Note: Here we go, then.

It's not that she's mad.

She's not.

She's not mad.

It's just that's she's out sixty bucks that she could be spending on more important things like food for her forever empty fridge, or her always loomin' phone bill, or heat for her dingy apartment that she shares with four other girls, who can't ever be bothered to remember to chip in their fair share. She's out valuable scavenged savings that's needed for the basic living essentials that she has to have to get by - to survive her day to day life. Instead, Beth is out sixty dollars for a bus ticket. A ticket for a bus. A ticket for a sweaty, crowded, uncomfortable bus that she'll have to cram herself into from New York City to way far back home.

No, it's not that she's mad. Not at all. Even though Maggie sighing irritatingly over the phone when Beth had dared to mention her desire for help for a plane ticket, instead of throwing her own money away for the bus pass, had left her clenching a small fingered fist in irratation of her own. Maggie knows that she's tight on money and Maggie knows that herself and Glenn are not.

"It's two seventy six, Maggie, I've looked it up and everything," she had pleaded through the line, two weeks back. "Just lend me the money and I promise I'll pay you back! Or, better yet, put Daddy on the phone. He wouldn't want me on the bus, by myself, anyway."

"Bethy, you know you're not paying anyone back for anythin'. You'd have to have a steady job for that kind of thing," her sister's voice had responded back, distractedly, as she hunched and hovered over those thick white booklets Beth had seen photos of all over Maggie's Facebook page. And Beth could'a sworn she heard their Mama's calm tones in the background, grilling Glenn over his sudden family additions and where they were going to put them. "And you're not gonna rook Daddy into this, he's stressed enough as it is."

The idea of Hershel Greene getting stressed out over a wedding, of all things in life, is so laughable to anybody who knows him, that Beth had simply rolled her eyes and carried on in her pleas. In fact, for months, Daddy has probably been out with the cows and the chickens, avoiding all of the hub-bub and casually waiting for the week to start so that it could end and the dining room table would finally get cleared away of centerpiece designs and stacks of schedules and lists.

"You know, Mags, if you got me on a plane, I'd be home in three or so hours. I'd be right there to help with all the extra little details - actually get to be a Maid of Honor. And there'd be way more time to boss me around, you'd love that!"

But, Maggie hadn't budged on the matter and had proceeded to hang up on her a few minutes later with orders to purchase her pass and get over it, already.

Beth huffs out a breath and keeps sorting haphazardly through her and her flatmates shared closet, desperately searching for her grey sweater. She's only got fifteen minutes before the bus drives away from the curb and begin's it's journey. She's not too worried, however. It's only a three minute walk from her two bedroom apartment on Rutgurs to Allen. But, she doesn't want to push her luck at any point during this trip. Despite being out of state, completely on her own for the first time, she's not so used to being by herself - always surrounded by the other girls she lives with - and she doesn't want any unnecessary problems. Beth just wants to get on the bus, get through the fourteen hour drive from New York to Senoia, flop directly into her old bed, back on the farm, and fall asleep for a little while, in a place she's familiar with. It's been a really long time since she wasn't living under the thumbs of a bunch of girls yelling on the phone, or talking to each other, or whispering to their boyfriends that are laying with under the sheets with them in the bed next to Beth's, not trying too hard to be quiet.

She's looking forward to finally being comfortable for a week.

Well, as comfortable as she can be while she gets shuffled around with a million ridiculous bridesmaid duties, where she has to entertain a million family friends and neighbors that she's known her entire life, while she watches her sister glow and her future brother-in-law sweat.

Still, it's an improvement from the wild but somewhat stifling life she's been living in Chinatown. It's home. And she'll get to see her Daddy and show him she's still alive - that no one's stabbed her or mugged her and that she's okay.

There are dresses and pants and shirts and coats of varying sizes hanging crookedly on hangers and piles and piles of shoes, down below, that Beth does her best to narrowly step around without crushing the sides, as she digs her way further into the back of the space. She got to New York in her Daddy's truck, with him and her Mama and brother seated alongside her and a beat up old trailer hooked to the back, filled with her stuff. Back home, if Beth wanted to head into town she road Nelly more than anything. And if she wanted to take a trip into the city with her friends, she took the truck. Her experiences on buses are limited to the city issued ones she sometimes uses to get around and, from what she knows, they're not the same as the one she's about to settle in. So, she'd done a quick search online about travel buses only to find they're usually kept cool to accommodate so many people for such long periods of time. Beth doesn't want to spend the whole drive shivering to herself, but she can't seem to find what she's looking for...

