'•' The Lightning Thief '•'

3 :: Our Forever Family

Published: August 15, 2021

Edited: May 18, 2022

'•'

"Spiders.." I panted fearfully, rounding the corner of an overflowing dumpster and jumping behind it. "Can NOT be this bad!" Annabeth just shook her head, too out of breath to speak. It had been three days since we had slipped away in the night and monsters kept us on constant alert. Annabeth had acquired a big mallet to fend off the creatures and me a short section of white PVC pipe.  The giant creature raced past, too stupid to realize that he had rushed right past us. I was about to stand up when Annabeth dragged me back by my tattered sleeve.

"If it realizes we're not up there, it might come back here!" She whispered fiercely. I thought that was unlikely but decided not to say so. 

I sat down behind the smelly blue dumpster in a 'crisscross applesauce' position like we used to do in Kindergarten. To give my jittery fingers something to do, I began to try and untangle my wavy black hair. I tried to control my shaking, trying to look braver than I felt. Something growled and my head shot up at lightning speed, looking for the monster that had made the sound. I whacked my head on the back of the metal dumpster and yelped in pain. Then I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the sound. Beside me Annabeth shifted uncomfortably, her blonde hair flashing reflectively in the late afternoon sunlight. 

"'Dia it's okay, that was just my tummy." She murmured, folding her arms over her torso. I blushed, embarrassed at my clumsy startle. Both of us were exhausted, hungry and scared. The  one and a half smashed granola bars in my jacket pocket hadn't lasted past the first night and we weren't yet desperate enough to be eating out of trashcans. 

'•'

Annabeth and I stayed cramped behind that disgusting dumpster until the sun had nearly set. Then Annabeth motioned for me to follow her as we crept out from our hidey-hole. We raced across two busy streets into an seedy looking alley with a dead end. Annabeth held out her arm to stop me.

"What? More monsters?" I hefted my pipe, nearly thrown off balance in the process. She shook her head, the matted blonde hair dancing.

"No, we need to stay here for the night." She spoke certainly, looking around at the dismal courtyard. I crossed my arms nervously, still not convinced that Annabeth wasn't crazy. The blonde had claimed that a woman's voice was speaking to her, giving her advice on where to sleep and which direction to go. We had speculated that it might be her goddess-mom talking in her head.

"The voice again?" I asked half-hopeful, half-annoyed. It was comforting to think that someone was watching us on our scary journey to no-where, but it was also annoying that my sister and best-friend was either crazy or had a goddess for a mom but said goddess couldn't do anything other than tell us to sleep in dingy alleyways.

 Annabeth nodded uncertainly, probably hoping I didn't think she was nuts. But, as I had told her the night before, I was willing to follow her where ever she lead, as I had no magical voices giving me advice. I shrugged. There was no one there at the moment, but it seemed to be a popular place for homeless people to hang out. There were old, patchy sleeping bags lying around and a stack of boxes made a kind of fort around the place where a truck would unload. A door nearby was slightly ajar and a faded sign above it read something like: RCIHONMD IORN WRSOK. 

As I had learned to read in kindergarten, It had been hard. Before the school year ended, both Annabeth and I had been diagnosed with dyslexia. I didn't understand what that meant but I knew it messed up words so I couldn't read right so it probably said something different than what I saw.