Every night my dream's the same / Same old city with a different name / Men are coming to take me away / I don't know why, but I know I can't stay

- "Keep the Car Running" by Arcade Fire

Luke ran.

He ran out of the principal's office. He ran past the receptionist. He ran out of the front door of the school. He ran past his bike and through the parking lot and out into the street. He kept running through town, past the post office, past the McDonald's. He didn't stop running until he finally reached his house, struck speechless by the sight.

To the left was an ordinary small-town house, number 1134. To the right was a similar house, number 1142. But in the middle, where Luke's home used to be, was a smoldering wreck. The roof had caved in, but some of the walls were still half-standing in a valiant but ultimately useless attempt to keep the house standing. The fire had already been extinguished. The blackened skeleton of this place he called home silently shouted the message that he would never live there again.

Luke ran up to one of the firefighters. "What happened to my aunt and uncle? WHAT HAPPENED TO-" he yelled then stopped mid-sentence as he noticed a nondescript black van with the word CORONER on the side of it in a cold, impersonal font. Laid down next to the van were two figures covered in black plastic.

Luke vomited.

His ears were pounding, and he felt dizzy. He felt his pockets: he still had his smartphone and his wallet, containing a credit card, a library card, and about $25 or so in cash. In his backpack he still had his textbooks, a pencil case, some notebooks (some for school, others for drawing), and the lunch he had packed that day. He had lost everything else.

Luke ran, again.

He didn't know where he was running this time. He had nowhere left to go. He simply ran away.

Some time later, he finally had to stop to catch his breath. He then looked around: he was on the side of a county road, one of the few leading out of town. How the hell did I get all the way out here, he thought to himself. Cars whizzed by, going far above the speed limit, as one does on small, fairly empty county roads. He kept walking on the shoulder, still in the opposite direction of Stafford. He went on, probably for about half an hour, when he heard a car come by, slower this time. It kept slowing down and came to a stop next to Luke.

"Need a lift, kid?"

Through the window of the dust-covered white sedan, Luke saw a large, shaggy dog, its tongue hanging out and its right ear turned inside out, its left still flopped next to its face. Next to the dog, in the driver's seat, he saw a skinny, darker-skinned man, probably a year or two older than Luke, with long, greasy hair and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. He was wearing a brown leather jacket over a long-sleeved shirt that may have once been white but had long since been stained to a faded cream-ish yellow-ish color.

"Did you hear me, kid? Need a lift? I need to keep the car running, she's a bitch to start."

Luke finally responded, his throat dry, "Where you headed?"

"San Diego," the man responded.

Luke wordlessly climbed into the backseat of the car and sat in the middle, attempting to buckle his seatbelt - he heard the click each time, but as soon as he let go it came undone again.

"This piece of shit never had working seatbelts, but trust me, I won't crash her, and if I do, you'll be fine."

Luke was wary about this as the car looked like it could fall apart at any second, but he stopped trying to buckle in. San Diego, he thought. Luke had never been to San Diego before, but it seemed like as good of a place as any now that he had nowhere to go.

"What's your name, kid?" the man asked as he pulled back onto the road.

"Luke. Luke Skywalker."

"Well if that ain't the second-most pretentious name of anyone I've ever met."

"What's the most pretentious?" Luke asked.

"Mine. The name's Han Solo, nice to meet you."

AN: Here at the end is where we actually get started with the meat of the story. Let me know what you think!