Thalia Grace was twelve when she ran away from the wretched women I had been forced to call "Mom". I only grabbed a few hundred dollars, a backpack, some food, and a couple blankets. So there I sat, in the central park on a bench all alone while passerby's stared at me like I was some freak.
"Bug off!" I shouted at this one lady who was staring at me for a minute or so. She had a baby in her carriage and quickly hurried off. It was cold outside, and the wind whipped against my face, making it red and hurting. Suddenly there was a boy next to me on the bench; he looked around my age, maybe a year or two older. He had sandy blonde hair with a few streaks of brown placed here and there. His eyes were the same color as the midday sky, and his grin was mischievous and wicked. I looked away for a minute so I didn't look like a stalker, but when I turned back, he was gone and so was my bag.
He was fifty feet away, leisurely walking with his hood on his navy blue Abercrombie hoody over his head. I stood up quickly and dashed towards him at full speed. As I reached him, he turned towards me with a bronze knife in his hand. He held it shakily, his eyes wide and scared, but I could tell this kid was just acting. My hand shot out to the hilt and I ripped it out of his hand as his facial expression turned into a real state of shock.
"Bag." I held out the hand without the gleaming knife in it and he pulled the bag off his shoulder. I chucked the knife into the woods ahead of me, and opened the backpack, looking to make sure everything was still in it.
"Way to throw my knife." He mumbled sadly as he turned his head towards the woods in despair.
"Stay here and I'll get it… And if you move from this spot I will chuck this knife into your back." I threatened as I slowly walked backwards and the turned and sprinted the wood. I looked for a brief second, saw the glimmer, and picked it up.
"SHIT!" I yelled as I grabbed it from the wrong side. I dropped it quickly, along with my bag and held my hand in pain.
"Whoa, are you okay?" The boy asked voice full of concern, as he sprinted towards me.
"Uh, yeah. Fine." I said with gritted teeth. He got my backpack from the ground and started looking for something.
"Hey—" I started as he put his hand over my mouth and kept rummaging through. He pulled out one of my thinner blankets and ripped a strip off of it and moved his hand from my mouth.
"Gimme a sec." He sighed, pulling a bag filled with lemon squares from his pocket. He pulled one out quickly and put it in my good hand. "Eat it." He demanded, and I did as he said. As soon as it touched my tongue, I was going to spit it out. It tasted nothing like lemon squares! It was more like my nanny's home made chocolate chip cookies.
"By the way, I'm Luke." He smiled again, and his facial features became more distinct; he had pointed ears, and high eyebrows. He'd be targeted as a trouble maker like me.
"Thalia." I mumbled through my teeth as he started to wrap my hand up; it stung like a bitch slap but after a few minutes it started to feel a bit better.
"So what are you doing in Central Park in the middle of the night?" He asked quietly, looking at me with cute puppy dog eyes.
"Ran away from home." I smiled sheepishly before an impressed expression appeared on his face.
"That takes guts." He grinned at me, then handed me my backpack. I started walking to the park bench and when he didn't come I turned and asked,
"You coming?"
"Yeah, sorry." He jogged up to me and we fell in step until we sat on the bench facing each other.
"Why are you here? At Central Park, I mean."
"My mom's psycho so I ran away."
"Sweet." I laughed. A chill ran down my spine as the wind whipped against me once more. I pulled out one of my blankets and handed it to Luke.
"Thanks." He mumbled, wrapping it around himself. I took one of for me, and hung it over my shoulders.
"So how old are you?" I ask.
"Thirteen. You?"
"Twelve."
"Oh. That's cool." He smiled at me, but it wasn't as creepy as before.
"How about we blow this popsicle stand and we go get some Starbucks?" I asked quietly as I pulled out a twenty dollar bill from my bag.
"Sounds like a plan." He stood up, keeping his blanket wrapped around him still. I got up after him, and we started our journey.
"Oh, curse my dyslexia!" I growled as we got into town. I couldn't read a single sign; they were all written in bright letters and worse: they were mostly in cursive.
"You have dyslexia too?" Luke asked me quietly as we kept trudging through the cold wind.
"Yeah. Hence the reason I said, "Curse my dyslexia.""
"ADHD too?" He asked me curiously and I shook my head in agreement. "Shit… That's almost a sure sign."
"A sure sign of what?"
"Here it is. Go on in; I'll explain in there…." He pushed me into the store that actually happened to be Starbucks. I told him what I wanted, and he told me to sit in the back alone. After a few minutes, Luke came back with two steaming drinks and a smirk.
