You're My Anchor

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Thalia's POV

The car journey was the longest ten minutes of my life. I kept hoping Melody was alright in school alone after the party and that these people I was going to meet would be nice. Everything was spinning. Melody had started to become my anchor- the thing that kept my world in one place. But she wasn't here and I'd almost forgotten how to breathe without her. I wanted to text her so badly but decided against it since I didn't want to distract her from school. Instead, I'd taken a breath, clenched my fists and looked out of the window as we approached.

As the car pondered onto the next street, I saw a woman, man and son stood on the driveway of one of the small buildings. The boy looked around eight and had a small piece of string in his hand. I watched, mesmerised through the car window as he played with it, creating intricate patterns with this single piece of string. His eyes were not trained on me or the driver but focused intently on the number plate. The car came to a halt and terror flooded through me. This is what I'd never wanted. But recently I'd realised that maybe it was not only me that needed time away from home but my mother too. Maybe this was what was best for both of us. Maybe, soon we'd be together again.

I stepped out of the car onto the pool of gravel in their driveway. Immediately, the boy's gaze raised to mine yet stayed a few centimetres away from my eye-line.

"You're lucky..." He said, pointing to the number plate of the car. 235 EM8. I looked over at it in confusion,

"How so?" I asked, crouching down a little to his height. He shifted his feet and looked at me as if I were stupid,

"It's the Fibonacci sequence!" The hand in which he held the string stopped moving, "2,3,5,8..." I smiled to myself at the realisation.

"Yeah, I guess it is... you're smarter than me!" I exclaimed.

"Of course I am," He said blatantly and turned to who I assumed was his mother and tugged on her sleeve twice looking up at her pleadingly.

"Let's get to know Thalia first, then you can show her around- okay?" She said, almost as if she had understood the exact meaning of the two small tugs on her jacket. She looked up at me and smiled. The large weight in my chest loosened its hold and I breathed deep once again. The clouds were beginning to dull the light of the sun as the woman welcomed me into her home,

"I'm Victoria, just call me Vici and this is my husband Andrew."

"You can call me Drew- if you want," Andrew added to his wife's welcome speech with a chuckle and lead his son to the living room couch. We all sat and Vici offered tea around. The conversation was slow at first but as time ticked by it became more fluid and I began to feel less and less tense. We were talking for around ten minutes when I realised that I didn't know the name of the small boy sat on the couch beside me.

"What's your name?" I said softly and turned towards him. He looked me up and down, clutching his string tighter. I watched his knuckles turn white and his mother leant over and tapped his fist four times. He immediately released all the tension in his fist and went back to playing with his string, paying no attention to the question I had just asked him. Silence followed the next few minutes and as I turned my head back to his parents I heard a small whisper,

"Holland." I watched Vici smile at her son and pick up a notebook and pen from the table. She passed both to him and I sensed his immediate relaxation as he nestles both of the objects into his hands.

"Holland is... on the spectrum. He isn't usually this relaxed around strangers so I'm guessing he likes you," She explained, looking at the young boy in awe as he sketched frantically in his book, "My Mom used to foster... I was determined to continue to do so after her death but Holland has been my priority for the past few years. Now I feel he is more settled, I thought an elder influence would do him good, as well as finally being able to continue what his grandma started." I smiled and walked over to sit next to the boy.

"Wanna take me on that tour now?" I asked him. His blue eyes lit up and he placed the book in my hands looking towards his parents. His father nodded, smiling at him and he grabbed me by the shirt, pulling me off the couch. After a very rushed tour of the house, he pulled me into his room. It was covered in posters of a variety of animals and the window sill and desk were decorated with small mammal figurines.

"Chameleons are my favourite," He said quickly, "Most people think they change colour to camouflage but actually it is a way to regulate body temperature since different colours reflect and absorb different intensities of heat." I thanked Mr Raidon in the 6th grade for making us memorise the scientific names of the animals in each class.

"Did you know the scientific name of a chameleon is Chamaeleonidae?" I said and curiosity filled his expression.

"Really? I didn't know that," He said slowly, grabbing the book from my hand and scribbling down a note inside. I smiled. At the time, I felt a weird aura of protectiveness over this boy. He was just so innocent and the way his brain worked was so fascinating. I'd never met anyone 'on the spectrum' but I'd always hated the classification people felt they needed to give them. I'd always hated the classification people felt they need to give everything. The only difference between this warm-hearted boy and I was that his brain worked in a way mine could never comprehend. I didn't see that as an illness or disease. I breathed out as I watched the boy scribble in his book- I think I'm actually going to like it here.

A/N

Hi! Sorry, this is so late, I ended up having to edit half of the chapters since I mixed up my tenses at some point so yeah and I also lost this book at one point due to a small bug but it was fixed promptly so thank you to the team that worked on that! I hope this doesn't seem too rushed I did want to make this a fairly big part of the story but I wasn't sure how long to spend on it since it's not exactly needed for the storyline. Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed and thank you so much for 850 reads! That's almost double since the last chapter- every read means the world to me, thank you so much!! Have an amazing day!

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