I ran until I couldn't hear her apologizing anymore. I ran until I couldn't recognize any of the tall buildings that seemed to go on for miles above me. I ran for what seemed forever.
I ran until I couldn't, until the exhaustion caused by the frustration and disappointment and absolute terrifying fear of not knowing exactly what the hell I was doing weighed on my shoulders, like Atlas carrying the weight of the world.
I collapse on a nearby park bench, a dim light above me, my throat tight.
I had failed the one person in this world that made me want to stay in it.
The thought of him lost, alone, without me, afraid, is enough to frustrate me into tears.
People pass by, paying no attention to the freezing homeless kid beneath them, and it comes as no surprise. All I've learned in this life is that people will fail you over and over, especially when they don't have to deal with the consequence of failing you.
I wipe my eyes and exhale, and tell myself I will never let anyone fail me again.
The money I'd snagged from my mother's dresser before I ran away, an impressive forty-nine dollars and sixty-two cents, was now reduced to a couple of crumpled bills in my pocket I figured would be too depressing to count. My clothes were stiff from having worn them for days, and my latest actual contact with soap involved the cheap foamy kind in a shady-looking gasoline station full of tired people that obviously didn't think anything of the faceless, messy-haired, scrawny homeless kids like me who silently passed by them.
I stared into the dirty mirror, the tagging in thick black sharpie bordering it like some kind of pathetic picture frame, and try to make sense of what's looking back at me.
To say I looked like a mess was the understatement of the century.
My tired gray eyes had dark rings underneath them, as if I had liquified violets and injected them into my skin. My nose was bright red, in contrast to my unusually pale face, and my lips were in dire need of Chapstick. They were split as if all of the thoughts I never had the courage to voice were trying to escape me and find their way into the world. My hair was messily cut and dyed a hideous dark brown color that didn't suit me at all, but in retrospect, at the time, the only thing on my mind was picking the first thing my mother wouldn't recognize.
My mother. My mother, if she was still looking for me, wouldn't rest until I was back home, back listening to her drunken rambling, trying to hold her down when she started smashing glasses in the kitchen after she'd had too much. She'd pressed her mouth against those fancy wine bottles like God was in there and she'd been searching for salvation. She hurt me and… me and him, in ways any other mother couldn't dream of doing.
"I'm going to get us out of here, alright?" I'd told him every night, holding him tightly in my arms, while she nursed her latest hangover in bed. He looked up at me with his bright gray eyes and nodded quietly, burying his face in my neck. He trusted me.
I can almost feel him in my arms again, his light blonde hair by my face, his innocent little smile, the thin white scar he'd gotten when he tried to-
"Hey, what the hell is taking you so long in there?!" a voice demands, pounding on the door.
I splash water on my face and shove the door open, hitting the voice's pleasant owner in the process. "Be my guest." I breathe sarcastically, pushing past him.
I walk away, trying to put as much distance between me and this miserable place as possible.
My name is Thalia Grace, but the way I'm stumbling through these dirty streets, absolutely unsure of just where it is I'm going, you wouldn't think there's anything graceful about me.