Page 2 of Runaways

"Fine," Silas says. "No issues. Well, except for Noah."

"What do you mean?" Mia asks from the passenger seat. "What did you do?"

"I…didn't do anything, Mia," I tell her. "I don't know what he's talking about."

"You sure?" Silas asks. "Look at this."

He lifts his shirt, revealing his toned chest and abdomen. I suck in a breath as Mia points the flashlight on her phone directly at his chest, illuminating the eight tiny blood-soaked crescent moons against his dark skin—four on each side of his chest from my fingernails.

"Oh, my god! You did that? He's bleeding!"

I shake my head. "He was going too fast."

"Was he?" Tate asks, smiling as his eyes meet mine again. "Going too fast for you? You couldn't take it?"

He bites down on his lip rings, and I look away, grateful for the darkness as my cheeks burn red.

"It's raining," I say.

"It's Oregon," Tate says. And I'd roll my eyes if I wasn't determined not to meet his again.

"Levi is calling me," Mia says, holding up her phone. "Should I answer it?"

"No!" I say.

"Fuck no," Tate says, hitting ignore on the call. "That's a good way to let him know we were close to where his bike is. Whatever happens to it now is fate."

Levi and Mia broke up two weeks ago after one of his friends showed her texts he was sending everyone about some girl he hooked up with while he and his family were on vacation, bragging about how much better looking she was thanMia—how good it was and how funny it is that she'd never find out.

And then shedidfind out, and he cried in the hallway of our apartment building so loudly that someone called the police—so loudly that both Silas and I came out of our units to watch. He's lucky Tate wasn't home; I was so convinced he would come barreling out of the apartment and throw Levi over the balcony that I could barely swallow until the police made him leave. But Tate was out being Tate, and his twin sister was home alone, so he got off easy.

For days, I fought the urge to ask him where he was. Tate doesn't have to tell me where he goes or what he's doing. And I shouldn't want to puke when I don't know the answer.

But anyway, that's why we took the bike. Because none of us have had great lives, and we stopped believing in karma a while ago. Or…well…we decided it was only right that, when necessary, we give it the little push it needs.

Maybe tomorrow, Levi will get a call that his bike is parked somewhere it shouldn't be, and he needs to come pick it up—no harm done. Or maybe someone will find it with the keys in it, and he'll never see it again.

Or someone else will get caught with the bike eventually, and he'll get it back, and that person will pay. That won't be our fault, either. We didn't make them steal the bike.

By the time we pull into our apartment complex, the rain has stopped. We exit the vehicle, closing each of our respective doors, but before I follow the others around the back of the building, my eyes settle on the moving truck parked next to the dumpsters.

September came far too quickly.

Ten years. The four of us have lived in this building for ten years. We've spent ten summers inseparable; a decade's worth of school years knowing that we weren't alone. And it's all about to change.

Well, for me, anyway. They'll still be together, and I get to spend my last year of high school somewhere else—alone.

But if I'm being honest, it changed a couple of months ago. And that's mostly my fault.

"Hey…are you okay?" Silas asks.

"Maybe we should have just kept driving," I whisper. "Just kept going until it ran out of gas and stayed wherever we landed."

He shakes his head. "Don't tempt me. I'd tie you to my bedposts if I could. I'm not happy about this."

"Yeah…me either."

My jean shorts and black tank top are still soaked as I follow them around the corner and into the wooded area behind our building. I sit next to Mia on the fallen tree in our usual spot. A faint squealing sound coming from nearby makes my skin crawl as Tate and Silas grab a few logs from under a tarp and start a fire.

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