"Mortals." He scoffed quietly, looking over at the café worker and sat down across from me.
"As if you're not?" I laughed but he looked dead serious. You'd think I was weirded out by this kid but I'd met stranger. He seemed quite okay in my book, maybe even a little better then okay.
"Whatever. So anyways, explain to me about that "sure sign" thing." I demanded hastily as I took a sip of my steaming hot chocolate. The heat actually felt good; warm spread around me, making me much more comfortable.
"Don't talk until I stop okay?" I didn't say anything so he took it as an agreement. "The gods are real." Add a deep rumble of thunder in the distance here. "Everything you do in your life revolves around the gods of Olympus. And you, Thalia, are one of their children."
I cracked a smiled and laughed aloud, "Are you kidding me?" He looked nothing but of straight out serious, but I still couldn't help but laugh.
"Thalia, think about it. How many times have you been in a plane?"
"Quite a few, actually."
"Do you swim often?"
"No, I'm a terrible swimmer."
He scoffed and kept going. "Afraid of the dark?"
"…Maybe…"
"Afraid of heights?"
"NO!" Was my immediate response, but he could tell I was lying. Truth is, I'm deathly afraid of heights. My mom, once, took my brother… Jason and I to the Empire State Building and I refused to go to the top. And another time, we had a field trip at school to go mountain climbing—
"Do you like thunder storms?"
Now he perked my interest, "Of course! I mean, they're like amazing. How quickly the noise comes and goes, as if someone is getting angry and then calm once more!"
"Oh, so you mean like Zeus?" Thunder growled across the sky angrily as if hearing the name Zeus had gotten it mad.
"Um, sure. You mean like Hera and Poseidon and Hephaestus and Aphrodite and Hermes—"
"My father." He snorted quietly as if he didn't want me to hear, but I looked up at him with wide eyes, taking another sip of the delicious hot chocolate.
"Your father, huh? Hermes… The wing dude guy person?"
"Flying shoes, yes. He can't fly without them, but whatever."
"So it's all real, Luke?" From behind me, a man's voice came, causing me to jump and spill hot chocolate down my night black long-sleeve shirt.
"Why are you here?" Luke spat, not even attempting to look at the strange man. He had dusty blonde hair, the same as Luke's, with the same sky blue eyes, just a little older and more jittery.
"Let me properly introduce myself to this young lady, boy, before we get into yet another fight. Thalia Grace, my name is Hermes." He smiled at me excitedly, taking the chair to my left, looking at my terribly baffled expression.
"Father, way to give her a heart attack! She is ah… Like me, you do understand she needs to go to CHB before she gets eaten, right?" He explained to his father as I stared, confused, at the ceiling like an idiot.
"Daughter of Zeus." He smirked with a creepy grin on his face. It hit me like a brick then; he was speaking to me. Luke was no girl, and I was. And I really don't think he was addressing the morbidly obese women sitting in the corner on her laptop.
"Are you speaking to me?" The words busted from my lips and I blushed a terrible shade of red.
"Yes, Thalia." He laughed lightly, seeming to make the room seem brighter.
"You're kidding me. You're both insane, aren't you? You just made it out of the asylum didn't you? You, you're on drugs or something. This isn't true at all." I still couldn't believe these idiots.
"Hun, you really shouldn't speak to a GOD like that. Some aren't as… Oh, how do I put it? Nice." Hermes, the psychopath, smiled cunningly as I let out a nervous laugh.
"You guys are seriously crazy… Well, I'm going now." I smiled sweetly, picking up what I had and started running off.
"Thalia! Wait!" Luke called from behind me, but before he could say more I was outside, the wind whipping angrily at my face.
"Where are you going?" A voice said from behind me, and I turned to see who it was, no one was there. And when I turned back forward, I ran into the most insane person, Hermes. He didn't seem quite amused by my fear, but he didn't seem quite upset either.
"I'm going. This is crazy! You… People are making me crawl back to her!" I shouted insanely as I kept rushing forward, running to nowhere.
"Thalia Joanna Grace, sit your ass down before I have to." This was Hermes again, but he said these words with such a shocking force that I slowed down and stopped in front of the closest place and sat. How he knew my middle name, but now I didn't want to question him. He calmly took his place across from me, now with a smirk upon his lips, and started to speak.
