Hello again, everyone!

I hope you're all doing great and that life has been treating you well :-)

It's been six years since I finished 'Hiding in Alleyways'. Six years in which everything has changed for me, and my life is in a very different place than it was when I wrote that story. And yet, I still receive regular emails notifying me of new favourites and followers, both for HIA and for me as an author, so firstly, I just want to say, thank you!

It's the highest honour to know that I've written a story that is still reaching people even now, six years after its completion. I'm honestly shocked that so many of you have followed that story, and that there are so many people still discovering it and following it even today.

So, with that in mind, I've decided to do something I first had the idea for six years ago, after finishing 'Hiding in Alleyways':

Welcome to the first chapter of 'Living in Shadows', the story of Percy and Annabeth's now-adult daughter Ella, a college student living out of home.

I started writing Ella's story a few weeks after posting the final chapter of 'Hiding in Alleyways', but I didn't feel like it was ready for me to release at that time. But I've given it a lot of thought, and, while I may not be able to post as regularly as I did for HIA, I've decided that the time is now right for it to be released into the world.

Thank you all for your support and love for 'Hiding in Alleyways', and I hope you love 'Living in Shadows' just as much. As always, please read, review, favourite and follow!

Without further ado, here's Chapter 1!

LilRed17

Chapter 1

"Are you sure?" I asked, biting my lip, dismayed, as I stared at my professor. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. An essay was bad enough on its own, but –

"Yes," he responded, hands clasped on the desk in front of him. "The essay must be based on one real-life example of a child affected by the social work system. It can be listed and referenced as one of your sources, an anonymous case study, but it must be included."

I looked at my hands. "All right. Um... I'll try and find one. Thanks, Professor Stevenson." Picking up my bag, I slung it over my shoulder and started trudging out of the classroom.

"Ella?"

I turned back, my bag bumping my hip. "Yes?"

"You start your community service project this week, don't you? At the primary school?"

I stared at him, puzzled. The community service project was part of my Community Outreach subject, a mandatory undertaking for all junior-year social work students. "Yes. Why?"

"You could always try asking around at the school and see if someone there fits the profile and is willing to talk to you," he suggested, closing his laptop and standing up. "It couldn't hurt."

I nodded slowly. Not a bad idea, but... How was I going to convince someone to talk to me? "Thanks for the idea."

I turned away and, pushing the glass door open, walked outside to my car.

When I moved out for college, just over three years ago, I initially lived in the dorms on-campus with a roommate – chosen for me by the RA – who was always out partying. Eventually, though, I grew sick of the constant noise and, in my sophomore year, moved into an apartment a few blocks away with Layla Martin, another girl from my History class.

Layla, I quickly found out, liked to live among bright colours and objects. A side-effect of being an extremely talented artist-in-training, I suppose. So when we started renting together – a four-room spread on the fifth level of an apartment building around the corner from school – she brought her colourful lifestyle, along with her colourful personality, into our apartment.

She also brought her boyfriend, Connor: a senior, recipient of a basketball scholarship and one of the nicest guys I had ever known. He and Layla had been together since her senior year of high school.

So when I opened the door after returning from my meeting with Professor Stevenson, I fully expected to see Connor in our apartment – like he was every other day whenever he had classes that finished before two in the afternoon – at best, eating our food on our couch; at worst, making out with Layla on our couch. I had walked in on them more than once and it was never a pretty sight.

I pushed the door open slowly just in case, and peered around it. Seeing only Layla on the couch, sketching and watching TV, I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped into the living room, shutting and locking the door behind me.

"Hey. How was class?" she murmured, her attention on her sketchpad.

"Fine. Okay." I dumped my bag on the coffee table and made a beeline for the kitchen.

I grabbed a bag of BBQ-flavoured chips and heard the volume on the TV decrease. "What went wrong?"

"What makes you think anything's wrong?" I queried, pulling a mixing bowl out of the cupboard below the sink. I ripped open the bag of chips and dumped them in the bowl, stuffing the empty bag in the bin.

"Because you deteriorated from 'fine' to 'okay' in two seconds flat," she replied, twisting around on the couch to look at me. "And because you love salt-and-vinegar chips the best. BBQ flavour are for when you're sad or frustrated. Comfort food."

I scrunched my nose up as I munched on the handful of chips I just stuffed in my mouth. Swallowing, I revealed, "Professor Stevenson said I have to use a real-life example in my essay for his class."

Layla cringed and I felt a tiny bit better, knowing that someone else understood how much I would hate that. "That sucks."

"Yep." I stuffed another handful of chips in my mouth. Time to change the subject. "Is Connor coming over tonight?"

"No. He's going out with his brothers." Her boyfriend belonged to Kappa Alpha, one of the more well-known fraternities on campus. Layla liked that he was in a frat because she – and, by extension, I – got invitations to most of the parties there. I liked that he was in a frat because it gave him another place to be besides our apartment. Nothing against Connor – he was a great guy and got extra points for treating Layla like a queen – but sometimes three was a crowd, especially in our small space.

"Speaking of," Layla began, turning to face me fully and propping her chin on the back of the couch. "Kappa Alpha's throwing this massive party next Saturday night and Connor's invited us to go. It's out on the field behind the frat house and there's gonna be a bonfire and food and music."

"No." I picked up another handful of chips and began eating them one by one.

Layla frowned, her dark brown eyes crinkling. "Why not?"

"Because I hate big parties," I said in the same flat tone, the one that promised zero negotiation. I used the tone with my mother, when she tried to persuade me to study a bit closer to home, and with my brother, when he tried to convince me to get a tattoo on our sixteenth birthday. Both times, I stood firm on my decision.

Layla fixed me with a stare and flipped her long black braids over her shoulder, exposing the three piercings in her right ear. "Ella, I get that you don't like being social outside of class. I also get that, because of this, you're going to hate interviewing whoever you choose for your essay. But we have gone to the fewest number of parties possible over the past three years because I have tried to support you and that ends now. We are going to that party and we are going to look hot." She turned back to face the TV and resolutely began sketching again, as if the conversation was over.

I blinked twice, then picked up my bowl of chips, walked over to the couch and plopped down onto the other end, across from my roommate and friend. "I'm not going, Layla."

"Oh yes, you are," she muttered, without looking up from her sketchpad. "I'll do your hair and makeup and you can raid my closet because all you own are hermit clothes."

"If you're referring to the fact that I don't own any 'partying' clothes, then just say so," I said, stung. I ate another chip. "But jeans and sweaters don't count as hermit clothes."

"They do if it's all you wear," Layla sniped.

"I can't raid your closet," I complained. "You're, like, two sizes smaller than me." On top of her studies – and an Internet-based custom design business she ran out of her bedroom – Layla was also a member of the college cheerleading squad.

"Then we're going shopping," she sang, waving her pencil in my face. "Face it, Ella, you have two choices: shopping or my closet."

I pulled a face. I hated shopping even more than I hated loud, obnoxious frat parties. "Fine. I'll raid your closet."

Layla grinned. "And let me do your makeup."

I sighed. "And that."

"And hair."

"Fine." She beamed at me and turned up the volume on the TV.

I sank lower onto the couch and stretched my legs out to lie on top of the coffee table, the bowl of chips balanced on my jean-clad knees, somehow feeling even more sullen than when I came home.

Community service, an interview to organise and a frat party with my roommate and her boyfriend.

This week was going to suck.