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Yesterday I had been ready to leave Seattle, even if that meant being on my own, but now I was here with Brooke, I wasn’t going to jeopardize the company by telling her why the police were after me.

‘Do you think we’ve been reported missing?’ Brooke asked. ‘It’s not even been twenty-four hours since we left.’

‘Yeah, but we’re seventeen. Did something happen to you?’ I asked, deflecting hard.

‘No! You?’

I shook my head, not trusting myself to come up with the right words to convince her.

‘And how the hell did they find us so quickly?’

I’d been thinking about that, too. ‘Did you use a credit card to check in last night?’ I suggested, and Brooke groaned.

‘Shit. You’re right.’

‘Or our cell phones. Is yours still on?’

‘It’s on airplane mode,’ she said. ‘Do you think that’s enough?’

I’d turned mine off completely. ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly.

‘I’m gonna turn it off now,’ she said, fumbling in her pocket.

‘I can do it,’ I said quickly, wanting her to keep her focus on the road.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured and handed it over. ‘I’m going to take a detour,’ Brooke said after a few moments. ‘Get off the main drag. Just in case they’re following us.’

‘Sure. Good idea.’

‘I need coffee,’ she added, her words stretched out by a yawn. ‘And I want to get dressed. I don’t have a bra on.’

I really didn’t want to think about what underwear Brooke Summer was or was not wearing. It was way too early for that kind of existential angst.

Thankfully, it took less than ten minutes for us to find a Starbucks, and Brooke pulled into a parking space rather than the drive-thru, which had a huge line anyway. There didn’t seem to be many people inside.

‘I’ll order and you can go get dressed, then we can swap?’ Brooke said, and I nodded. ‘What do you drink?’

‘A caramel latte?’ I asked it as a question, like this was something I could get wrong.

‘Hot or iced?’

‘Hot, please.’

She nodded and edged into the line, looking slightly more human in jeans and a sweater than I did in pajama pants. Then again, no one looked at me twice, and I got the impression I wasn’t the worst-dressed person the baristas had ever seen.

The restroom was impressively clean, and I double-checked the lock on the door before stripping out of my pajamas and putting on clean underwear and jeans.

I was grateful I’d packed long pajama pants because they covered the ugly scar at the top of my thigh that I really didn’t want Brooke to see, and I didn’t like looking at either.

Checking my body in the mirror for bruises was second nature and I twisted uncomfortably to see how the one on my back was fading. It had turned yellow-green, which was good news. It would be gone in a few more days.

I threw on an old but clean T-shirt and washed my face, smoothed down my eyebrows, and felt almost normal again.

My hair was a mess. It had gone greasy around my hairline, turning the light brown darker, but I couldn’t do much about that, so I pulled it all into a messy bun on the top of my head and decided I would try to pretend that was my intention all along.

I stared at myself in the bleary mirror, pulling strands of my hair loose from the bun so I didn’t look like I’d tried too hard, then applied a tiny dot of foundation over the faint mark on my cheek.

Brooke hadn’t mentioned the mark, and I wasn’t sure if she was being kind or discreet or if she just hadn’t noticed it.

Either way, it was easier to hide it than to answer questions.

It had been a while since my last encounter with Child Protective Services, which put me on edge.

When I was younger, I had been on their radar for a whole host of reasons, most of them related to my mom’s terrible taste in men, but as I’d edged through my teenage years, they seemed less and less interested in me.

Knowing someone was looking for me put a different spin on the road trip.

It was more important than ever that we put distance between us and Seattle …

for my own freedom, and so I could protect Brooke from the mess I was leaving behind.

A knock on the restroom door startled me.

‘Mouse?’

‘Coming,’ I said, quickly shoving everything back into my backpack.

Brooke was waiting outside when I opened the door. ‘Sorry, I need to use the restroom. I ordered and paid, but they haven’t made the drinks yet.’

‘Thanks. I’ll give you some money,’ I said, already feeling embarrassed that she’d paid for everything so far.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, waving my embarrassment away and dashing into the stall.

I went over to the end of the bar to wait for our order.

‘Summer?’

It took me a moment to realize Brooke had given a fake name, which was smart . I should have thought of that. I muttered my thanks and took the two takeout cups the barista had set on the counter, then went to a table near the front so I could watch who was coming into the parking lot.

