Lu was sitting in the middle of her world geography class going through the motions of the early morning school day. She had stumbled in the doorway not a second after the first bell wearing whatever clean clothes she had for that day. Her usual attire; Old unknown band's t-shirt, guy's hand-me-down pants and brown boots because she thought she was such a cowboy when really she was just like the rest of her family; Redneck trash.

Her young twenty-ish teacher was going through morning announcements and proceeded onto current events, her favorite part of the day. She and her brother didn't have more then four channels of TV at their house, or internet, or even cellular phones. They had to go to their brother Merle's house to watch Monday night football where he's set for life in his man-cave.

It was the usual weird stories of an illness spreading like the swine flu in more public areas, it just got a little bigger every time it was brought to the class's attention. Lu had no worries though, she was from the place where people from 'The Sticks' called 'The Boonies'. You couldn't get down their gravel road without four wheel drive after a nice summer shower in June. That was most kid's around there though.

After a mind-numbing, complete, whole 8 hours of school was done she would usually sit around the building and do homework, maybe just start walking home or chill in someone's car with them until Daryl could pick her up. His arrival time varied between 3:10 and 5:55 due to his off work schedule. If Lu wasn't at the school when he'd come, or late when he's early, he'd bark at her for the first few miles home.

She wouldn't take it so easily though. They'd holler back and forth, call names and remind each other of their faults. Once they were home it was a different world though. They still cussed at each other and were constantly stepping on one another's heels, but it was done in an orderly family matter. This was their strange relationship they developed after Emma Lu had decided to live with her biological 'Uncle Daryl' that past year or so after she realized living with her father, Merle, wasn't a very good plan.

That day Daryl wasn't going to pick Lu up from school until at least five. She could tell this by how the morning started; Daryl dragging his niece out of bed and throwing her in the truck to get to both school and work on time. He'd have to stay later at the plant to make up for Lu and her tendency to forget that Saturday mornings come after Friday nights, not the late night hours of Wednesday.

A classmate friend, a boy named Marcus, came fumbling out of the backdoor of the school carrying his football equipment nearly tripping over Lu on the curb.

"Isn't it a little late for football?" She called after him trying to hide the roll she just lit up behind her back.

He turned to look at her as he made his way to his white, dirt covered car. "No ma'am it's fairly early. Spring tryouts, you know?" He grinned and threw his stuff in the back seat. "Isn't it a little risky to be smoking on school grounds?"

She looked at what was in her hand then threw it back in her mouth. "It's Newport, hardly called a smoke."

He took it out of her mouth and leant a hand to his old friend. "Come on, I'll drive you home if you promise not to burn into the interior."

"Daryl's going to flip if I'm not here." She reminded him though she proceeded to follow him to his car.

"I'll flip out if you get expelled from school. You're the only reason I come to school for study hall in the mornings anyway, just to see what crazy thing you're going to catch someone doing and take a picture of it."

"Yeah," She sneered and dug in her bag for her cheap camera she always carried around and flipped through the random pictures of people that she took that day. "You need to see this one I got of Harper, in eleventh grade, looking like she's making lovely eyes at that young kid who skipped a grade."

Marcus laughed at the picture. "You should be in yearbook, Lu."

"No."

"Why?" He mimicked her in a high pitched voice and pulled out of his parking space.

"Because it involves socializing with people that aren't… that aren't like you, really. I mean, I've known you for like, five years and hadn't gotten to know you really up until this winter. You took a chance to talk to the strange girl because you're open! Now you're like, the closest thing I have to a friend and you just can't get rid of me now."

"If I wanted to get rid of you I would have already, and you shouldn't knock the rest of our high school so soon. I'm being your friend openly, soon enough you're going to be coming to parties, invited out with people, maybe get asked out if."

"So their going to like me because I'm with you?"

"No!" He ran his hand through his hair and thought for a moment.

"Marcus, you gotta tell me straight up, do you like me just for the ball of awkwardness that I am, or is this going to end up like a bad 90's teen movie?"

"What, are you afraid that I'm taking you in as my pet, making you popular so I can feel better about myself?"

"And making me the Prom Queen so you can win a bet with your friends…"

"I think those are two different movies."

"I think you're avoiding the question!" She rolled up her window as he turned on her gravel road.

"No. I'm friends with you because you do your own thing. Someone tells you to join yearbook and you just reply with 'hell no' and walk away. I think you're friends with me because I'm almost a better tracker then you," she gaffed. "I just thought 'hey, I should introduce my new friend to my old friends so we can all be friends together and I won't have to go crazy trying to make time with my two best friends.'"