She's just about to call out in frustration and desperation when her bedroom door [the smaller bedroom of the two] flings open and Haley strolls in with a can of Coke in one hand, a magazine shoved underneath her armpit, and her body wrapped snug in exactly what Beth's been spending twelve minutes trying to find.

"You heading out, soon? Fourteen? Thirteen?" Haley hums and snaps the tab open with the tip of her thumb, before quickly lifting the can to her lips to suck away the foam and chuckling under her breath.

Haley's a short spitfire of a girl and the first person Beth met when she initially moved into the apartment building. Her Daddy had just pushed open the front door, when Haley's brown hair came whipping around the corner with a smirk on her lips. "You must be Beth," she'd grinned cheekily before looking between the New Face standing uncertainly in the front room and the older folks hovering, that were quickly deduced as parents, hovering next to her. Haley had hesitated for something of a moment and pursed her lips, "There's two beds to pick from, at the moment, and I'd suggest you room in here with me...Megan's a screamer."

Beth quite clearly remembers her Mama's wide eyes, her Daddy's disapproving stare, and Shawn, standing behind all of them, choking on his laughter.

"Bridezilla awaits, I suppose, and you definitely don't want to keep her storming around the castle-"

"Don't be rude, Hale," Beth twists herself out of the awkward position she's found herself in and strides over to where her friend is settling herself on top of her bed.

"-breathing fire and - ouch gently - sucking away the souls of everything in her fucking path."

"Maggie's just...excited," she shrugs one shoulder and, despite Haley's protests, continues tugging her sweater up from the waist and off of her friend. "She's getting married, after all, and that's a nice thing. She's allowed to go a little crazy."

Haley's hair flies up and falls back around her face, as the fabric finally pulls away from her body, "Whatever you say, girl."

"She and Glenn have a lot to do," Beth mumbles on and drags the sweater over her her ponytail - blonde strands of hair fuzzing around her forehead from all the static. "And she's not like me, you know? She's got this vision in her head and she's so darn stubborn." Beth's known that Maggie was going to be specific about her wedding and all the small details, her entire life. As little girls growing up, Beth had dreamt of a wedding on the farm. She'd spoken of mismatched chairs settled out onto the property looking off towards their home, so beautiful and unique, with sunflowers decorating the wrap around porch. She'd spoken of barbecue grilling in the backyard, and her wedding dress worn with cowboy boots, so that she could dance, and the stars mixing in with the twinkle lights lining the sky. She'd spoken of a country wedding so simple and so perfect and so calm and Maggie had stared at her for a long beat before grinning and tilting her head just so, "You're so sweet, Bethy." Jumping into visions of events far grander.

Beth has never expected her to settle for anything less.

"As if you're not. Ten minutes," Haley flops her magazine into her lap and flips open the cover. "You don't even sound excited, which is weird because you love romantic shit. Like, you love romantic shit. What's up with that?"

Beth says nothing as she turns to the items placed on her bed, eyes downcast as she goes over her mental checklist. She's got a brown backpack filled with things for the ride: a book, a packet of gum, a bottle of water, a couple of magazines that Haley had shoved inside, and a change purse with a little bit of money ready to go for rest stops. Sat next to that is her suitcase, still there with the cover flown open. She moves to pull it shut and close the zipper, "I am excited. I'm really happy for Maggie...Happy for them both...This is good."

She listens to a page turn. "Wow, I really believed you just then," Haley's voice is dripping with sarcasm. "Nine minutes, you better run."

xxx

The wheels of her suitcase bump along the raised ridges of the sidewalk, as she makes the turn onto Allen. It's a nice day out; the sun held high and warm in the sky, shining down on the long line of green trees planted in the center walkway of the double wide street. She allows herself a quick moment to take in the sunshine, filling her up and pushing her forward. The weather seems happier than she is and she makes a decision then and there and moves to change her attitude. She weaves her way through the other people who are out and about for the day, strolling past the "Chinatown" mural painted along the outer wall of Tay Shing Corp.; the small white cat in the large red "C" almost waving her goodbye. Wishing her a good trip.

