Page 162 of Runaways

"They'rewhat?We can't stay here."

Tate snorts. "Look who you're sitting with, Noah. We're the worst things in this place…probably."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"They just want to live a quiet life and be left alone, like us. Just finish your food; it's probably better to save your questions for when we get to the house instead of whispering about them in a crowded room."

After we finish eating, I put on my new coat, and we walk another mile and a half in the cold, following a hand-drawn map Wendy gave Silas to a tiny cabin hidden from the main road. Behind it, there's a small river and an empty chicken coop.

"Come on," Silas says, holding the door open.

I step into the tiny cabin. There's a kitchen in the front corner, but there isn't much to it—no refrigerator, no oven. Just a table, a stovetop, a sink, and a few cabinets. The living space is sparsely furnished with an old sofa, a rug, and a couple of lanterns sitting on two side tables. Silas opens the wood-burning stove at the center of the room and tosses some logs inside.

"Home sweet home," Tate says, sinking into the sofa.

I walk around him to the back of the room, checking to see what's behind the closed doors. The two along the back wall lead to small bedrooms, both of which have beds with linens and fur blankets I'm pretty sure are made from real animal skins. The one off to the side leads to a bathroom.

"Do we have running water?" I ask Silas.

"Yeah, we have water," he says. "No electricity, though. We could get solar panels at some point. A snowmobile would be cool, too." He really is happy—he pauses to smile again before continuing. "There's a battery powered stovetop; I brought a radio and a ton of batteries. Wendy said I could take the car out this weekend, and I'll get us some winter clothes and supplies."

"So, we don't have the car anymore?"

He shakes his head. "It's a communal car now. They're going to paint it and change the plates. But that's okay; we won't need it."

I don't necessarily like hearing that, either. What if we need to run again? "Silas, we don't know how to live like this."

"Yes, we do," Tate says. "We've been reading about it for over a year now; we've been doing it, too."

"Bothof you?" I ask.

Tate scoffs. "Yeah, I can read, Noah."

"But we realized pretty quickly that it isn't easy to do when you can't stay somewhere for very long, and you're doing it alone," Silas says.

"Well…can I read them?"

"Of course," he says. "They're in my suitcase. I'll get them for you after I get this fire started."

"Thanks. I'm going to go lie down. You can put them in my room."

Silas shoots me a puzzled look.

"Your room?" Tate asks. "What are you talking about?"

"I'll take the small one without a window," I tell them. "But I need my own room…for obvious reasons."

"They're not that obvious," Tate says. "I don't know the reasons."

"Well, then, to state the obvious—I can't be around you. I'll be in my room."

Shortly after I close the door and crawl under the blankets, Silas steps into the room with my bag of clothing in one hand and books under the opposite arm.

"I brought those books for you," he says, setting them on the nightstand. He looks around the room, opening drawers and the closet doors, even looking under the bed.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"I'm worried about you. Are you feeling okay?"

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