"Dad, why did you run away with Johnny when you were younger?" I had asked my father late one night after I had found out everything. I just couldn't get it through my head that my father had been an accomplice. I couldn't believe he had witnessed a murder, done by his best friend.

"We had to. We didn't know what would happen if we didn't," he admitted. My dad's and my relationship had been strained in the weeks since I had found everything out, but I still had questions.

"Do you regret it?" I asked him. He gave me a funny look, and I realized how stupid that sounded. 

"There's nothing I regret more than that night, Hope," he told me. Which I understood, but it kinda made me sad too. In a selfish way, I guess, because if that night didn't happen, if they didn't leave and the fire didn't happen... It was a horrible way to think about it, but if Johnny Cade didn't die... Would I ever have been born?

I couldn't just ask that like it was nothing. I was sure it was hard for him to talk about anyways.

"Don't ever get yourself into something like that, honey. It was the worst mistake of my life." 

.....................................................................................................................................

I sat back down in my seat on the train next to Eli, but I didn't sleep. I couldn't. Everyone around me was, but I sat there, awake, my thoughts taking over. How did it get to this point? My life was falling apart. My parents were getting a divorce, I was gonna have a new little sibling I didn't want, I was losing my boyfriend and my best friend, the only person I was talking to right now was once the person I hated most in the world, and I was on a train, with nowhere to go, screwing my life up more than I could fix and there was nothing I could do about it now.

I wondered how long we would be gone, and wished Eli had talked me out of it instead of going with. Would we miss prom? It's not like I could go anyways, but everyone else could.

Would I miss my little siblings birth? On the few dollars we had, I doubted we could last that long away, but it was still something to think about. And school, what about school? How far behind would we all fall, would we have to repeat the year?

This was all a big mistake. But at least I had my friends. If I could still call them that.

I sat up, awake and thinking about everything. I couldn't believe I had done this... It was a few hours before any of my friends woke up, and decided we were too cramped here to go much further. We decided to get off at the first stop that morning. So we grabbed the little stuff that we had, and got going. We didn't have a clue where we were, or how far from home we were, or anything. 

"This feels so... freeing," Faith, who had never done anything bad or "wrong" in her whole life, said, breathing in the surroundings. We looked through the train station into the new world we'd be staying in for a while, and that was when I saw it. 

Windrixville Station. 

My stomach sank and a pit formed in it. I didn't want to believe it.

"W-Windrixville?" I said aloud. It was just my luck. 

"Looks like it... Have you been here before?" Alex asked. I shook my head. 

"I..." My voice trailed off, and we wondered around for a few minutes, grabbing a map of the city, before leaving the train station. It seemed very big, and I got overwhelmed looking at it. I handed it over to Eli pretty quickly and asked him to figure out where to go next. He gave us directions and we walked until we got to the place he wanted to set up camp, just a few miles from where we began.

"Where are we?" I asked him after an hour or so of walking. It was cold out here, and I was shivering, just wanting to get to some shelter. He shrugged, looking around. There was a white building, and a little 

"Somewhere called... Jay Mountain? It looked like there were a couple hotels," he said. There was a crummy motel that looked like it had been there since the 1930's or before that he pointed to first.

"I bet we could afford something like that," he suggested. We all nodded in agreement before going in. It looked so old that if the rooms weren't free, they had to be dirt cheap. Otherwise, no one would have stayed. 

"Hi," I said to the man at the counter when we walked in, smiling. "How much for a room?" He looked us over. He was an older man, round with a long beard and a yellow toothed smile.

"For the four of ya's?" He asked, eyeing us. I nodded.

"Fifty bucks." He pronounced it as "fity". I looked at my friends, waiting for someone to say if that was too much, because I really didn't want to tell him that we didn't have even that much on us. Alex whispered something and I started getting really nervous. I gestured to Eli, trying to get him to say something.

"But for you kids?" He gave us a smile, and picked up a key. "No charge." I gasped. 

"You look like you need somewhere to stay, and I'm not about to put a few kids out on the street. It's not safe out there," he told us. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief, and it felt good. Someone had cared about us, something had gone right for us.

"T-thank you," I said, quietly. Eli and Alex thanked him too, and he handed us the key, giving us a quick direction of where to go. 

"I cannot believe that just happened!" Faith exclaimed when we were out of earshot. I nodded in agreement. Life doesn't work out that way, especially for people like me.

"We got really lucky," I responded, happily. It felt good to not be worried about the next step. It didn't last very long...

A/N: I want this story to be over and done with by like... the end of the week, so I'm gonna be writing nonstop these next few days. Hope you enjoy!