Beth can't really figure out what it is about Maggie's impending big day that's been dragging her down. She loves her sister more than anything in the world and she really does adore Glenn and the constant show that it always is to watch him awkwardly navigate the entirety of the Greene Family Clan. She loves the wonderful way that he treats her sister on top of everything else and she loves that she can physically see the love between them with every passing glance, even when it's going into just the wrong side of mushy.

She supposes others - she supposes Haley has been looking at her over the past few weeks, as the impending event approached nearer and nearer, and had been seeing the faded forms of the slippery long green tentacles of jealousy slithering through the spaces of Beth's mind. She supposes she's been meant to interpret all of her friend's little looks and casual mentions of her interests in romance, despite lost loves, as the complete knowledge that she's figured it out - that she knows why Beth had spent so much time putting off finally packing her things into the suitcase that she's dragging behind her, now.

But, Beth's not been thinking about Zach - she hasn't been thinkin' about Zach for quite some time, not really. Despite what people seemed to gather, she hadn't been quite as head over heels as people had believed. As Zach had initially believed. And whatever she'd had with him a couple of months back really doesn't have any effect to her lack of joy, today. It's just all so much work, finding her way home.

A year and a half back when Beth had heard the news that Glenn had plucked up the courage to slip a ring on Maggie's sister, Beth had happily cheered along with her. She's know Glenn since she was sixteen. Somehow through the thick fog that had invaded her mind so heavily throughout that year, she'd managed to see it in Maggie; that glow that people seemed to assume Beth must've had when she'd stood on Zach's arm. And when her Daddy and her Mama and her finally watched Glenn skitter into the front foyer, with his hair slicked back unnaturally and a plate of store bought cookies spread out onto a plate, she'd seen it in him, too.

Beth clutches the handle of her case as she passes by Pandorabus and the photo of the two panda's sitting casually over the building's sign with the red Chinese symbols that she's not bothered to try to learn how to read. There are sign's in the two front windows reading "NY to Atlanta" but she's not headed here, she's headed further down the street to the third station on the block, past Howard Johnson, Hua Ji Pork Chop Fast Food, and Bo Yi Buddhist Association. Why there need to be three stations on one line of side walk, Beth isn't quite sure. But, she doesn't question it further as she comes upon her destination.

The long vehicle is already sat outside, as she comes up to the corner, the bottom carriage pulled up and open and a man in a vest helping organize the luggage of the passengers, inside. She heads over to the line that's already formed and (after some unsure fumbling over what she's even supposed to do - how this is supposed to work) has her pass scanned. She watches as her things are pushed underneath with the others and starts up the stairs. It's a tight fit and there are people lining the seats. So, Beth settles herself in a row somewhere in the middle, pulls her bottle of water out of her bag, and waits for everyone else to climb aboard.

xxx

It all started blending together about two hours back. The cars. The cars, white and white and black and red and green and orange, and the trees and the sky and the clouds and the yellow lines painting across the burning black of the asphalt. One after the other after the other after the other. Everything in every town they drive through or past looks exactly the same. The same sorts of houses and the same sorts of people and the same sorts of buildings and cars. Fuzzy imitations of the town's before them and muddled, like her mind.

Every single part of her body hurts and it's only been four hours. She's not sure if it's from the act of sitting, alone, bouncing lightly as they hit potholes, or the general exhaustion of her mind. But, by the time she notices the world outside of the window is finally slowing down from the frantic pace of the long highways, the backs of her knees are scratched on the patterned fabric of the seat and her neck hurts from the odd angle of the headrest, where she's been mindlessly watching the cars pass by and counting out the lines in the road. She feels like a child she once was, fascinated as if by the the glow of the stars through the open sunroof.

But, profoundly less at home.

A large group of teenagers, not much younger than herself, considering the fact that she technically still is one, take up the majority of the back of the bus. They've been behind her, three rows back, hollering to the person next to them for more miles than Beth can take. She now knows more than she ever wanted to about Cindy stealing Bryan from Jenna, during the "raging" party after the game, and the following scandal than ensued between the triangle. In the back of her mind, Beth's been considering asking them or the people chaperoning them to tone it down. But, the bus is finally pulling away from the endless road and onto a rocky stretch leading up towards a gas station. So, she bites her tongue and waits impatiently as the woman driving navigates them into the lot.

She needs to take a walk.

She needs something else to drink.

She needs to pee.

