time to run.

i.

When the two men in crisp suits came to the door, The Sister regarded them blankly for about five seconds before slamming the door in their faces.

“Who was that?” The Mother poked her head out of the kitchen.

“Dunno,” The Sister dropped back onto the couch, and picked up her paperback.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Get your feet off my coffee table.”

Entirely too close to the TV and outlined in it’s hazy glow, sat Michael. He was playing some game where he was shooting 8-bit aliens out of the sky. Each of the pixelated aliens let out a pathetic little scream as it fell.

The doorbell rang again.

“Don’t answer it,” The Sister said.

The Mother caught her sharp stare and glared back as she walked to the door. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.”

ii.

They sat at the marble-topped table so clean the light reflected dimly from its smooth surface. The low light makes The Mother’s skin look warm, the brown highlighted, shaded by the glow.

It made the Agents look sickly.

One of the agents accepted the coffee, and the other didn’t.

The Sister had stopped reading, straining to hear their low voices over the digitized death cries.

"My partner and I are from a classified section of the CIA, and we’re here to talk about your son,”

“My son?” The Mother asks in a voice so clearly and truthfully oblivious that it almost makes The Sister’s eyes roll out of her head.

Everybody knows Michael is a bit weird, and everybody has some shity theory. Even she knows something isn’t quite right about her little brother. But, she’d take his weird-ass over anybody else’s plastic facades and broken promises any day.

“You see, we’ve had our eye on your son for quite some time - ”

Her eyes snapped up. She knew she hadn’t been imagining things. Her shoulders felt a bit heavier on their walks home lately, and she’d turn around to look at nothing.

“And he’s indicated that he might be in possession of a, well, supernatural gift.”

“That you want to use for your benefit, yeah?”

The Talkative Agent, the one who had taken the coffee before, whirled his head around. The Sister loomed in the doorway, looking down on the man.

The Mother gasps. “That’s no way to talk to an adult, let alone an Agent! Show some respect!”

“Why?” The Sister asked flatly, eyes flicking from them to The Mother. “When have they shown respect to any of us? 9/11? Katrina? When they let kids like Michael get shot in the street every day?”

The Mother opens her mouth, but The Sister just keeps going.

“And besides, how do we know if they’re telling the truth about who they are? They stalked us for weeks and insisted that their Agents. For all we know, they could work for some ultra-secret underground syndicate or cult or mafia.” She glares at them. “Screw off.”

Almost mechanically synchronized, both Agents move for their badges.

The Sister sneers. “People forge those all the time. Haven’t you seen any movies?”

“This isn’t the movies, little girl,” The Agent says.

She gives him a searing look and storms off.

iii.

“She was incredibly rude to the Agents,” The Mother was telling their Father over a culturally assimilated plate of turkey with weirdly thick gravy, fluffy mashed potatoes, and perfectly round defrosted peas.

“I was only telling the truth,” The Sister says, churning the mashed potatoes with the fork.

“That doesn’t mean you get to be disrespectful!”

“Well, maybe they deserved it!” The Sister snapped.

“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me, young lady!”

“You didn’t even fight them on it! Who knows what kind of stuff they’d do to him!”

“That’s enough,” Cuts in The Father’s cool voice. “There will be no yelling at this table.”

The Sister slouches, continuing to stab her at her peas. A feeling of calm begins to ebb at her anger like the waves on the beach. She shakes her head, giving Michael a dirty look.

“Quit playing with your peas,” The Mother says.

IV.

“Can you drive us to the border?”

They stare at her for a long time. Everybody has that friend that they would do literally anything for. But most people never really expect them to actually show up, sopping wet, at their front door.

The Sister inhales. “A government agency - or that’s who they say they are - want to take Michael. They said they want to help him, and I don’t fucking believe them. And there probably isn’t that much time until they notice we’ve gone because they’ve been tailing us for days, or maybe they already know - and I know this is a lot, but I didn’t know where else too - ”

They put a hand up. “You’re rambling. Calm down. Breathe.”

The Sister inhales and holds it into her mouth.

“I believe you,” They say. “It’s going to be okay. Just let me get my keys. Also, you’re probably going to have to leave your phone.”

“What about the music?” The Sister’s voice shriveled with exhaustion. “Can’t I just leave it in airplane mode or something?”

“Even in Airplane mode. Don’t worry about the music though, I have CDs.”

She groaned.

v.

From the city, to this frontier,

All the noises join to make -

The Sister drops her head against the headrest, looking at the side-view mirror through half-lidded eyes as Michael rides the wind with his hand.

Her eyes fall on the person beside her, hands slung over the shift, fingers tapping the beat as they hum along, always a note or two late.

"What?” She asks over the sound of the wind hitting the windows.

“You can go to sleep if you want,” They say.

“Nah,” The Sister drops her head back on the headrest. If she couldn’t drive, she would stay up and keep them company.

A feeling of cool sleepiness starts to ebb at her resolve.

“Michael.” She groans.

The feeling parts suddenly, like clouds opening up in the eye of a hurricane.

“He’s worried about you,” The Friend’s eyes dart to her before flicking back to the road.

“Yeah, well,” She adjusts herself in the seat. “He doesn’t need to. Not his job.”

