7 Years: Annabeth's Story

7 Years: Part 1

once I was seven years old, my mama told me go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely.

Annabeth ran away. She packed a backpack with what she was able to scrounge from the pantry without being caught and she didn't hesitate. With one last look to the room she had lived in for seven years, she stepped out of the door and was gone. They wouldn't send anyone to look for her so she didn't bother wasting time keeping her head down as she strode through the streets confidently. Confidence- they were less likely to ask questions about a seven year old on her own if she looked like she had a purpose.
Maybe they made up reasons for why she was walking all alone, gripping her backpack strap tightly. "She's just meeting her dad at the park" or "I'm sure her mother's just a little ways behind." It almost made seven year old Annabeth laugh. No, she wanted to yell at all the people who passed her by without a second glance, they aren't. She had run away to be noticed by someone, family or not, and her Athena child brain found a certain level of irony in the fact that even now, she was still alone and unnoticed. Not even a single police car.

She had grown accustomed to the loneliness, to telling herself bedtime stories and singing herself lullabies, but it felt more deafening now. She couldn't even pretend she had someone now, she thought as she curled up in a small alley, hoping and praying nothing would come her way. As she kept traveling, she became tougher. She couldn't afford to want people, she had discovered. If she wanted someone too much, she would suffer for it. She made it on her own. She didn't thrive, but she didn't die in the streets, and Annabeth took that as a victory.Her mother started sending signs. Annabeth figured it was because she had proven herself somehow- some test she hadn't realized she was taking, and Athena was pleased with the results. Maybe it was her independence, her ingenuity...or maybe the goddess had simply decided Annabeth was worth keeping alive. Whatever the reason, Annabeth found some strange and probably unhealthy, her mind whispered, comfort in the idea there was a pair of eyes out there that cared, even a little bit. And then she was sleeping and something startled outside and the noise made her shoot up and she gripped the hammer she had found earlier and scurried to her feet, looking around to find the source of the noise. It was a person and that terrified her."Thalia, look what I found," the guy whisper-yelled, stopping Annabeth's vain hammer swing easily. "Come on, kiddo, I'm not going to hurt you."Annabeth may have given him an unimpressed and unbelieving glare (and hadn't she been right, she thought, as she sat in her cabin and stared at the knife- hadn't she been right to be so doubtful that she wouldn't get hurt), but Luke just smiled at her.She opened up. How could she not? They gave her a knife and the skills she hadn't been able to teach herself. They gave her hope in the shape of a destination, a safe place that the three of them would reach together. She would thank Athena silently at night, for letting them find her. It felt like a gift back then (and maybe it was, just a gift too good to exist that had to crumble eventually).She hadn't been alone and even if there had been warning flags back then, she knew she would have ignored them. She was too desperate to believe someone, too young to be able to close herself off enough. Give an inch and she ran the mile and the mile was the death sentence for her heart.