The water bottle resting in her lap is already empty - was empty half way through New Jersey - and her leg's been bouncing for around an hour now. So, the second she realizes they're arriving at their first rest stop, Beth reaches below her seat and grabs for her backpack and settles her feet firmly to the ground. The jolt of the vehicle stuttering into a stop and the hiss of the engine shutting down has Beth rising from her seat. There's a few second's hesitation to listen the women in front explain that they'll be heading back onto the road in ten minutes, before Beth's flying down the aisle and down the steps - boots slamming down onto the concrete, below.

The hit of fresh air does her head wonders and she stops to breathe in, for a sum of seconds.

Four hours down.

Ten to go.

She can do this.

"It's all going to be okay," she mutters underneath her breath as she starts forward towards the station. She can make it home on this loud and obnoxious bus and she can be happy for Maggie and smile a lot and hold the train of her sister's dress when asked and help organize seating charts that haven't been settled and tease Glenn over his crooked tie. She can do this. She can. "This is good. This will be good."

"You know, talking to yourself is the first sign you're going mad," one of the boys from the bus passes by her, with his friend. They're tall, with matching styled hair and those matching confident smirks that she's known since Shawn's friend's first started becoming teenagers. Beth does nothing but tilt her head and offer a vaguely amused smile, for them more than her, before filing in the station after them. The multiple group's she's been sharing the bus with with are all milling about. A few of the girls she's been listening to from before are hovering over the candy bar aisle and an older couple are poking at the donuts. Beth moves around all of them to the fountains where she grabs a medium foam cup and fills it to the brim with Sprite, before heading to the register to purchase her drink.

When she's finally managed to wrangle her change purse out of her backpack and pay for her beverage, Beth pushes her way back out into the open air to sit on the curb and sip at her drink. It's been awhile since she wasn't surrounded by tall buildings and an extra abundance of people and it's nice. It's nice to only have these folk around - no matter how loud - and it's nice to look up and see mostly sky. It's not as clear as back home and the air's not as fresh as it is on the farm. This gas station in...Wherever, United States she is, isn't anywhere near as serene, as back home, and there's trash piling out of an overflowing garbage can. But, all of the signs are in English and she can see normal houses further out in the distance - buildings not built on stack of each other. It's more her style, even if it's not quite...right.

She ain't going to tell her Daddy that, though, when she gets home. She doesn't need to give him any more reason to try and talk her back.

Because, with the way things have been going, he'd probably be able to convince her and it's the type of decision she wants to make without any outside influences.

...Not that she's been thinking on it, or anythin'.

After a few minutes, she notices that some members of the group are starting to head back, so she pushes herself up and off of the ground, "Excuse me?" she calls out to the older couple she'd seen earlier, who are inching their way further away from the door she's stood near. "How much time do we have?"

The man directs a shaky smile towards her and points at his watch with a wrinkled hand, "Four minutes, dear."

It's enough time, so Beth turns back around and heads into the station. She waits too long for a woman to pay for her gas, before walking up to the counter.

"Do you have a bathroom?" she asks the man who's crooked his head to the side to look at a portable television sat on a stool. From what she can see it's playing a football game and by the look on his face, his team isn't doing so well. "Sir?"

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbles and blindly grabs at a nail hammered into the wall, where a strip drapes 'round. The key on the end jangles, as he pushes it across the counter, "'Round the side, near the back. Don't lock the door when you're in - it's no good, and I can't hear you from here to make sure to let you out."

"Thank you," Beth's hand closes around the object and she starts back out. The older couple is still walking in the direction of the bus, taking their time, it seems. So, Beth dashes around to the restroom and shoves the key into the door. It's sticky, inside, and dark. The light over the sink flickers menacingly, casting everything inside in a strange shadow. But, there's a toilet and toilet paper and no high school class trip screaming about high school drama, right outside, so she feels more comfortable relieving herself in her than she did on the bus. She's careful to not let her jeans touch the floor on either the way down or the way up and she mentally clocks away the time she has left while she flushes and moves to wash her hands. Beth grabs an extra piece of paper towel, after she's dried her hands, to use to pull open the door, once more. She's not locked it behind her, just as the distracted man behind the counter told her not to, and it opens from the inside as easily as it did from the out. Beth keeps counting as she slides out of the room to go and return the key - she's got one minute to get back into her seat and settle in for the next couple of hours. When she turns the corner of the station, however, she freezes where she stands.

