“MADISON? ARE YOU SURE YOU want to leave?” Tatum asks, looking at me from over her arm, her hands resting on the steering wheel.
“Yes,” I answer, gazing out the window. “I can’t be around them right now, Tatum.”
She looks at me, pulling onto the highway. “Do you want to talk about what happened back there?”
I hit the radio, hoping to drown out her questions. Jason Derulo’s “Stupid Love” starts playing.
“So yup, that’s a no then,” Tatum mutters, taking her attention back to the road. I close my eyes and lose myself in the lyrics of the song. Fuck love. Fuck any feelings that resemble love, or show it. The one person who was supposed to love me unconditionally betrayed me too. What does that say? What, am I that unlovable? Or do so many people think I don’t deserve their truth? Both of which are shit, if I’m being honest. Which I am.
The song finishes and I turn the radio down, realizing it’s not Tatum’s fault.
“You don’t have to do this with me, Tate, but I can’t be here, with them, around all the lies.”
She sighs. “Madi, I’m not leaving you. I know our friendship moved fast, but… I’ve never had any friends before, and I’m a little…” Her face turns red before she looks back to me. “Lonely. So I’m not leaving you out here—alone.”
“But you do realize that you’ll have to ditch your credit cards?” I point out, watching her reaction.
Realization slips over briefly before a smile snaps back onto her face. “Yes, Madi. Consider them gone.”
“Really?” I ask, my eyebrow quirked.
“Yes.” She nods, and I almost buy it. Then she casually adds, “Right after I withdraw a few thousand.”
Laughing, I shake my head, turning the music back up. What the fuck are we going to do?
“Okay,” Tatum inserts, running her hand through her hair as she continues to drive us wherever the fuck we are going. “So we need to go back to your house quickly and gather whatever we might need.”
“Like what?” I ask, horrified that we need to go back home. “No, Tate, I don’t want to go there.”
She looks to me. “Well, what then, Madi? We don’t have many options, and we need passports and all that!”
“Okay,” I whisper, resting into my seat and trying to think of a solution. “Okay, this is just a real blind shot, but I promise if this fails, we can break into my house and take whatever I need.”
Tatum relaxes. “So where are we going?”
I swallow. “To Riverside. To the library.”
Pulling up to the school, Tatum parks the car out front and turns in her seat to face me. “Are you sure about this?”
“Um.” I search for the word I’m looking for, but fail. “No.” I push open the door and get out just as Tatum’s door closes.
“Well, lucky I have my running shoes on.” She rounds the car and comes to stand next to me.
I look down at her feet. “Those aren’t running shoes, Tatum.”
Heading toward the school with Tatum in tow, we sneak down the side of the girls’ classrooms, ducking under any windows where people might see us, and make our way past the pool, straight toward the library that’s tucked behind the gym. As we reach the student-only entrance, I slide my student card over the little box until the green light flashes and beeps. Pulling open the door, we step inside. It’s fairly quiet, a few students hanging about here and there, but no one who would take notice of Tatum and me. The door slips shut, breaking the kind of silence that can only come from a library.
Miss Winters’s head snaps up to the entrance, pulling her out of the book she was engrossed in. Her eyes widen when she sees me, so I give her a pleading look. She gets to her feet, shoving her glasses up her nose. Walking toward Tatum and me, she watches her surroundings closely, her paranoia obvious.
“Girls, how can I help you?” She plasters on a fake smile.
“I know” is all I manage to say. All the times I’ve wanted to ask, What the fuck is going on? is replaced now with those two simple words.
Miss Winters pauses, her head tilting to the side as her eyes drift over my shoulder briefly before coming back to me. “You know?”
I maintain eye contact, my shoulders squaring. “I. Know.” In a blink of an eye, she forcefully grabs onto Tatum’s and my arms and directs us back toward the entrance we just walked through. Pushing the doors open, she shoves us back into the late afternoon sun, closing the doors behind herself.
She exhales, her hand coming up to her forehead where she rubs across it softly, in an almost meditating gesture. “Shit.” She cranes her neck, closes her eyes, and then breathes out, “You know you’re the Silver Swan?”
“The Silver what now?” Tatum asks sassily, looking toward me with a crinkled eyebrow.
“Yes,” I hiss. “But I don’t know what the fuck that means or how you know about it or why everyone has been lying to me.”
“I can’t….” Miss Winters shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Madison, but I can’t get involved with all of it. It’s too dangerous.”
“Well then, can you help me disappear?”
Miss Winters snaps her head toward me. “You can’t run from the Kings, Madison. They’ll kill you.” She ends her sentence in a whisper.
“They’ll kill me anyway. Assuming I read the book correctly.”
“Where is that book?” Miss Winters asks, looking around nervously.
“It’s in my bag. Are you going to help me or not?”
She pauses, searches my eyes, and then pulls out her phone. “Look, I know a guy. Tell him Tinker sent you.”
“Tinker?” I ask as she scrolls through her cell.
She looks up at me. “Yes, Tinker.” She pauses, dropping her arms to her side.
“What?”
“It’s just…. Listen, you need to do this right if you’re going to do it. Get all the documents he needs from you, but withdrawal all the cash you need for now. He’s not cheap. You can’t carry over ten grand in cash if you fly internationally, so withdrawal ten thousand, and then another eight to get everything you need from Benny.” She pauses, giving me his number, and I quickly add it to my phone. “He will charge you four thousand each.” She pauses and looks at me. “Run, Madi. Run and don’t ever come back, because regardless of what Bishop feels about you?” She searches my eyes. “It means nothing. It meant nothing when it came to Khales, either.”
“What do you mean? What do you know about Khales?”
Her face turns hard. “I know he put a bullet right between her eyes.”