what did you see back at

the fruit stand?”

“You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They’re not like ...

Mrs. Dodds, are they?”

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies

were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, “Just tell me what you

saw.”

“The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn.”

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might’ve been

crossing himself, but it wasn’t. It was something else, something almost—older.

He said, “You saw her snip the cord.”

“Yeah. So?” But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.

“This is not happening,” Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. “I

don’t want this to be like the last time.”

“What last time?”

“Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth.”

“Grover,” I said, because he was really starting to scare me. “What are you

talking about?”

“Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me.”

This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.

“Is this like a superstition or something?” I asked.

No answer.

“Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to

die?”

He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers

I’d like best on my coffin.

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