Runaways- Runaways 1

Chapter 8: Aaliyah

No alerts came. I guess we hadn't met the criteria for an AMBER Alert, considering they probably didn't assume we'd been abducted if we'd all left together in Luke's car. I looked up files of any missing children on the Greenville County Police Department website and found a few. We had several days at most before they expanded to Georgia, that is, if they even cared to.

I saw Peyton's first, Marcus's shortly after, and then mine. Luke was right. He hadn't gotten one yet. He seemed so down. I could tell that even though he was depressed about his situation with his parents, he was happy to be with us. I could understand it to some extent. I just didn't understand why they didn't care enough to report him missing. As far as they knew, he could have jumped off a bridge. But they didn't seem to care in the slightest. Maybe it was because he was eighteen now, so he wasn't a missing child, but they could have at least filed some kind of missing persons report. 

"Man, I guess it's too late to second guess myself now, but I feel kinda bad. I know my parents and my grandparents are freaking out," Peyton said. I rolled my eyes. Her parents were probably the most concerned out of any of them. At least she was normal.

"Let's pull over here," Marcus said. He'd been driving the majority of the time. Peyton had taken over once, but Luke hadn't done it since the very beginning. I still didn't have my license which meant I couldn't drive at night even if I'd wanted to. We'd been on I-95 for a while now, and we'd seen quite a few empty cars on the side, so it wouldn't be too uncommon.

"Anyone know how to remove a license plate?" I asked.

"That'll look pretty suspicious," Peyton pointed out. "Chances are, they won't even come look for us down here. I mean, yeah, they probably don't think we've been abducted since we all left together, but they still may not look out of state lines yet. We might have a few days."

"I'm sure his parents' know his license plate number though," Marcus added.

"But we don't even know if they're looking," Luke countered. I sighed.

"Luke, forget about them. It'll be fine."

As soon as we climbed out of the car, Marcus wrapped him in a hug. Luke just patted him on the back and stepped away, exchanging a few words with him quietly.

"Hey." Peyton came over to me, catching me off guard and making me realize I'd been staring. Then I noticed how long her hair was. She'd let it out of the topknot she'd tied it in, and it fell almost to her waist. It may have been childish, but I was still a little uneasy around her just because of how we'd first met, so I didn't want to think what I was thinking. But I thought it anyway. She was really pretty. Not like a model or celebrity, but naturally pretty.

Her brown hair had golden streaks throughout and cascaded in waves. They were frizzy, yes, but they were much better kept than my short hair. She had hazel eyes that seemed to change colors every now and then. Her smile was contagious. And then I noticed she'd been talking to me.

"Aaliyah!" she said again and started laughing. "Did you hear what I just said?" I blushed, embarrassed that I'd zoned out. I was supposed to be focused on getting out of here, not finding a girlfriend. She was straight anyway. Geez.

"Uh, no. What?"

"I'm terrible at navigation. Like, I'm pretty sure a tortoise could get somewhere faster than I could even if I'd been given specific directions. So, can you help me? I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to get to Florida and none of this makes sense!" She gestured toward the road map in her hand. She was still laughing pretty hard. I could tell it was out of frustration though. "Plus, it all goes by roads and I don't think we'd exactly want to follow roads if you know what I mean."