The sharp-sweet smell of coffee and the familiar, generic environment of Starbucks was the permission I needed to relax.

Everything here was as it should be, from the menu to the noise of orders being tossed back and forth between customers and baristas, and the gentle background music that I didn’t need to listen to.

When Brooke came back out, I couldn’t even tell that she’d gotten ready in a Starbucks restroom.

She looked as effortlessly perfect as she always did, and something in my belly fizzed with want.

My crush on Brooke had been simmering for a while now, at least since the beginning of the school year, when we had started having classes together for the first time.

She slid into the seat opposite me and took the first sip of her coffee, clearly not noticing me staring at her.

‘Do you really think they were child protection people?’ Brooke asked, both hands wrapped around her cup.

I thought carefully about my answer, wanting to show her that I wasn’t just freaking out like some little kid.

‘Honestly? Yeah.’

She nodded quietly and looked back out the window. ‘Okay.’

‘I don’t know why else they would’ve sent two cars and all female officers. That’s what they do.’

‘Do you –’ she paused for a moment, still not looking at me, clearly trying to figure out a polite way to ask her question. ‘Have … first-hand experience? Of that?’

I huffed a laugh. ‘Yeah, Brooke. We’re old friends with CPS in our house.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s not what you think.’ Or maybe it was. I didn’t know her well enough to guess what she was thinking. ‘It’s better now. We just had a few issues with my dad when I was younger.’

‘I see,’ she said, her voice totally neutral.

‘It’s okay, though.’ I’d learned that lie by repeating it so many times it had become true. ‘We worked it out.’

‘Okay,’ she said, nodding, wincing a little in sympathy. ‘So, the cell phones have to go.’

‘Fine by me.’

No one ever texted me. I mostly used my phone to keep up with K-pop news on Twitter and stalk celebrities on Instagram. Those were habits that I probably needed to break, anyway.

‘Credit cards too?’ she said, and it took me a moment to realize she was asking for my opinion.

‘Well, I don’t have a huge amount of cash,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should get some money out near here, then ditch them?’

‘There’s cameras at ATMs, though.’

‘Does it matter? Once we have the cash, it’s not traceable. All they’ll know is that we took it out.’

Brooke stared at me, and I wondered whether she had put mascara on. Her eyelashes were so dark, and so long, showing off her beautiful eyes. Then her lips stretched into a smirk.

‘You’re outrageous.’

‘I’m not,’ I said quickly. No one had ever called me outrageous. I liked it, even though she was wrong.

‘Audacious.’

‘Definitely not that.’

Brooke laughed brightly. ‘Okay. We should drive somewhere, go to an ATM and draw out a shitload of cash, then double back and keep heading down to Disney World.’

‘Why Disney World?’

‘Why not? You’ve never been.’

‘It’s a long way from Seattle,’ I murmured.

‘Exactly.’ Brooke leaned back in her seat, like that settled it.

Maybe it did.

We got back in the Mustang and Brooke drove around until she found a strip mall with multiple ATMs in the parking lot.

I got out of the car and walked in one direction, toward CVS because I’d left my toothbrush behind in the motel bathroom and I needed a new one, and Brooke went in the other direction, to the grocery store.

Just walking across a parking lot made me feel like a felon on the run, like every pair of eyes was on me, even though I was under no illusions.

Actually, I was a nondescript teenage girl giving no one a reason to look at her.

That didn’t stop my heart beating up into my throat, like it had yesterday when I was walking to the bus station.

Only yesterday? Time moved fast.

The drugstore was relatively empty in the middle of the day, and I tried to act normal.

What did normal girls do in CVS? Look at makeup?

I only ever wore makeup to cover up bruises, scars or zits, and I always felt conspicuous when I tried on my mom’s bright lipstick, so I never bothered with it.

I browsed the aisles under the fake fluorescent glow of bright white lights, threw powder and concealer into my basket, then went looking for toothbrushes.

At the checkout line I picked up two Snapples and a bag of chips and waited for the woman in front of me to be finished.

‘Hey,’ the cashier said as I walked up to her counter.

‘Hi.’

I looked around as she scanned and packed my stuff, checking out where the CCTV cameras were. They’d already caught me, I was sure of that, so there was no point in trying to hide now.

‘Forty-two twenty-six is your total.’

‘Thanks.’ I swiped the card and watched the screen on the card reader for it to clear.

The machine beeped.