The Runaways

Chapter 6

Hailey

I came to in the middle of chaos—writhing in the center of somewhere I didn’t recognize.

Everything hurt—not enough to keep me pinned to the ground but enough to panic about. For a while I couldn't tell the difference between choking on crop dust and crying.

Every breath stung and burned the insides of my lungs worse than the whites of my eyes. But the pain was only half the equation in a full-blown break down ‘cause everything aside from my bones felt broken.

My life, my parents, my way back home—everything. I'd ended up smashed into the dirt, miles underneath a deceptively beautiful blue sky, waiting to wake up from a terrible mistake. But mistakes are just bad dreams realized, and mine were tattooed across my body in purple-blue bruises.

No matter how many times I closed my eyes hoping to wake up somewhere familiar, nothing changed. The air stayed stagnant, and I stayed crushed underneath the ugliness of an inescapable reality.

Boa-constrictor-panic tightened around my throat, but I lifted my legs to stop the shock from knocking me out a second time. Part of me expected to look down and see my legs gone or mangled like in the war movies.

They still were there, but God were they ugly. The cuts looked worse than the bruises, but nothing was stitch worthy. Fingers crossed.

Once the muscles in my back stilled, I tried getting to my feet. Big mistake. The second I stood up a bout of post-crash vertigo hit me so hard I keeled over backwards. I free-fell, hopelessly dizzy, arms flailing, and neck flying back far enough to send my head crashing into the dry packed dirt.

A gasp hitched in my throat. Trying to breathe in Virginia heat was like sucking a milkshake through a coffee straw. The longer I tried to convince myself that I'd be okay, the less I believed it.

I figured being alone like this for long enough would eventually wear away at me, until there was no composure left to pick at. D.C private schools didn’t teach you how to survive outside of the stock market.

The most they taught was how to pay attention. I'd learned to pay attention—only six hours too late.

Something snapped within feet of where I'd landed, and the summer cicadas broke into a panicked frenzy. Their hissing exploded into deliberate chaos and spread through the nearby cornhusks like a warning system. Trouble was coming.

I stayed low to the ground, hoping I could spot whoever it was before they could spot me.

The stalks rustled again—this time the snap-crackle-crunching sound of dead husks much closer than before.  I stood up faster than fast and sprinted in the opposite direction before the stranger’s footsteps got too close for comfort.

I followed rising smoke trails in the sky until I reached the clearing where they'd come from. The crash had set fire to the air.

Tufts of smoke towered over the crumpled red truck turned belly up with its wheels spinning skyward. The Chevy had flattened the cornhusks in its wake leaving every sign of a horrific accident but no sign of Liam or Caleb.

Fast flames shot out of the hood as I staggered around the truck searching for a body. Running would've been easy work if I hadn't caught sight of Caleb hanging upside down in the driver’s seat between twisted metal and broken glass.

He didn’t deserve a chance. I didn't owe him one. I didn’t owe him my time, attention, or help. I’d spent every minute of the ride down from D.C. thinking of ways to put miles between the two of us.

I'd thought about screaming on the bus or making a scene at the Manassas station. But the minute my dad set the police out for me, he stole any chance I had of calling for help. Who do you call when the police are out to get you?