Saviours *HEROES OF OLYMPUS FANFIC*

Chapter 8 -Leo

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for this job.

It's hard enough living on your own, a run away at seventeen. Well I like to think I'm a runaway but the truth is that no one actually cares where I am.

Reyna didn't ask any questions when she hired me couple of weeks ago. She said that she wouldn't let me work any school hours though, so I might as well go to school. I told her I was just getting settled into town before I enrolled in the local high school but the truth is I had been hoping no one would mention it.

I've thought about dropping out, but I'm really into mechanics and engineering. Like really advanced stuff, I could get to the top of every school I went too if I needed to be. Although I told Reyna all this at the job interview, along with the fact that I can make tofu tacos, butI know she only hired me because I was Latino and it would make the cafe feel more authentic.

I can't complain though, I'm just happy to have the job.

I'm disappointed about how things went down with Calypso though. I finish my shift at 8:00 pm and I'm tired and trying not to think about homework or calypso or school or work at all.

Other than that though I don't know what to think about, sometimes I feel so full of nothing and other times too empty of everything.

Finally it's 8 and I take the stairs to the overhead apartment I'm renting. When I told Reyna that I was having troubles finding someone to rent to a seventeen year old she said I could stay in the apartment upstairs.

I'm thankful she hasn't asked questions about why I'm on my own. The truth is I need to stay a little under the radar until I'm 18. My Dad left before I was born and my Mum died a couple of years ago in a fire.,I got put in the system but the last foster carers I had didn't care where I was, I just hope they haven't reported me or I'll be easy to find since I enrolled in a high school. I doubt that they even noticed I'm gone though. I just wanted to get out and be my own person, I'm sick of being owned by the state. I'm sick of having everything inside me because no one understands how alone I am.

My apartment smells like burnt toast and coffee. It's messy but pretty much empty. I have two laundry baskets on the floor, in the blue one I keep my clean clothes and in the red one I keep the dirty clothes until I can be bothered to do the laundry. Sometimes I get them mixed up when getting dressed in the morning though.

There is only a double bed in the bedroom which is messy with blankets. A couple of engineering books are stacked next to it making a bit of a table.

Soon I'll get my school text books to add to the pile. There is a tiny bathroom with a toilet, shower and sink.

The main room though has a mini fridge, an old tv I fixed, A table I made which I'm especially proud of and a couple of kitchen benches. The sink has dishes in it but both the table and the kitchen benches are covered with screws and tools, as well as projects I'm working on.

The couch is worn and old but comfortable. I open the mini fridge and pull out a frozen Apple pie, I ate at the cafe on my break but I'm still hungry.

I slide it into the microwave oven and sink into the couch whilst it cooks. I pull a sheet of paper from the table and find a pencil on the floor. It's blunt and I can't be bothered looking for a pencil sharpener.

I get up and grab a pen out of my tool belt which is sitting on the kitchen bench. I drop down into the couch again, the piece of paper was a flyer for a school fete but I had scribbled measurements at the top of it as well as sizes for drill parts.

I flip it over and apart from a coffee ring it's blank. I start to sketch when I suddenly remember the drawing I slipped into claypsos bag.

The drawing of a dragon she had watched me doodle on my notebook page. I laugh to myself, I'll have to make it up to her at school tomorrow.

I don't know what had made her come to Madre Tierra after what we talked about at school but I had been a jerk for not explaining.

I'm just glad I hadn't written my number on the drawing like I was going to, if she had found that after leaving the cafe it probably would of ticked her off even more.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and scroll through the contacts, names that mean nothing to me now. I need a new phone as this one is crap and I don't want my calls to be tracked. If I'm going to run away I want to so it properly, at least pretending that there are people looking for me.

Even though I'll be dumping this one soon I delete all the contacts and my shoulders feel lighter.

I chose this area based on the high school, it was not great academically, it wasn't athletic and it wasn't full of snooty rich kids.

I had moved schools several times, especially after being in and out of temporary foster care placements that dragged on for months. This though, was the first school I had chosen on my own.

It was in the state over but that was only two hours away from my last foster placement. I chose this school because of the significant lack of background check they did. They literally let anyone in and the only paperwork done was barely more than you have to do when signing up for a library card.

I'm trying not to think about Calypso, I fall for girls easily and desperately. It was hard for me to find girlfriends as a result of me coming with so much baggage. Lots of girls couldn't understand or handle me opening up to them about everything I've been through.

I didn't expect them to understand but when they told me they couldn't handle it I felt like screaming.

Did they have to go through it all?
Did it feel like they had tried out for a hundred different replacement families for the one they had lost?
Did they have to relive all this every time anyone asked if they were okay?

All they 'couldn't handle' was doing something other than making out with their boyfriend.

It was easier not to be myself, to be someone people thought was full of himself, confident and completely oblivious.

I can be myself when no one is watching, where I can be messed up from the loss and emptiness that fills my chest.

It was easier this way, to accept defeat and surrender to an endless fight I could never win.