Page 150 of Runaways

I suck in a breath, holding it, grateful he can't see my face while I blink back tears.

"Do you want to know where we're going?" he asks.

"No."

"There's this—"

"I said, no!" I shout. "I don't want to know. I don't care because Iwill notlive there, okay? So, just stop. I don't want to know anything about you or where you've been or what you've been doing. I don't care where you're going—not anymore."

He doesn't speak while he finishes painting on the hair dye, covering it with one of those plastic shower caps the box comes with when he's done.

"We'll wash it off in twenty minutes, and then Silas should be back. Do you want me to help you eat?"

"No. I want you to get the fuck off my bed."

"Okay," he says.

He leans over, kissing my bare shoulder. "I love you, Noah," he says.

"Stop! Youdo notget to say that to me."

"Okay." He climbs off the bed and moves to sit on a barstool. "But it's true. You know when I'm lying, too, remember?"

"No. I was wrong. I don't know you at all."

He shrugs. "Fine, Noah."

Tate takes an ear bud case from his pocket and pops them into his ears, too afraid to be alone with his thoughts, as usual. But I sit here with mine. They used to scare me, too. I took pills and alcohol to quiet them enough for me to sleep and so that if I did have nightmares, and most nights I did, I wouldn't remember them in the morning.

They don't bother me now.

I drink the rest of the Gatorade on the table, and then take a giant bite of the bagel.

"We need to rinse your hair now," Tate says later, breaking me from my haze. "Silas will be back soon. And it's dark."

"I can do it myself," I snap, stomping off toward the bathroom.

Tate gets his arm inside the door before I can close it and lock it. "Go ahead," he says. "But you're not closing the door."

twenty-three

Not All Heroes Wield Shovels

Tate

Noah takes her time washing and drying her hair, even though she knows Silas is waiting for us in the car, and I know she doesn't care what it looks like.

She does it just to piss me off. And just to piss her off, I do my best not to react and appear to wait patiently.

She finally sets the hair dryer aside, her formally blonde-turned-red hair almost as dark as mine now. It looks good on her; it makes her sad green eyes and freckles pop.

She looks as pale as she did when I rolled her over last night and saw the puke crusted onto her face and bruised neck. I've seen it every time I've closed my eyes since—a new mental polaroid to join the collective of still images that will forever haunt me.

I look away, trying to shake the image from my mind now, but I land on the tub and remember holding her against me under the cold spray of the shower instead of in the warm bath the night before, and the way she looked up at me, the despair in her tone when she realized she was still alive, and even worse, stuck with me.

And when I try to shakethatimage, I'm standing on wet carpet instead, and it's my sister lying under bloody water.

"Okay, let's go," I say, dipping out of the bathroom. "He's just going to come up here and drag you out if we don't come down soon."

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