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

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

Kis stared out the window, watching the city lights bleed into the desert dark. She didn’t smile, but the tension in her shoulders eased.

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. It was the love of girls who had

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

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.” Alexis dug into her duffel bag and pulled

Kis was last. She turned her head, just enough for Meadows to see the hard set of her jaw. Then she dropped a single, folded piece of paper onto the wet pavement. It was a list of every violation, every skimmed dollar, every “accidental” lock-in of the basement. A copy was already in an envelope addressed to the state licensing board, sitting in a mailbox two blocks away.

“Get back here or I’m calling the cops! You know you’re not allowed to leave the property!” Alexis kissed the photo and tucked it back

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.