Thalia

Chapter 14: Bad Timing

Chapter 14: Bad Timing

Can't people mind their own dang business? I'm just a tense girl with superpowers. Calm yourself down, fools.

"It's her!"

"You're Thalia?"

"Can you take a photo with my son?"

These people are asking way too many questions. I have an already bombed half-date to attend to. "Um, hi. Yeah I'm the. . . Thalia? I really don't have answers to your questions right now. I'm just a teenager and I'm still in school. . . so. . ." An uneasy silence falls over the crowd. Their eyes just stare at me in speechlessness. This isn't a circus. You don't see me running around like a nutcase juggling newborn babies, do you?

A little boy, maybe seven, approaches me at my leg. "Ma'am? Can you sign my action figure?" He raises up a palm sized toy of superman and a black sharpie. Apparently, nobody cares that a little seven year old boy is walking around with a permanent marker in his hand with eternal-rest-worthy parts. I know I'm not the only one that sees this right?

I take the marker from his hand and kneel down to his level. "Sure. What's your name, kid?" Bet it's something girly like Amanda.

"James Bond." Oh, my what kind of ignorant, selfish, stupid thinking parents named you that? No offense if your name is James Bond, though. The figure is placed into my palm and I start to sign an "R" and quickly write over it with a "T". That was pretty close wasn't it? Crap, it's ruined. I might as well have wrote the alphabet, overlapping with my left hand.

"Thank you! Thank you so much! You and Superman should date!" James comes forward and envelopes me into a soft, warming hug.

Hugs. Sounds familiar. It's almost like a faint smell you can't quite define with me. Affection is something I'm not really used to which is why I unconditionally freak when Ryan almost kisses me, touches me, or even looks at me. The old grunge of a father I had never cared about people's feelings and how much they could hurt. You'd think that when you tell a girl under the age of ten that she's a foul piece of nothingness, it'd hurt her. My dad's logic said otherwise.

He's dead to me now. Dead to me. I don't ever want to see him again. A tear escapes my eye and I wrap my arms around the little boy sinking my head into his neck.

"Um, mom? Get her offa me. I don't know what she's doing." Oh, snap. I didn't think this through. I guess it's kind of eerie if your "hero" starts crying on your shoulder because you asked for an autograph. You better make up some quick save before that boy burns his action figure 'til it's milk.

"I'm sorry, James." The tears are quickly wiped from me and I look at him in the eyes. "I'm just crying because I've always found Superman attractive but I have a boyfriend now." James' eyes are the size of Pluto--which is still a planet to me--and he looks totally freaked out of his loving, innocent mind.

He starts to grab his mom's hand and walk away with her. "I just wanted an autograph, mom." I hear him mumble quietly to her. Well my fan-club just dropped to negative one people. Yay.

I guess I should stand up or something and find Ryan without actually finding Ryan because if I find Ryan then he won't know it's me and--oh crap! Ryan! He doesn't know where I am! My eyes search the whole area, skimming over the dust tree and find him sitting in the pile of leaves playing with one of them with this distant, depressed look on his face.

He thinks I ditched him! This day is turning out so horrible. Every date I have with him somehow gets completely and utterly complicated.

"Thalia! We would like a few words with you! I understand you are a busy young lady but may we please ask some questions?" It'd be rude to leave them there wondering but Ryan looks like he's about to get up and walk off a building. Just when he was going to kiss me I take off and never make it back.