Take Me Tomorrow (22 page)

Ready to Escape

The door was covered in paper drawings, but not one included a sun. While I hesitated, Lily knocked, and
the cheap decorations floated to the floor. “They used to have us make those for the holidays,” Lily explained the paperwork. “Most of the girls burned them.”

The door opened an inch, revealing
a small girl with bright red hair. Her tiny eyes moved over us. “What do you want?”

Lily smiled wide. “I’m looking for Harper.”

She placed her hand on the doorframe, “That’s me,” she said.

I stared at her thin arms. I could see the veins. All of them. But her wrist was bare.  She hadn’t tried to kill herself. Harper wasn’t Noah’s little sister. I tugged at Lily’s sleeve to stop her from speaking.

“Do you have a roommate?” I asked, trying to sound calm, but my voice shook.

“Yeah,” H
arper snarled at me. She heard the fear in my voice. “What do you want?”

“I’m her sister,” I lied.

Harper’s eyebrows would’ve pushed together if she had any. “You don’t look like you could be Bri’s sister.”

“Genetics,” I laughed
, momentarily believing myself, but my façade shattered.

A
second voice broke into the conversation, “I don’t have a sister.”

The roommate stepped into the doorway, but she stayed behind Harper’s broad shoulder. Bri
had a black pixie cut and three piercings on both of her small ears. Her eyes were brown, but her pale complexion was paper-white against her dark clothes. The fierceness in her glare made me want to walk away, to try to find Rinley somewhere else, but we had to explain ourselves now. The girls were waiting.

“Sorry, girls,” Lily chirped up, remaining bubbly and confident. “I’m new to working here, and I wanted to get to know some of the residents. I think we were confused on the room—”

Harper began to slam the door in our face, but Bri had rolled her eyes. When her brown eyes moved, blue irises peeked out from behind her colored contacts. It was only then that I noticed her blond roots beneath her black hair-dye.

B
efore I could contemplate what my body was doing, I grabbed Harper’s red shirt and yanked her into the hallway. I used the momentum to pull myself into the room and slam the door behind me. I locked it, spinning so fast that I knocked the wind out of myself on the door. Bri moved faster than me.

She lunged to her desk and
latched onto a sharpened envelope opener.

I flicked my knife out of my jacket.
“Don’t try me,” I growled.

Bri’s eyes were on my weapon. Unlike her brother, she looked terrified.
“What do you want?” she managed.

“To get you out,” I
explained. “Noah’s here. He’s waiting for you.”

Rinley jumped forward and swung
the envelope opener at my throat. I dodged it, tumbled to the ground, and dug my nails into the pressure point on her ankle. She collapsed to the floor, wiggling violently. I turned her over, covered her with my body, and shoved my arm into her open mouth. Her teeth latched down on my bare skin, and I bit back a scream as her sharp teeth dug into my flesh.

“Let me in,
” Harper shouted from the hallway as she pounded on the weak door.

I focused on the little girl below me as she continued to fight, scratching and biting.
I pressed my knife to her throat, and her teeth released my arm. A sigh escaped my lips before I could hold it back. Knocks continued to echo around the small bedroom.

“You’re going to get us killed if y
ou don’t believe me,” I warned, “and fast.”

She
arched her neck away from my blade, but her breath fogged over the shiny metal. I prayed she wouldn’t try to kill herself again.

“
You have to trust me, Rinley,” I emphasized her name. The blade glimmered, reflecting the shaky light that my grip produced.

“You’re holding a knife to my throat,” she retorted, trying to squirm away. She was still fighting.

I did the only thing I could do.

I dropped the knife as I grabbed her left wrist, running my thumb over the bumpy scar Noah had told me about.
“You tried to kill yourself,” I tried to convince her with information. “Liam died saving Noah. You got left behind. Noah wears a watch that’s synchronized. Your mother loved purple periwinkles—”

Her envelope opener fell from her scarred hand as she screeched, “Okay – okay! I believe you.”

I jumped off of her, but we both gaped. Her shallow breath rose as she gripped her chest. Before I could help her off the ground, she stood herself, “Noah’s here? He’s really here?”

“Yes,” I
answered, picking up my weapon.  “And you’re escaping.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

Rinley’s
eyes widened. “What?”