She doesn't see the boys with the matching styled hair and the matching confident smirks.

She doesn't see the girls, so keen to gossip about Bryan and Jenna and Cindy and their romantic tryst.

She doesn't see the older couple hobbling their way towards the bus, any longer.

She doesn't see the bus.

Her hand clenches tightly around her foam cup, as she stares at the empty space where the giant uncomfortable hunk of metal once stood. There's no way it could've left, she thinks as her eyes widen and her mouth drops open in panic. Beth cranes her neck to look out towards the highway, but her mobile prison isn't there, either. Not even a tiny speck off in the distance to mock her and her stance.

When her body catches up with her mind, she darts back inside and slams the key back onto the counter, "The bus that was here?" she breathes out to the man still hunched near his screen. "What - when did it go? I'm supposed to be on that!"

"Oh, sorry, sweet'ums," he doesn't sound sorry. He doesn't sound sorry, at all. "Left a few minutes ago. You should really of gotten on that, huh. Probably should've planned better, kiddo."

Beth doesn't have the time or the energy or the heart to gripe at this gas station clerk for being rude, she's too busy flinging herself back through the doors and whirling her backpack off of her shoulders to dig around inside. The panic burning through her veins has her hands shaking - thinking of all of her stuff that's in the undercarriage of the bus - thinking of the fact that she only has a few dollars in her change purse - and it slows down the process in finding her phone. She does eventually, though, and stabs her way through her contacts until she finds Maggie's name.

It rings.

And rings.

And rings.

And rings.

Until her sister's voice is humming down the line, in a pre-recorded response, "Hey there! You've reached Maggie Greene. Sorry, I'm not in. I'm real busy right now planning something important! So, just leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

"Maggie," Beth's voice shakes just so and she coughs to try and pull herself together. She stares off in the direction of the high way and wills the bus to realize her seat is empty. She wills it to turn around. "I'm in...Virginia...I think. I'm on my way home, you know? And we stopped for a rest and I went to the bathroom...The bus left me behind and there's no one around, but this nasty man behind the counter...Can you call me back, please? I need...I need help."

She hangs up and scrolls through her contacts, again, and dials home.

It rings.

And rings.

And rings.

And rings.

Until her Mama's voice is humming down the line in a pre-recorded response, as well. Beth bites down her curse about how Maggie's big day isn't quite as important as being a young girl stranded alone outside a gas station with nothin' but a rude man and nothing else. Nothing resembling protection or a prayer. She doesn't think Annette Greene would appreciate a "fuck" dripping through the lips of her little girl - no matter how deserved. So, Beth repeats her call of help to her Mama and Daddy, as she thinks through her limited options. She can't call Haley, who's even more broke than she is. Her friend would do anything to help her on a day to day basis, but Beth can't see how she could manage to do anything, here, no matter how hard she tries. She doesn't bother to call Glenn, either, who looks at his phone least enough, as it is, without all of this wedding business on top of it.

She can't do anything, but wait.

So, she flops back down to the curb she was sat at earlier and stares at the screen of her phone, trying to mentally force her family to call her back.

She's there for more than an hour. Cars coming and going. Drink long gone. Eyes unblinking in horror at the bar on her phone draining lower and lower in power.

She's not sure if she's crying, by this point. Her face feels numb, just as her hands do. The rush of panic has simmered into something much worse: the sludge of the dead. She's tired and the sun has dipped just a little lower in the sky and she's sure if she raised a hand and brushed it across her cheek that she'd feel the steady stream of tears. But, she wants to be strong and make it through until someone calls her back. She doesn't want to know if she's allowed herself to let go - she's not a little girl, she shouldn't be afraid. She doesn't feel her body shake with silent cries and she doesn't know if the straps of her bag are actually starting to pinch in through the fabric of her sweater, or if she's just imagining the pain.

But, Beth does feel the sun on her face fade, as a sudden shadow overtakes her, where she sits - concrete digging into her butt. Beth does hear the hesitant scratch of a rough ended voice, standing high above her, as she clutches her phone tighter and tighter and prays for something of a miracle to come and get her out of this mess, "Hey, girl...you alright?"

Note: The title is like "Rachel Getting Married". The movie. But, with Maggie. Get it? Eh? I'm not very creative. Anywhoooo please review? I have plans for this oh yes plans.