The Run Aways

Chapter Three

Hazel's POV

About an hour later, the four of us were in the basement of Serenity's house. She was pacing the room, Jess and Naomi already told us what was up in the second section of the hospital's Sick Teen Unit. "Those kids aren't sick, they were kidnapped from their homes. The hospital is trying to use our generation to keep theirs from dying!" Serenity begins to freak out. "They know of us, they're going to take us next." Jessica steps in front of the pacing teen, putting her hands on her cheeks gently. "They're not going to take us, understand?" She spoke softly, however, Serenity wasn't going to calm down. "How do you know?!" She stuttered as the rest of us think of ways to stop what's happening.

"You wanna know how I know? I know, because we are going to run away. They can't take us, if they can't find us. We'll all clean out our bank accounts, shred anything that has our identities on it, we'll remove ourselves from the public eye. You can't find a person if there's no evidence of them ever existing." Jessica was calm, like she'd planned this before we even went to the hospital. "What about school? And our friends? Families?" Serenity questioned. "We have to move on, Ser. We have to leave if we want to live." I cut in at this point, "if we're going to basically erase our lives, then what about pictures?" Naomi was next to speak, "I'm pretty good at Photoshop, we'll find every picture with us in it and I'll change it up and fix it to be like we weren't ever in the picture, as if we never existed. Anything that can be searched to find us will be shredded, never to be found again." Jessica spoke once again. "Alright, say we get all the pictures to you by tomorrow, when can you have them done?"

"Give me four days and another day for us to place the pictures back perfectly where we found them. Then I'll take another day and a half to erase anything about us off of the internet and delete and information we have on any type of technology. We'll sell our old technology away and run." We all nodded in agreement. "Over the course of the next week, we'll get everything ready. We'll pack the clothes we need and burn the rest, we'll change our appearances to look completely different, and we'll shred paper copies of anything with our identities on them." Jessica rambled, again we nodded. "Let's split up to our houses and find everything we can that has our faces in it, after those are given to Naomi, we'll find every kind of paper copy form of I.D., then we'll pack up and burn excess items, lastly we'll all change our appearances." Again, we nodded. "Let's go to our banks first, pulling out all of our money, then we'll all go home and get the pictures and i.d. items." Serenity went up the stairs the rest of us following.

Jessica drove us to our bank, which was the same for all of us thankfully, and we walked in. We went to different ladies at different desks, all requesting to remove every penny from all accounts we may own. Next Jessica went around, dropping everybody off at their houses.

When at my house, I went straight the the entertainment center in the living room. My mom is on a business trip, so I didn't have to worry about her seeing me removing these pictures from all the picture books. My mom never bothered to hang family pictures, not wanting to forget any in the case we ever moved, so she simply put them all into scrap books. Lucky for me, and pictures that had me in it were all compiled into one big scrap book. I grabbed a couple reference photos of my parents just in case, before searching the rest of the house, looking in many unordinary places in the case my mom might've hidden a photo or two. I later found one more, much smaller, scrap book or my baby photos. These would simply be thrown away (burned) with the other forms of i.d.. I did find my birth certificate, social security number, and both copies of my learner's permit. I usually drive my mom's car, so I didn't have to worry about selling a car within the week unlike Jessica.

When I'm sure that I've found everything that could possibly relate back to me, I put it in a plastic bag and set it by the front door. Next, I went to my room and packed a small suitcase full of bare necessities. Something for every weather type, toiletries (obviously travel sized), a few things for memory, and my stuffed wolf I got from Italy. With my bag packed, I set to packing all my other stuff in a trash bag and making my room look like it's never been lived in. Finally, I cleaned the whole house, making sire it looked like only one person lived there, even putting wine in my mom's favorite glass cup, pouring the wine in the sink, and placing the cup in the dishwasher as if she had a drink then left for her business trip. I thoroughly cleaned the house, and even removed my fingerprints from anything that might've had them on it. I left my spare keys in the key bowl on the shelf next to the front door, picked up everything that was mine, and walked (slowly due to the amount of stuff) to Jess' house just three doors down. Everyone is at work at the moment, so I'm not worried about being seen.