“Trust me,” I pleaded
, but she was frozen. Every Tomery I knew did this.

I flipped my knife over so that she could take the blade away from me. Anything to get her to
believe that I was on her side, that I wasn’t here to hurt her, that I was here because Noah needed me to be − because she needed me to be. “Please.”

Rinley snatched
the knife as if I would change my mind. She flipped it into her pocket, but her eyes never left me. The knocks from the hallway continued to rise in volume, and without another moment of hesitation, Rinley ran to the door and flung it open. “Cut it out.”

Harper
stepped back, and her bottom lip fell open. Lily’s bun had broken, and her white hair sprayed around her startled expression. They had been fighting, but Harper was giving in now. She looked from Rinley to me. “What’s going on, Bri?”

“These are my friends,” Rinley lied, glaring at Harper
like she was suddenly the enemy – which, if she kept making noise, she was. “Stop making a commotion.”

I followed Rinley
out of the door, and the little girl looked around the crowded hallway. Everyone had come out of their rooms to see what was happening. “Nothing to see here,” Rinley announced, waving her arms around. “Go back to your rooms.”

As if she controlled them,
the whispering girls went back to their rooms. The fighting wasn’t significant enough to feed their drama. I sighed.

Rinley
waited until everyone was gone before talking to Harper, “We’re going to the library,” she said, “Don’t bother me.”

Harper
hugged herself. “Okay.” The redhead must have been older than Rinley, but her widened eyes told it all. Rinley scared her. A thirteen-year-old scared everyone.

Rinley, completely ignoring her disheveled roommate,
began walking without ever speaking to Lily. She had the same stride as Noah − focused and silent. I grabbed Lily, and we followed the young girl. We didn’t speak, even when Rinley reached up to her face and rid herself of the colored contacts. She dropped them on the ground, and we stepped over them.

“This way,” Rinley pointed forward as she glanced over her shoulder.

When her blue eyes met mine, I remembered the family portrait. I saw the small girl from years ago before I stared at the older version in front of me. She was thin, but her arms were strong. Even when I held her down, I knew how strong she was. For two years, she kept herself trained. She was always ready to escape.

We neared a door at the end of the hallway, and a warning sign stopped me. It said it would sound an alarm, but Rinley slammed into the bar to open it.
For a moment, I panicked, expecting a siren, but Rinley jumped outside, unfazed. Like Noah, she knew how to escape a facility. There was always an escape.

A siren didn’
t sound as Lily and I followed. The alarm must have been broken a long time ago. “Cheap building,” Rinley muttered. How long she had lived there was a mystery, but it wasn’t for days. She had a reputation. The girls listened to her. She probably knew the building inside and out, even better than Lily did. It was only then that I realized Rinley had probably seen Lily – her brother’s friend − volunteering there. We had been close to her all along.

“Do you remember me?
” Lily asked the girl, apparently realizing the same thing I had. “Last time I saw you, you were—”

“I don’t know you,” Rinley said, but she never looked at Lily. Her blue eyes searched the street in front of us for activity. We were on the side of the building. I could even see the main road.

“Lilianne,” Lily tried to jog the thirteen-year-old’s memory by saying her name, “I’m Miles’ twin. I used to do your hair—”

Rinley’s
hand shot up to the short, black crop that she now wore. “No offence, Lilianne,” her tone was sharp, “but I want to find my brother.”

Lily frowned as if she had been denied an ego boost, and I had to push her lightly to remind her why we were here. Now was not the time to catch up
over past makeovers.

“We’re meeting at the sun,” I
said to Rinley, hoping she knew the code.

Rinley’s lips twitched like she wanted to smile but had forgotten how to.
Before I could comprehend her movements, she flicked out my knife and handed it back to me in the same way Noah had. “Take it,” she said. She officially trusted me.

Unlike her, I could smile as I grabbed the metal. In the dim light, she reminded me of myself, standing in front of my father as he trained me in the forgery. “Be prepared to fight,” I said. It wasn’t about to get easier.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she chirped as red and blue light reflected off of everything around us.

T
rucks screeched up to the building, and cops − a heard of them – leapt out. All three of us pressed our backs against the side of the building before the sirens blared.

