To Find A Place

By: Moonlightbear

Summary: It's the place where love takes over hate, where confusion becomes clear vision, where once you were lost, now you are found. This is the story of Lilias Connor, a girl who seen too much, but knows so little. Formally, It's a Hard Demigod Life…

Disclaimer: these books are so good I wish I could say I wrote them, but I didn't… please give it up for the brilliant Rick Rioridan!! Although all characters you know are his, but the ones who are new are mine and I'm proud of it!!

Chapter Four: School, School, and more School

School wasn't so bad. I cried when my mommy left. My roommate, who made a big entrance by having a yelling match with her stepdad in front of the dorm building, wasn't bad either. We got on really well. Her name is Delia Reten, and she's from Seattle, WA. Her mother died when she was four and now all she had in the world was her stepdad, who wasn't happy to be stuck with her. "I've gone to boarding school ever since I started school. School doesn't agree with me, this is the third one I've been to." She told me once. I told her about my school experiences too. For once in my life I didn't feel different anymore. She loved poetry and music; where as I enjoyed the horseback riding and language classes. Sure it was hard because of my dyslexia, but I worked past it.

The school was pretty cool. They had kids from 36 countries, all girls, and they specialized in Latin, horses and the arts. It was a really tough school, but with all the extra study hall and teacher's aids, I did pretty well. Delia and I spent a lot of time together not just in our dorm room but also in the dozens of dyslexia workshops. Fifteen percent of the student body actually had one learning disorder or another. Dyslexia, ADD, and ADHD were some of the main ones. Kids at school joked all the time that that's why their parent sent them away. On the weekends, I spent most of the time helping with the horses. Sometimes I'd talk to them and they always seem to understand, but that's just silly!

When I came home for Christmas break I was no longer sleeping in my brother's room. On the second floor of our house there once was a computer cubby. It's a tiny little room that has desks built in on both sides and just enough room for a chair in between. Well for the past few years it was filled to the hill with storage boxes that didn't fit in our cluttered shed, basement, or attic. They must have done some serious cleaning during the fall, because the computer cubby was cleaned out and inside was a barely fit twin size bed. It was ok… My home clothes were in mom's side of her her's closet. All the kids were as nuts, quiet, or smart as ever.

The winter term was just like the fall one. There were maybe five new students and after spring break we got a new science teacher. He was kinda strict and blew up the lab on the last day of school. He went totally crazy and started to scream at several of the students, me included and if I could have helped it. I didn't want to be included in that! He sorta just disappeared too. No one knew where he went.

Need less to say, the next fall, I was at another school. This school was smaller student wise, but bigger building wise. Every kid had their own room. That was nice! Until I realized it's not easy to make friends when you have classes with different people all the time and you're never around someone long enough to get to know them. It was a lonely semester; I was so glad to be home for Christmas and lied to my mom when she planned on sending me back for the winter term. I told her some wild story that I didn't even think she'd actually believe, but she did.

My third boarding school was in Oregon, farming land. I loved the settings and this one had horseback riding, which I love as you know. There was a bully problem here though. I got myself in some major issues because if the target wasn't me it was my friend, Ellie. She was a tiny little thing you could knock over with a twig. She just started boarding school and she was always home sick. If she wasn't crying in a corner, she had her nose in a book, or she was grooming the horses. We had great fun out at the stalls together. The best part of this school was just one month before we went home for the summer Ellie spoke her mind to those wretched girls who were giving us such a hard time all year. Just the looks on their faces! Oh, it was priceless!

Unfortunately, when I turned ten, my brother Eli was old enough for school and mom decided to send him away, like me. She wanted us to stay together so, lucky me! I have to change again… Ellie and Oregon, well they were a girls only school. It just wasn't fair! I liked that school, nothing freaky happened there, it wasn't boring or lonesome. I wanted to stay! But what could I do…

Eli was my brother though… I loved him, even if he drove me nuts. I swear that year I heard my name called a bazillion times through the halls, but when I needed him for something I could never find him. Oregon was cheesecake compared to this place on the bully scale. Ninth graders loved to pick on the littlest kids and Eli was the third youngest in the entire school. It took me a few months but they learned to stay far away from Eli Connors.

I didn't realize how fidgety I was until I began worrying about my brother so much. My mom told me I had to watch him. I was his protector. Ever since I started school teachers always made small comments about me possible being ADHD but at the age of ten is when I was actually diagnosed with it. They said it ran in the family, because Eli was diagnosed that year too. I guess it made sense, but they should have noticed Eli sooner because it's kind of hard to miss.

Nothing much happened at the school and I had a few good friends, but just like every other year I went to another school. We changed, mainly because of Eli's imagination, I thought. He told mom he saw big puppies in the shadows; his words, not mine. I told him he should have played with the puppy and bring it home. Mom flipped out on me and told me it wasn't funny; trust me I won't joke like that again (at least not while she's around).

Oh, and get this, we have the newest member of the family, Noah. Before him were the triplets: Addison, Arynn, and Abigail. The A crew were the ones mom was pregnant when I first started boarding school. This completes my family for now. With so many people, it a running joke that chaos is our family motto at home.

That summer was my mom's Ten Year College Reunion, and we went to San Francisco for the week leading up to the party. We went to Fisherman's Wharf and rode on the cable cars everywhere. It was loads of fun. Mom said we would go to Alcatraz when everyone was older, so we didn't go there. We never made it to the reunion either. The day before the reunion we were on the beach when a loud explosion sounded. And if you looked far over to the right we could see debris in the sky from Alcatraz. My mom and stepdad were worry for our safety and we left that night.

