Runaways- Runaways 1

Chapter 7: Luke

I guess it was morning now. It was just past midnight. Luckily, I had a little more time than Marcus and Peyton, but I needed to figure out some way to not only get out of our security-system-protected house, but also get my car out of the driveway as quietly as possible. Not to mention I was trying to rustle around the house packing without waking my parents up.

I quickly threw in a short-sleeved shirt along with a long-sleeved one and threw a pair of jeans in with a hoodie. I might not need the hoodie if we were heading south, but it was good to have. I managed to raid our pantry of all the trail mix, dried fruit, nuts, and granola bars we had, and I still had enough room to stick a large water bottle and a purifier. My backpack was a little heavy, but it wasn't unbearable.

Then I changed into jeans and a t-shirt. I didn't bother to put on shorts because even though the southern humidity could be unbearable, the mosquitos were always worse. I threw in bug spray too, along with sunscreen. I had just enough room left for a set of walkie-talkies and then I sat down to wait.

If Marcus was leaving his house at one o'clock, then that meant I'd have a minimum of an hour and a half to figure out how to safely get out of the house without setting off the alarm. Plus, I had to get both of them in my car and out of the neighborhood before anyone saw or heard anything.

Why'd I agree to this? It all seemed a little extreme. But, then again, my parents were going to kick me out anyways. I guess it didn't really matter. They might not even care that I ran away. In fact, they probably wouldn't. They'd just assume I didn't want to change.

Okay, I needed to stop sitting around and moping. If I had an hour and a half to two hours, I needed to find some way to get out of the house. My bedroom was on the second floor, so I could try to open the window, but the jump wouldn't be great. I couldn't go through the front, back, or garage doors because they would all set off the security system. I could try a first-floor window and risk getting caught on camera but—oh who cares, the car would be on the camera anyway. But did I even know how to unlock a window? I'd never exactly tried to before. And I'd have to take out the screen. Geez, this was harder than I thought.

I went downstairs as quietly as I could, carrying my backpack with me. I had to figure out how to do this without waking anyone up and hope that wherever Maisie had gone, she'd be gone until after Marcus and Peyton got here. I tried to unlock the window without much success.

The easiest one for me to get out of was the one in the front, but it was different from all the others. It had some kind of lock that looked like it was fifteen years older than the rest of them. I knew our house was about fifty years old, so I guess most of the windows had been replaced and this one just hadn't needed to be at the time. I was able to figure it out after almost a half hour of fiddling with it, and then I switched to taking out the screen.

It was one a.m. now. I had about an hour before they got here. I started tugging at one of the edges before I realized that I knew how to do this. Dad had taught Maisie and I years ago when our neighbor's house burnt down so that we would know how to get out of windows if it happened to us. I was eight at the time, or somewhere around that age. After successfully pulling the screen out, I jumped through. I decided it might be better to wait outside for them, just out of sight of the front camera. My car was directly below it, so there was a slim chance I could go without being detected. Unless...

I found a way to climb up the roof. The camera was dangling from the ledge, so I could tie the bandana I'd brought with me around the lens to blind it. That would work, hopefully. Then I could get in the car and leave undetected as long as I was silent. Maisie still wasn't back, so I assumed she'd spent the night at her boyfriend's place without my parents' consent or something. Hopefully, she'd get back before they noticed I was missing. I didn't want my parents to think they had lost both of us.