Anarchy's Daughter

 CHAPTER 1

            The bus ride to Charming was a long one. The rain hit the windows of the bus hard, like a sheet coming one after another. I leaned my head against the window, looking into the dark night as I saw the city lights coming towards us. A brightly lit sign said ‘Welcome To Charming’. I wondered if my face was put on Amber Alerts yet. I mean, I know that my foster parents may think that I was kidnapped, but the police might not. I was a seventeen year old foster kid. They’re not even going to need to look at my record of different homes. They will see the foster part and assume. I find it sad, but truthful.

            I mean, I was running away…

            I wanted to meet my father. I dug a little bit into my mother’s background (which was hard in itself to do since it was supposed to be a closed adoption, but hey, being a hacker can have its kicks) and from there talked with her friends about her relationships, men she was around seventeen years ago. The man that they all kept talking about was named Jackson Teller.

            The real trick was that we had the same last name. Sometimes parents can choose their kid’s last names before going into adoption, though in closed adoptions it is rare, it can happen. I don’t know why my mother wanted me to have my father’s last name, but that’s what she put on my birth certificate: Sidney Alice Teller.

            All of her friends said that my mother was with him for about a year before he broke up with her, or moved away, something of that sorts I know that. The tales conflicted with each other sometimes.

            There was only me and an old lady on the bus. I had been on here for about nine hours and I was exhausted, bored, and cramped. But at least when people were leaving I could move to different spots that had more space. I slept a little, but I mostly stayed awake, too scared to close my eyes. There were a lot of creepers on this bus before. And at the last stop when it was just me and the old lady, I didn’t go to sleep because I didn’t want to miss my stop.

            My plan only really got me this far, a bus to Charming. After that, I was going to be flat broke and wandering the streets until I found out where this Jackson Teller lived, which wasn’t exactly going to be easy since it was eight o’clock at night. If it wasn’t raining then I would have just found a bench to sleep on and start in the morning but I didn’t exactly have a plan for all of this rain coming down. If I couldn’t get anywhere then perhaps I could find something else to shelter me from the rain for the night.

            It wasn’t long until we were in the city, the lights burning in my eyes from the darkness. I cringed a little and closed my eyes a bit more before opening them again. Soon the bus stopped and I sighed, getting up. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and put up my hood on my sweater. It was thick to keep me warm, but not water proof. I would be soaked soon.

            I walked off the bus and looked around. I saw the road that led out of the city and I knew that I couldn’t go that way, so I turned and began walking more into the city, looking for a house that looked pretty and would hold nice and normal people.

            I had been walking for six blocks before that happened. I went up to a red bricked house and knocked at the door. In those six blocks of walking my shoes were soaked and my sweater was too. Everything on me felt soggy, even my backpack. My hair that was showing through my sweater was soaked and so was my face. My hands were freezing as I knocked.

            I stepped back a bit from the door when I heard someone open it. I looked up at the person and gave him a smaller smile. There was a man in the doorway, maybe in his late forties with balding black hair and a pot belly. He gave me a weird look and asked, “can I help you?”