She can feel their eyes from under their shades.“That’s not how it works,”

“I know.”

Plunging back into the darkness,

It’s not pain, it’s just uncertainty -

vi.

“Can I have some gas on pump three?”

“Sure,” The woman with graying hair’s half-bitten nails draw thin white lines across the Sister’s wrist when she takes the folded bills.

Authorities are searching for this boy, kidnapped and believed to be in the possession of this woman -

The Sister snaps her neck around to the TV seeing a picture of her, but not her. It seems doctored a bit to make her look a bit more deranged, almost cryptid-like.

She lets out a sound like a laugh.

“Here you go, ma'am,”

The Sister tilts her head a little and mumbles thanks, hit with a blast of heat as she walks out of the Gas Station.

“Michael, you’re going to have to sit on the floor a bit,” She says, and Michael immediately slides to the floor, the handheld still chirping with 8-bit death cries.

“They’re looking for us,” She walks around the car, standing next to The Friend. “But it doesn’t seem like they know you’re involved yet.”

They hum, hands resting on the pulsing gas lever.

The Sister squints into the distance, struggling to cobble the words together in her head. “What I’m actually saying is - I’m saying that - well, if you want to get out now - now would be the time to do it.”

Their eyes flick over her heavy shoulders and the deepening bags under her eyes.

The hum. “I don’t think so, no.”

“Why not?” Her voice was sharp, looking the gift horse directly in the mouth.

“I had always wished somebody would have stood up for me the way you do for him. It’s admirable,”

The Sister shifted, glancing at the ground. “I don’t - … thanks, I guess.”

vii.

They pile into the cheapest room in the cheapest motel on the side of the road. Michael falls asleep almost immediately after his bath, and The Sister has to pry the handheld out of his grip to charge it.

The Friend sleeps with no socks, long legs half of the bed and feet directly in the crispy ice-cold blow of the AC.

“What is it?” Their voice cuts through the dark.

Broken out of her trance, The Sister blinks. “What? Oh. Nothing.”

There’s a second of silence, and then she hears them shifting in her direction. She can’t really see them in the dark, but she doesn’t need to - she can feel the “bullshit” rolling off them in waves.

The Sister sighs deeply, something that rattles her spine and travels all the way down. “I just - this was stupid, wasn’t it. There’s just no way we can keep outrunning these people—their professionals. I don’t think we could possibly make it to the border before they figure it out - and wait for us there.”

The Friend hums.

“Say something, damnit,” Her voice cracks.

“I don’t think it matters,”

Her eyebrows furrow. “What?”

“It might be a little “stupid”,” She winces silently as they continue, “But people do stupid things all the time.”

“Gee, thanks,”

They stretch, rolling over to their back. “I’m just saying it doesn’t really matter in the end. Michael will remember that you tried. Nobody else but you.”

viii.

Unfortunately, The Sister, is right about the blockade at the border - because she’s always right, especially when she doesn’t want to be.

Her eyes follow the Agent as he walks around the car and knocks at the window.

He knocks again.

Staring straight ahead, she cracks the window.

“I figured out what you were doing almost immediately,” He taps his temple, voice dripping with poison condescension. “But I figured we could give you some time. Did you get to say goodbye to your little brother?”

The Sister doesn’t say anything. Instead, she pops the lock on the door and slams it into the Agent and yanks it back closed.

“Go!”

The Friend slams on the gas and the car lurches forward. In the rearview mirror she can see the Agent, buckled and trying to move for something.

The car stops.

The Sister jerked forwards, whirling around to face The Friend. “What are you doing?!”

They blink once, then twice, slowly, as if their eyelids are sticking.

She swivels her head to the backseat. “Michael, what the - ?!”

The haze clears from the Friend’s eyes immediately. “He says he doesn’t want you to run anymore.”

"What are you talking about?!”

Michael opens his door and slides out, walking toward the oncoming Rage Rover.

The Sister is pulling at the door handle, beating the panel with her opened palm. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me - ”

The Friend is pressing the driver’s door lock controls. “I can’t - it’s not, it’s not working - “

The Sister wails, hitting her forehead against the windowpane, still jerking at the handle. It opens and she almost falls out, struggling with the seatbelt and running after her brother.

"Michael! Michael!”

She’s running.

The Agent raises his gun.

A wave of exhaustion sweeps over them. The Agent grip loosens on the gun and the Sister drops to her knees, tears still seeping from closed eyes.

ix.

The Sister stops at her Friend’s house every so often, after school and eventually after work. The silence between them is heavy, and her Friend takes it like a weighted blanket over their shoulders so she doesn’t have to do it alone.

The Sister is too numb and cold and exhausted to say thank you at first, but she hugs them extra tight and cuts their onions, and takes out their trash.

They end up on the sofa, bending awkwardly at strange angles, but neither of them move.

“They say they might let me see him soon, but I don’t believe that. They keep saying it, and they never do, but - ” She looks up at them, trying to blink hard to keep the tears in.

They put their hand into her hair, guiding her head back to their chest.

And her Friend says nothing because nothing is better sometimes - holding her until she inevitably peels off of them and into the dark night.