The morning sky was grey, that kind that didn't promise rain but held a silence heavy enough to echo her thoughts. Claire stood at the end of the bus terminal, her suitcase scuffed and dirt-streaked from miles of running-not from danger, but from everything that no longer felt like home. Cities blurred behind her. So did names, streets, and the hollow goodbyes she'd stopped replying to. At seventeen, she wasn't just leaving a town. She was leaving behind the version of herself who never questioned who she was supposed to be.
The city around her buzzing with unfamiliar life. Horns, hurried feet, strangers talking as if they had somewhere important to be. Claire had no destination. No plan. Just a crumbled piece of paper with an address scribbled in fading blue ink, handed to her by a women she met two weeks ago in a church hallway, who had looked her in the eye and said " you don't have to stay lost forever".
She clutched that paper like a lifeline now.
Her heart pounded, louder than the traffic. What if this was another dead end? What if this new life wasn't a new life at all, just another shadow she'd have to walk through? But she took a breathe-slow,steady-and stepped forward.
For the first time in a long while, no one was pulling her back.
Maybe she was still lost. But she was walking. And that had to count for something.