The Runaways

Chapter 1

And I did—a place in the floor behind his desk where he’d removed the vent cover one too many times. I jiggled the top, popped off the smooth metal covering, and there it was—a shiny new vault.

I ran my fingers over the sliders, sweat glazing the metal as I worked, and clicked through every possible combination he could’ve set.

Click, click, click.

Click, click, click.

Click, click, clack—the downstairs door popped open before the lock on his safe did.

Bad news. Dad’s footsteps echoed through the house while he mumbled angrily into his phone.

      “This isn’t the kind of deal people like you get in writing, young man. Just make sure to keep up your end and I’ll keep up mine,” he said.

I had thirty seconds left to find a hiding place, to put his secret back exactly where I’d found it, to disappear. But my body froze and my muscles tightened harder than the pressure building in my chest. I waited for the door to open, for him to hear me, to catch me, to notice me, but nothing changed.

             “Good. That’ll be better for both of us. I’ll be there in a minute,” he said.

His footsteps slowed to a stop just outside the door, but his phone call didn’t. The stranger on the other line dragged him downstairs and back to his business. So I went back to mine.

Click, click, pop.

The lock to his safe popped open to my mom’s birthday. He’d deny that if you asked him, though. He’s been denying a lot of things lately.

I lifted the lid to find a gun—a silver secret with “Re-election Day” etched into the steel. Dad’s secrets stopped being a game the second I realized they could kill. But Andersons didn’t have enemies or at least they weren’t supposed to—that’s what he’d told me, that’s what he’d promised.

I shouldn’t have believed him—politicians never kept promises. I just wished he’d kept his. Maybe he’d always had it as a precaution. Precautions were just a way to stay safe. But this didn’t feel safe. Dad didn’t feel safe, not anymore.

Panic crawled into all the places I’d felt secure and buried itself deeper than my bones. My lungs couldn’t breathe in the air fast enough, my eyes couldn’t un-see what they’d seen, and my hands couldn’t un-touch what they’d touched.

I shoved the gun back into the vault, fingers fumbling it into place, and slammed the lid shut like closing it would close the door on my reality. For a publicly anti-gun guy, a brand new pistol was anti-common sense.

But maybe this was normal. Eighteen-year-olds find crazy stuff in their parents’ rooms all the time. Maybe Dad’s wasn’t out of the ordinary. Maybe it was a collector’s item, but he seldom brought home hobbies for pleasure, just solutions for pain.

I staggered out of the room and tried to un-freak myself out about the situation, but when weird things like guns pop up, you're supposed to pay attention. If you don't, you pay for it later. I’ve watched a lot of movies, so I know these things.

I had a gun stuck in the back of my head for the rest of the day. Dad came home, dinner was awkward and silent, but it always is. He wasn’t paying attention—not to me, not to anything. The tension didn't even register.

After thirty minutes of dry steak and burnt potatoes, I skipped out on reruns of Gossip Girl, popped a couple Benadryl and knocked out early. The drugs didn’t make Dad’s secrets any easier to sleep on, just easy to forget for a little while.