Just Rose

Chapter Two

The train ride to Dallas was pretty uneventful after that. I talked a little bit more with the woman sitting next to me once I woke up and then we arrived in the station. I had a three-hour break in Dallas, which I spent exploring the city. As long as I was in a new place, it made sense to get to know it a little.

Then I got onto a different train, showed the conductor my ticket (which went without a problem this time), and looked out the window. The landscape didn't appear to change much for the first while, and then I fell asleep at about ten. Being awake for nearly twenty hours hadn't done me any good.

I woke up sometime in the late morning, hung around, pretended that a few different people were my parents whenever anyone would get suspicious, and finally took another peek out the window. It still wasn't very different- dry, burnt... too similar to where the Reids lived for my liking.

Five days and a scary encounter with some old guy outside the train station in San Francisco, California, an announcement came on in the train. "Seattle King Street Station, coming up."

I gathered together my few things. I had purchased some clothes in San Francisco and tossed my old ones, but the new pair of jeans and t-shirt weren't looking too great after having been worn for two days straight.

It wasn't raining, as far as I could tell from the tiny train windows, but was overcast and pretty dark for six-thirty in the evening. Then again, I didn't know for sure what time it was, with all the time zone stuff, and the sun could set at midnight here for all I knew.

I stepped down from the train and stood on the platform as it pulled away and the crowd slowly dwindled. Soon there were just a few people left.

"Do you have someone waiting here for you?" asked a kind, older-looking woman with her arm linked with a man who must have been her husband.

"Oh, I... no," I said. "I'm off to school at University of Washington. I called a cab just as we were pulling in, it should be getting here soon," I told her. There goes the last of my excuses. I had come up with almost fifty different background stories before leaving the Reid's place, and with all of them gone, I was a little bit worried about what I would do next time someone asked me where I was from, what I was doing, and where I was going. I didn't want to repeat any of my previous stories- doing so even once could be the only fact someone needed to find me. It was a lot harder to find fifty girls all over the country than just one.

She studied me for a moment. "We could wait here with you if you would like," she offered. "My daughter is coming to get me and my husband, but she won't be here for a good half hour."

"I'm fine, really," I assured her.

Now her husband seemed to take notice. "Did you say you're headed to the University of Washington? Good school. But I have to ask, why are you coming all the way from San Francisco? It's a bit far."

"Jason!" the woman scolded, hitting his arm. "I'm so sorry," she apologized to me. "He sometimes doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut."

"Now, Barbara-"

"So are you coming from San Francisco or somewhere past there?" the woman who I now knew as Barbara asked.

"I'm actually coming from... Phoenix. I have some family up here," I lied.

"Oh, Phoenix. Nice place," Jason said. "Our daughter used to live there. Well, in Chandler, but that's just a suburb of Phoenix. Have you ever heard of Chandler?"

"Um... I lived in Chandler, actually," I said. Maybe they would just keep talking about Chandler, wherever that was. The less they asked about my past, the better.