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"OKAY, WE WALK FROM HERE," Glenn told the group as he stopped the car beside the train tracks. Juliet grabbed her leather bag and jumped out.
The train tracks were rusting, half covered in ivy, the metal tainted by time and neglect. It made Juliet think of her parents. They could've taken a train instead of a car, maybe then, they would've lived. There were so many ways they could've been better, so many ways that could've changed Juliet's life forever.
She remembers how she came home from school that day, everything seemed normal. Walking in the house, the floor covered in beer cans and empty needles, pill bottles.
They were always too high to pick them up later, and Juliet was scared to touch them. Her innocent mind thought it was contagious, whatever it was they were taking.
She dropped her small bag on her unmade bed—she had the bag ever since she was five, now she was thirteen.
All the kids made fun of the childish unicorns and rainbow pictures on her bag, she felt ashamed but her parents spent their money on something that was way more important to them. White powder.
Juliet called out their names, half thinking they were passed out in their rooms as she headed there, knocking on the door respectfully and then opening it when she heard no response.
They weren't there.
In fact, nothing was there. All their clothes were gone, their stuff, their shoes.
It took her a second before she realized they'd just left. Without her.
She didn't think anything of it, since she'd been left home alone since the second she learned how to walk.
They were going to come back, was what she assumed.
But the next morning, they weren't there...
Maybe she should've been worried, should've callef the cops or something—they could've still been alive at that point.
But Juliet went to school, learned her multiplication and read her children's books and came home.
And they weren't there.
But the cops were.
She was terrified, even tried to run away. But they told her that she wasn't in any trouble. None at all.
They told her that her parents weren't coming home because they were in an accident. But when they found the needles and pill bottles, they looked at her differently.