A few days later Mount St. Helen erupted hugely, steam and lava all over the place. It was scary, I can't remember if any body was killed though. I live in Arizona, so I don't have to worry about stuff like that; I only saw it because mom was watching the NEWS a lot.

When Eli and I went to school again, we went to this place in Texas. I had my horses back and they had foil fencing too. Once during lunch, Eli found me. He was pouting. He really liked the swords, but the teacher said he was too aggressive. I tended to get the same remarks, mostly because they paired me up with the jerk who has thought he was better then me since the first day he got there. That year Eli and I bonded a lot. He helped me with the horses all the time. He'd talked to them just like I did sometimes, and we both felt like they could understand us. Eli tried to ask me what dad was like, but I couldn't give him much because I didn't know anything about him. I wasn't mean though, I didn't tell him my feelings about dad, about the way he got her pregnant and then disappeared. I didn't think our dad really cared about us, but I kept that to myself.

Just after spring break we got a new horse, but it was a mean little sucker. No one could go near it, I tried a dozen times, but no one could except for this one lady. I didn't like her, she was a teacher for one of the older grades and any time I saw her in the halls she'd always give me these dirty looks. I had to watch Eli super close because never liked it when others didn't like him, namely the horse. The school called him Daemon. I felt like that just added to his mean personality.

Over the weekend, Eli and I were practicing not being so aggressive with our foils outside. It's nearly been a full school year and we still have trouble, but it was more fun to be hard and fast, rather then controlled and slow. We use our instincts more then what we learned. We were at the edge of the woods practicing when we heard people screaming. The evil horse was galloping across the ground, chasing and biting people, and then it saw my brother and I and made a bee line towards up.

"Split up!" I yelled and Eli ran for the buildings while I dove into the forest. I ran as fast as I could, but I heard the angry snorts of a very pissed off horse. He wasn't far behind me. I was scared shitless; what was I supposed to do?! The foil sword would just bounce of the horse. I was getting tired, running wasn't my strongest suit. I saw a tree in the distance with perfect stepping spots. I climbed the tree easily, but the horse knew I stopped running and circled the tree several times, snorting and huffing. It cocked its head up and to the side and I knew it saw me. It tried jumping at me and I stuck my foil at it. I pocked one of the eyes out and it went nuts and ran off, only to come speeding back and rammed the tree. I screamed holding on for dear life. It took off and rammed the tree again and the roots were starting to come out. The tree was gonna fall over! It was too big if I didn't get out I'd be crushed, but if I did get down I'd be killed by a raging horse.

I stabbed the horse again, but it didn't do much. Its skin was tougher than my stupid foil. It rammed the tree again and the tree gave an almighty creak as it tilted and slowly fell. Thank god it fell slowly I almost got out before I got trap; unfortunately, I didn't get all the way out and was indeed trapped, it just didn't hurt as much. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but my attention was swiftly directed back at the crazy horse that was racing toward me. I grabbed the first thing my hand touched, I thought it would be my foil I had dropped, or a branch, but instead I picked up a big ass gold looking sword. I barely had time to register this before the horse ran straight into it. Well that was dumb on his part. The craziest thing wasn't me stabbing it, but rather it bursting into dust when I did. For a few minutes, I couldn't see or breathe, and I think I passed out. The next thing I new there was students and teacher pulling the branches off me. Someone said, "Where did that crazy dog come from?"

I was like, "What?! It was a horse, that mean horse."

A teacher near me told me to calm down and relax. In the end, I had no broken bones just a bunch of scratches and bruises. The school sent out a report about the rabid dog to all the parents. The parents of the kids, who were bitten, sued the school royally. My mom picked me and my brother up and asked us what really happened. Eli was on the same trip as the rest of the school, it was a rabid dog. They all came to the conclusion that it followed me into the woods and kept running after I had climbed the tree. The tree only fell because it was old and when I climbed in it I made unbalanced and it just tipped over, trapping me underneath. No one ever saw the gold looking sword either and everyone insisted it was a dog, not a horse like I saw. I thought I was going crazy, so I just kept my mouth shut and agreed with the story Eli told mom. Afterward mom said, "They're not ready to go, not yet." She'd mumble. "I'm not ready."

We finished school at a public school in Prescott, and had the whole summer to hang out. Matthew and Megan played pirates with us a lot. We'd use Star Wars light savers, long paper towel roll tubes, sticks, and styrofoam swords. It was great fun! Andrew was always reading, Dale loved his video games, the A team were totally into building things with blocks, legos, pans, and dishes. They drove mom nuts. Little Noah was sick with a cold or something all summer, so he was sleeping a lot.

Mom was really weird all summer. She barely painted and watched me and Eli constantly. I swear I found her watching me sleep a few times, and that's not easy considering where my room was. I heard mom listening to our song a lot too and she'd talk to herself, like: "I promised him… but they may never come back if I let them go… 'now I understand why you pushed me away'… I've got to think of the big picture…"

Alexandar was getting upset. He wanted his wife back. He wanted her attention and they fought a few times because of this.

The last month before we'd have to go to another school, a toxic terrorist attack hit New York. I only heard about this because my mom had been addicted to the NEWS and weather channels lately. There was this big storm system that traveled all the way across the states. We had rain for days in Prescott, but it wasn't as bad as up north. It was like everything was going crazy. There were tsunamis hitting a bunch of the coasts along the borders of the Atlantic Ocean. The weirdest thing though was, well, it all stopped on August 18. The storm was over, the toxic terrorist disappeared, tsunamis stopped… Whatever was happening just ended, and everything went back to normal. New York took sometime to recover, but they were fine in the end.

--End Chapter—

Come on now!!! Review!! Please?!!!! Thank you!! Oh and next chapter almost brings us up to speed with the prologue! Yeah!!!