-runaway Love - Alexis Love- Veronique Vega- Lindsey Meadows- | Kis-

“Alexis! Veronique! Don’t you dare!”

Alexis shook her head, a tight, sharp motion. “There’s nothing to go back to.”

The bus doors closed with a pneumatic sigh. The engine growled to life.

Alexis dug into her duffel bag and pulled out a crumpled photograph. It was of a woman who looked like her, but older, sadder. Her mother, before the drugs, before the disappearances. Alexis kissed the photo and tucked it back. “Alexis

It was the love of girls who had no one, and so became everything for each other.

The Nevada sunrise painted the mountains in shades of orange and pink. The bus crested a hill, and below them lay a valley with a rambling, honest-to-goodness ranch. A sign read: Second Chance Stables – Help Wanted.

The runaway was over. The living was about to begin. “There’s nothing to go back to

Lindsey Meadows stood at the edge of the parking lot, her pink bathrobe flapping in the wind, her dyed-blonde hair a wet mop on her head. She looked less like a predator and more like a furious, wet cat. Behind her, Dwayne’s truck’s headlights blazed.

She wasn’t being dramatic. The group home on Mulholland Drive had been a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. Alexis had aged out of the foster system six months ago, only to find herself shuffled into a “transitional living” facility run by a woman named Meadows. Lindsey Meadows had the smile of a televangelist and the cold, calculating eyes of a loan shark. She took their government checks, skimmed their meager paychecks from the warehouse jobs she forced them to take, and called it “life skills training.”

The bus hissed to a stop. The three of them moved as one, a small, ragged army. They weren't friends, not in the beginning. They were just three girls who shared a bathroom with a moldy curtain and a terror of the dark hallway. But fear had forged them into something harder. Sisters of the road. It was of a woman who looked like her, but older, sadder

The third member of their escape was already outside, leaning against a chipped concrete pillar. Kis—no last name, just Kis—was the strong, silent type. She had a faded bruise on her cheekbone from the last time she’d mouthed off to Meadows’ boyfriend, a hulking man named Dwayne. Kis didn’t talk much, but when she did, it mattered. Now, she simply held up two bus tickets to Nevada.

Alexis looked at Veronique. Veronique looked at Kis. And for the first time in a very long time, all three of them smiled.