Page 18 of Runaways

"What did he take?"

"Money," he says before opening the front door. Upon entering, we're met with a cloud of smoke, the scent of marijuana and stale beer heavy in the air. The house is dark, loud, and crowded. Tate probably could have come inside and no one would have noticed. "A couple thousand dollars."

"What? Where did Tate get that kind of money? And how does he know Calvin took it?"

"Because he did take it."

"You didn't answer my first question. Are you guys selling drugs or something?"

"No."

"Well, then, where did the money come from?"

Silas purses his lips, thinking it over before he finally speaks. "We're making fake IDs. Drivers' licenses, passports, selling social security numbers. You can't tell anyone, Noah. Not even Mia."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"Are you good at it?"

He scoffs. "What do you think? I'm good at everything."

I roll my eyes, but he isn't wrong. Silas is a genius when it comes to math and technology. Like me, he's a good student, and if we went to a better school district with decent funding, we'd probably both be in some kind of advanced placement program and have scholarships by now. He actually hacked into the district computers in seventh grade when they were considering holding Tate back and changed all of his grades to A's. They hadn't been paying enough attention to Silas to notice he had this particular skill and inclination, so they thought Tate did it himself. They punished him for it, but didn't hold him back, partly because they had sympathy for the school he missed due to his mother's illness and because, being premature, Tate and Mia started school late and were already older than everyone in our class. But mostly, it was because the teachers didn't have any written records of what his grades actually were.

"Hey, Silas!" Wyatt, another guy from the football team, shouts. "What's up, man? I never see you at parties like this."

"Hey, what's up, bro?"

"Calvin's got a keg in the dining room behind the beer pong table," Wyatt says, gesturing behind him. "Who's your friend?"

Are you kidding me? I have two classes with this fucker.

"No one you need to know about," Silas says, draping his arm around my shoulders. "Come on, let's get a drink."

Wyatt laughs. "Okay, I see how it is."

Steering me toward the dining room, Silas leans in and says, "You're fuming. I can almost see the smoke coming out of your ears."

"I've gone to school with that asshole since third grade! There are only two hundred kids in our entire class, and he copies off my goddamn math papers. And he looks at me and says, 'Who's that?' I mean, am I really just that…"

As he fills our cups with keg beer, I trail off, unsure how to finish the sentence. That pathetic? That much of a loser? That invisible?

"Are you really just that what?" he prompts, handing me my cup.

"Unremarkable."

Before he can answer, Calvin Schaffer takes a step backward and stumbles into me, causing me to spill my beer down the front of my shirt.

"Whoa. Sorry about that," he says. "I'm Calvin. Nice tits."

I glare over his shoulder at Silas. "Thanks. Nice to meet you for the very first time ever."

"Nice tits?" his girlfriend says, shoving him. "What the fuck, Calvin?"

"Oh, shit," he says, laughing.

"Come on," Silas says, guiding me out of the room.

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