Hi. Two reviews... yay? Okay well this chapter isn't betaed, my Beta is awesome, but I figured I would get this chapter up and see if I should carry on with posting this. Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do. Just please tell me how I'm doing, there is nothing more frustrating then putting time and effort into something and then you only get say... two reviews. So review if you want to hear the rest of the Zion and Zita's story, if not that's cool too, I can stop.

Zion

"Why the hell do you even bother with school?"

That was the very question I've been asked for a long time, mostly by my friends.

I sighed, "Dax, I'm not fuckin' answering that again. You know why."

My best friend laughed at me like he always did, "And you know your reason is impossible."

I shook my head and lifted a sweatshirt off the floor, trying to find my shoe.

"You need an address to go to college, you can't pay somebody for that address like you're doing now. Colleges actually care, unlike your shitty high school."

"You know what else you need an address for?" I asked him, throwing random clothes in a mad search for my shoe.

He waited for my answer.

"A fuckin' job, you lazy bum."

"You're funny, Z. I'm going back to bed because I can."

I raised my eyebrows, "See, you're lazy."

He shot me the finger before throwing the curtain back that served as his door.

Dax was right, I didn't have an address. We lived in an old, abandoned warehouse along the shores of Lake Michigan in the town of Fairfield, Illinois. Dax and I lived with eight other kids in the giant ran down building.

All of the kids living with us were either runaways or orphans. We all had a reason to flee from our homes. Some of the kids living with me, I tried my best to avoid. Others I considered my friends.

My best friend was Dax. Dax ran away from his house after his parents died when he was fifteen. His only other option was to live with his crazy Grandpa. He took off before the custody orders were in place.

The other person that I really hung around with was Logan. Logan watched her own father kill her mother. She took off with her three year old brother, Tanner, before the police even arrived at her house. She climbed out of window before her dad could turn the gun on her and Tanner.

Jordan ran away from foster care when he was sixteen. He was the oldest one living with us, but he was only nineteen himself. Jordan had a pretty decent job since he was older. He worked as a waiter at Applebee's. I knew that he would have enough money saved before the long Illinois winter would set in.

Then there was Pete. Pete is what you could call a fugitive on the run from the law. He got busted a few times for dealing drugs. He still deals every now and then, but we set ground rules that he can't do it out of the warehouse. If he got caught we were all screwed.

I didn't mind Pace either. Pace was kind of new to the runaway situation. He was the same age as Dax and I, seventeen. His dad wanted him to go to college and become a doctor. That's what he was raised to do his whole life. I guess one day he got in a huge fight with his dad over the fact that he wanted to be a musician and not a doctor. He grabbed his guitar and left.

Violet was a mystery. Nobody knows her story. She never talked at all. There was something dark from her past that I was hoping she would share with us one day. She'd been living with us for a year and said about a total of twelve words.

Caleb gave up his insane talent for his love life. Caleb was an amazing basketball player before he came out to his parents that he was gay. His dad kicked him out and he'd hadn't talked to him in about six months.

Then there was Abby. Abby had a mind of her own. She was sixteen and pregnant. Abby was an interesting character. Dax and I came across her when we were walking along the beach that the warehouse was on. She was curled in a ball sleeping next to a piece of driftwood. She was three months pregnant when we found her, she refused to get an abortion, her parents disowned her, and the baby daddy didn't want anything to do with her or the baby.

The warehouse we lived in was a big hollow space. It had no electricity or plumbing. Every time we had to go the bathroom we went outside or found a gas station or store nearby. We strategized where we went, so people wouldn't catch on. All the lights ran on batteries or were solar powered and their wasn't very many lights that ran on those sources. I managed to find a way to run Christmas lights on batteries one day when I got bored. That was our main light source. In the winter all the heat came from space heaters and piles of blankets. All our furniture came from dumpsters or street corners.

It was horrible, I admit, but it was better than what we had before. We kept a low profile making sure we never led anybody onto where we lived. That's what made going to school so hard. I had to pay one of Pete's clients so I could use his address for my school records.

We all found the warehouse by chance. I stumbled upon it one day as I walking on the beach at night, trying to figure out what do to with my life. There were a group of kids laughing and joking by a bonfire right behind the warehouse. Once they set eyes on me they knew my situation.

I ran away from my home in Milwaukee when I was twelve. My mom was a single mom. She had my older brother, Hayden, when she was fourteen. Hayden's dad ended up leaving the night after she told him that she was pregnant. She turned to drugs soon after. Eight years later I was born a crack baby with no father.

Hayden practically raised me. Mom was never sober and she had a new boyfriend every week. Her boyfriends were just as drunk and high as her. I don't remember a day in my life when I lived with my mom when I wasn't hit, starved, or locked in a room.

Then one day when I was seven, Hayden didn't come home from school. I thought something bad happened to him for the longest time. As a couple months passed and Mom's hits got harder and more frequent, I finally figured out that he had left me to fend for myself.

By sixth grade I had enough. I managed to buy a bus ticket to Chicago from Milwaukee.

Along with leaving Milwaukee, I left behind my identity. I was born Harlow Loften, but I changed my name to Zion Ezra and managed to find a guy that got me a new social security number. For years I found women to take me to shelters with them and their children. Sometimes I would find a few men who taught me how to live on the streets. I was twelve and scared, but I knew I was better off than I was before.

I looked at the clock in our makeshift living room. I had fifteen minutes to get to school.

"Fuck," I muttered to myself and started searching for my shoe even harder.

I drew the curtain to Pete's room. He was hard core passed out and I spotted my shoe right under him. His room smelled and I realized he'd puked everywhere, including in my shoe.

"Jesus!" I kicked him in the rib lightly, "Pete, you owe me a new pair of shoes."

He groaned and rolled over, pushing me away.

I sighed and had no choice but to go to school how I was. I rushed to the stairs.

"Zion!" I heard Logan's voice behind me.

I turned around.

Logan was the mother of the group, she always held us in line. She knew how to take care of us when we were sick and was the easiest to talk to.

She held a yellow pill bottle in her hands and she shook it once, a hand on her hip.

I grunted and she tossed the bottle to me.

I was born with something wrong with my heart. I found out when I was eight that I had Ebstein's Anomaly, a rare heart disease that made my blood flow off and my heart rate a lot higher.

I had to take pills everyday too make sure that one of my heart valves didn't tear. I had to buy my pills illegally off of another guy Pete knew just to keep me alive.

"Thanks, Mom," I joked, tossing her the bottle back after downing the right amount.

She smiled, "Have a good day at school."