"Sorry." She shrugged. "I've just never been the outgoing type when it comes to the people I know. Total strangers I can tolerate, even if I'll never see them again, or I'll have them in my every day life forever after our meeting. Totally opposite when it comes to my brothers. Those two stick pretty close."

"Yeah." He sighed and looked over at his friend clutching her bag with her camera on top. The pictures that she saves on there in hopes of one day printing them off are mostly of strangers.

Lu has this thing with remembering faces and keeping sentimental things like that when it comes to photographs. When she was little she never had pictures taken of her. The only one she has is of her and her mom laying down on her grandmother's kitchen floor. Her mother was three sheets to the wind, just got home from a cocktail party or something with the girls, and Lu was just three years old waiting up for her. That pretty much sums up the first part of her life.

She keeps these random faces, sometimes in a box or a book, and writes their names on the back of them if she can remember. It would make her day knowing someone had her picture in their possession just laying around. She'd have that knowledge the someone thinks of her whenever they see it, or just acknowledges her existence.

Marcus opened his tiny, tender heart up just a little bit to find enough courage to ask, "How is it going at home?"

"It's fine." She snapped and immediately shut him down completely.

Lu stumbled out of the car and shuffled to her doublewide trailer house. Marcus would usually wait until she got in the front door just to make sure he wasn't deserting her completely if she was locked out. However, just as she got to the bottom of the porch steps Daryl flew out of the house and started barking at her about staying at school.

"Merle was gonna get you right at three…"

"The final bell doesn't ring until 3:10, stupid!" She cut him off. "And why was Merle going to get me today? I have two legs, I can walk home myself!"

"Or get rides from strange boys. I don't like that kid all around."

"You don't like anybody." She brushed past him into the house.

"My brother made an appointment for you," he started, a bit ashamed as he reminded her of a doctor's appointment Merle had made for her a week or two ago. She supposedly had a problem with depression and needed immediate care, just a quick fix, something along the lines of pills one could take once or twice a day…

This was their deal. Because Lu was young dealing with stuff way beyond her maturity level doctors were most likely to help her by giving her happy drugs that would make her concentrate, feel energetic or all around better. If she went in once in a while with a problem and came out with a prescription, she'd be able to keep living with Daryl and away from Merle.

Merle was a decent father as long as he stayed away from Lu for long periods of time. She always had a fight in her no matter what the hour or day was. It was just natural waking up in the morning ready to defend yourself in anyway. All of them would argue about anything under the sun but it was Daryl who wouldn't turn it into a physical fight.

To make a short story really short the three of them decided that Lu living with her uncle for the most part was the best plan. She still had a spot for herself at her father's house though, in the spare room between the gun cabinet and the washer and dryer.

This all was decided at a very young age. Around the same time when six year old Emma Louise outgrew her 'baby-name' and preferred to be called 'Lu' after a nickname her mother used to call her: Emmy-Lu. That also was around the same time she decided she was going to call Merle and Daryl her brothers rather then father and uncle.

It was all very complicated but to a misunderstood six year old girl it was all very simple. She saw these two men in their upper twenties not as her overseers or caretakers or just older members of her family that needed to take care of her. They were, at the time, just two bachelors who didn't even know how to take care of themselves. Granted now days they both are still somewhat the same as they were before, but they were more the people that had to take care of her in order to prevent her from getting lost in the system. They were simple, immature, semi-responsible older brothers to this six year old girl and have remained that way ever since for almost ten years.

Daryl and Lu were usually at each other's throats about something. They'd claim that they hated each other, but at the end of the day they realize that they are the closest ally they have. For instance, that day months ago, Lu was supposed to go to a dreaded appointment to lie about fake problems. Daryl never agreed with this and would prefer his 'little sister' not to be yanked around. Not doing that though would be stepping out of Merle's order. No one wants to step out of that mans order if they could never pay the consequences.

Those days seemed so intense. The days of high school drama, family matters and keeping people at arms length. Trying to lie with a straight face took no effort at all and all Lu couldn't wait until her eighteenth birthday. She was planning to quit school with enough credits to graduate that spring and join the military. Everything she was dealing with, all the things that come with being a teenager, are just old memories of someone else's dopey life.

They were her days gone bye.

Lu packed up her brown native-printed blanket she adopted as her own weeks before and threw it in a green duffle bag on top of a few hundred shells for her double-barrel gun. These three simple survival tools were the only things that she called her own now other then what she carried on her body and winter was drawing near. It was another day of shuffling just to make it towards the next. It was another day closer of reaching civilization, another person or maybe even one of the others.