Miles Dilara and the Quest for Legends (A Percy Jackson fanfic)

5: Songs Make Me Ugly Cry

We all continued around with our stories. For the most part it was the same. Lived with one parent for most of our lives, ran away at a young age, trained at camp. Not everyone ran away obviously. Some just came for the summer. I learned what people fought with, Xander his spear, Alyssa and Tony both used swords, Roxanne had her gun, Jackson also preferred guns, Jay had a bow and arrow, and I had my daggers. After a little while the ride became quiet, the trip now monotonous. We still chatted occasionally, and the music sometimes played a popular song that we sang along to.

"Do you want to play tic tac toe?" Alyssa asked me, pulling out a notebook and some pens. I shrugged. "Sure, why not."

Xander gaped at me. "Why not? Tic-tac-toe is the worst game ever. 99% of the time you have a tie! It's so annoying."

I laughed as Alyssa turned toward him and teased, "That's why I didn't ask you to play with me."

We started doing a tic tac toe tournament, and during my game versus Tony, Alyssa suddenly clutched my arm, her nails digging into my flesh. I glanced over, concerned to see her face pale. And then I understood. My eyes softened and I hugged her.

"Alyssa, I'm so sorry."

She didn't respond, only held me close and cried into my shoulder. I'm sure we looked strange to the rest of the teens, but they didn't say anything. They couldn't have known.

Only Alyssa and I were there the night her mother died. And what spurred on this bout of sadness was the music that was playing softly through the speakers of the hovervan. It was Alyssa's mom's favorite song, and coincidentally, also the song that was playing when she died. Now, Alyssa and I would always think of her when this song played. It wasn't a sad song, it was actually a very fast beat song but the song had special meaning now.

"And we will be together," Alyssa whispered to me along with the last few lines of the song.

"Always and forever," I ended. Alyssa pulled away from me and wiped at her eyes. I was still shaking from the solid reminder that we trained to kill monsters for a reason. When a monster kills your best friend's mom, you get angry. And I was still heartbroken from that.

10-year-old me was passing through the city where Alyssa lived when I was running away, and I ran into Alyssa's mom. Like, actually ran into her. She was jogging, and I turned the corner and she knocked me down.

"Oh I'm so sorry," she said, helping me get up. Then she looked around. "Where are your parents?"

10-year-old me adjusted my backpack and nudged up my glasses. I looked up at the woman and said, "I ran away. Excuse me." Then I stepped around her. The woman grabbed my backpack handle.

"Hold on one moment. Why did you run away?"

"Let go of me," I said, then shrugged off my backpack, twisting around to yank it away, and reaching for my two daggers that I carried with me- the one gift I had from my mom.

"I'm sorry, I don't want to hurt you. But I can help. Are you running away from that monster?"

My mouth had opened a little. "How did you know?" I asked. The woman bent down next to me. "Hop on my back. I have a daughter around your age. We need to run from the monster that's chasing you."

I was still suspicious, but I figured that this woman was better than whatever monster had been following me, so I put back the daggers, but kept them nearby just in case. I wasn't sure what the monster was, but it seemed to not want to attack me outright and had been waiting. I could never get a good look at it, and to this day I don't know what it was.

The woman was surprisingly fast, even with me on her back, and ran to a neighborhood and let me into her house. A girl around my age sat up from something she was working on.