NOTE: This story is unfinished and unedited, and will not be updated anytime soon. This is from like four years ago I apologize.
16 year old CJ Lancaster is your average girl. She's lazy, she spends most of her time on the Internet, and hangs with her friends at school. She's not popular, but she's not a 'loser' either. When she's at home, CJ likes to sit around doing nothing, except when 6-year-old TJ is around. Then CJ likes to bug her younger sister. But it's all with love. She loves her parents, she loves her sister (though she'd never admit it), and she loves her dog.
But then something happens. CJ comes home to find her mother throwing clothes and valuables into suitcases, and her father guarding the door with a gun.
A gunshot sounds. CJ sees her mother's fear, feels her mother's hand pushing her under the bed, hears her mother whisper in her ear: "Whatever you do, do not do what the government says. Social services is not your friend. Trust no one. Run."
Now CJ is on the run, never in the same place. She's not experienced, but she knows some things, and the rest she'll gain with practice, and each passing moment living in fear.
CJ's sister is nowhere to be found, an neither is her father, not even a body.
She doesn't know what her mother meant by "social services is not your friend," because they're supposed to be the good guys, right? But CJ does understand one thing her mother said, and she follows that last order.
Trust no one.
CJ can still hear her mother's scream as the second gunshot rang out. She remembers crawling from her hiding spot under the bed after what seemed like eons. She remembers seeing her mother's body, lying on the kitchen floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her head, eyes open, unseeing. She remembers collapsing on the floor next to her ever-loving and -gentle mother, and being filled with anger, determination, and a need to have revenge.
It's never enough to just hope.
Remi has always loved the forest, the different sounds, smells, the way she could get lost in it and never have to go home to her non-existent parents. She goes in and out of her life with her best friend everyday just waiting until they're both old enough to leave their small boring town. But one day Remi is attacked, and nearly killed, by a man in the forest. When she wakes up everything's different. She feels something inside her, a power, but she has no idea what happened to her. All she remembers is the man's strange yellow eyes. When three new boys show up at her school, one with yellow eyes, asking her question she gets nervous. And then one night while heading to go get her friend she's taken and thrown into a world she didn't know existed.
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"Remi?" Jen says suddenly.
"Hmm?" I hum back.
"Do you ever wish you could just live in the forest? Away from everyone and everything?" She looks at me. "Free." We stare at each other for a long time. I see the real meaning in Jen's eyes. Her worries for going home to her overly strict parents. Her fears for the future and the unknown in general.
"If we lived in the forest we wouldn't have gummy bears any more." I comment to lighten the mood. She doesn't find it funny.
"I'm serious Remi! What if we did run away?"
"Jen, we can't just run away. I know your parents are strict but I truly think they just want what's best for you." She says nothing. For a moment I fear she's mad at me but then she puts her head on my shoulder and I know we're okay.