"It'll be you if you don't go with him. He's starting now… He's going to start now and if you don't help him all will be lost. All of it. And you don't want your crummy world to fall apart just yet, do you? Then help him, girl, help him and we'll all be spared. Please…. Please save my son from his terrible fate… I would save him myself but I cannot… Save him." He muttered on and on, in a trance, his eyes a thousand miles away and yet they pierced through me like a spear. "Save him!" He hissed as Luke came sprinting towards us, his face as red as possible, huffing and puffing about some 'retarded dad'.
"Bye father. Come on, Thalia… I thought I heard something in that alley that sounded suspiciously like sobbing." Luke smirked slightly as he said this, then when I didn't respond he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the alley.
"Mommy, help me please." I heard someone sob, but it was muffled, like they were hiding behind something. It sounded like a little girl, no doubt, but where was she?
"Stupid father! Grrrr, I wish he—"
"Hello?" We heard her voice again, but it wasn't sobbing, it was a paranoid question.
"Hello?" Luke echoed her, walking closer to where he thought the sound came from.
"Hello?" She called back, echoing him this time, yet again.
"What's your name?" I wondered allowed, silently cursing my ADHD. We waited a few minutes in stark silence before she replied,
"Annabeth."
"That's a very pretty name." Luke smile, even though the young girl wouldn't be able to see his cute dimples, and his shining eyes and—Whoa, Thales, watch yourself there. You just met the kid.
"Why don't you come out so we can tell you our names?" I taunted her quietly, trying to find the source of her voice. Suddenly then top fell off of one of the garbage cans and clattered to the ground. And then there she was, Annabeth, who popped out quickly from the garbage and took a deep breath. She had blonde hair that was washed in sunlight, which cascaded down her shoulders in dizzying curls. In the dark, you could still see her storm gray eyes analyzing everything about us.
"Who are you?" She asked curiously as she hopped out of the garbage can and landed with a light tap of her feet.
"I'm Luke." He smiled, staying where he was as she walked forward in her combat boots, dark blue sweat pants, and a huge sweatshirt that said, "Arhry Ottpre Vnecention." I couldn't make it out – screw you dyslexia, yet again – but I was pretty sure it did not say that. Unless it was in another language.
"And you are?" The girl asked me, turning and walking a foot in front of me, looking me up and down as if I was a model and she was the designer.
"Thalia." I smirked as she looked quite impressed with my overall "performance".
I looked down with a small smile on my lips and as Luke gasped, my head shot up to Annabeth and above her head was an owl bathed in silver light.
"A daughter of Athena…" Luke breathed, staring at the now disappearing owl above her head. "Congratulations." He smiled and walked up to her, and gave her a hug. At first it was terribly awkward, and she didn't hug back, but eventually she grabbed onto him and started sobbing.
"I-I miss my daddy! I-I m-m-miss Bobby and Ma-mat-mat-Mathew!" She croaked the words as her tears began to freeze on her face.
"It's okay, Annabeth…. Here… I'll, uh, make you a promise." Luke smiled, holding her in one of his arms as she sobbed hysterically on his shoulder.
"What's the promise?" She whispered, rubbing her face hard with her sleeve to rip the ice from her almost frost bitten skin.
"Me, you, and Thalia. We'll be a family from now on, kay?" Luke started, and she turned her face to his in surprise. "That means we stick together no matter what, whenever, where ever, forever, alright? So none of us will ever be alone again."
"Luke…" I mumbled, making eye contact with him as soon as I looked up. We both had the same thoughts running through our heads, I'm sure: We've just met. All I know is that Luke is a son of Hermes, I'm a daughter of Zeus, we both ran away from the fucked up place we us to call home, we met at Central Park, and he helped my injured hand. Not your usual meet and greet, for sure, but I could feel that some sort of bond had already formed and I couldn't let Luke down. I couldn't let Annabeth down either, considering Luke just promised that we would stick together no matter what. I'm pretty sure Annabeth ran away too, or maybe she was from a hobo family and she got lost… No, I'm pretty sure she ran away too. So now we have three runaways on our hands, all "demigods"—
"What the hell… We're demigods." I muttered aloud.
"Yeah, Thalia, we are…." And off into a lecture Luke went. As he babbled, I spaced, thinking. What the hell am I doing? I'm not daughter of Zeus! I should just go "home" now and pretend I never left at all. Why the shit would she care?
"Thalia, c'mon we're gonna find somewhere to sleep for the night, kay? We all need our rest if we're going to make it to Camp…"
"Luke, what's camp?" Annabeth asked, with curiosity seeping in her voice.
"You'll see Annabeth… Now, come on!" He smiled awkwardly, and then we ventured off in to the merciless night.