Lily, of all people, cursed
as dozens of officers swarmed the entranceway. “What—”

“
Stop talking,” Rinley ordered, pulling Lily off of the wall. “Just run.”

Shoot Them

Rinley was fast.
Really fast. Despite her short height and young age, she remained at my heels, her breath on my neck. I wasn’t sure if I was listening to my heart pound or hers as our feet flew across the grass, sprinting toward the river. The trees would add to the shadows of night, and the drop into the water would create an extra cover as the police swarmed the building.

A girl screamed in the distance, and m
y mind raced with possibilities. The police were entering a building full of troubled girls. It was guaranteed that they would fight back. They would keep the police there for a while. Hopefully, no one would get killed.

The ground dropped as the grass became slippery with water and mud.
My breath caught in my throat when my eyes adjusted and focused on the river − the same river I had almost drowned in, the one I was supposed to drown in.

I stopped
without thinking.

Rinley crashed into me, and w
e tumbled into the river, flailing our arms as we splashed into the creek bed. Cool water rushed over me, and my head slammed into something hard. Noah’s vision of drowning. It was happening. I hadn’t defied fate. I was only warned of it.

Fingers dug into my scalp before a hand yanked me up. I spit up water as I
stood on shaking feet. The water wasn’t even two feet deep. It was barely trickling, and I had nearly given up because of something Noah had apparently seen.

“What the hell was that?” Rinley shouted at me. Her pixie cut was pasted to the sides of her face, and mud smeared across her forehead.
“We could’ve broken something.”

“No time for arguing,” Lily yelled at the girl.

She didn’t have to say why. We had to keep running, and when they rushed off, I followed without hesitating.

We splashed through the river until we reached the bank, and we climbed it
on hands and knees. Rinley slipped, falling into the mud, and Lily pulled her up, kicking dirt into my face. I wiped it away. Dogs barked in the distance, but I was the only one who turned around, listening for the sound. Dogs ran faster than we did. If they were close, I wanted to see them coming.

We weren’t close enough to the train tracks to escape. At this rate, we were dead.

“How did they know?” Lily screeched as her feet slammed onto the concrete pathway. She spun around a corner, and it was over. A man shoved her to the ground.

Rinley dodged him
by ducking under his arm. He hit me instead, tackling me off the edge of the creek bed. We tumbled down the hill, twigs scraped my skin, and his hands wrapped around my throat.

“You little bitch,
” his scream ripped through my body.

Anthony.

I pushed his chest, and he toppled over, splashing into the shallow water. I pulled my knife from my sweater, but his fingers latched onto my ankle. He used the same pressure point I had used on Rinley, and I collapsed, dropping my knife. I reached out for it, but my fingernails found mud.

Anthony
loomed over me, his eyes wild, his face bleeding. “I should drown you,” he snarled, digging his knees into my ribs.

I gasped, unable to breathe, and his hands found my throat again.

“You really thought I wouldn’t have Lily’s name traced if she did anything?” he continued as I choked on muddy water. “I knew she was involved.
I knew!” His grip tightened. My windpipe was collapsing. “I should’ve killed Miles the second I had the chance.”

I
smacked his chest, his chin, his leg – any part of his body I could reach – but he never even flinched. “And Broden,” he continued, his wrists pressing against my collarbone. “Wait until I get my hands on him.”

H
e pushed my face under the water, and I squirmed beneath him. The creek bed shifted against my back, and the water became foggy. He sat on my stomach. He held me down. He weighed too much to fight him off of me.

Then, a
s suddenly as he had taken me down, his presence was gone.

I sa
t up, and my head spun. My legs twitched. My fingernails never left the muddy bottom. Next to me, Rinley hit Anthony across the face with a rock. He fell sideways, and his moaning echoed around us. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was down. I was up, but I hadn’t moved a single limb.

Rinley scrambled to her feet before pulling on my shirt.

“Wait,” I said, my hands skimming the river. My knife was inches away. I picked it up and swung it into my wet pocket. My legs followed mechanically, and we were off, running, tripping, coughing up water.

Lily’s white hair swung in the distance, and I focused on it as I ran, my neck burning from Anthony’s fingertips. It was as if he was still o
n top of me, drowning me, and dogs continued to bark. They were closing in as the sirens suffocated any air we managed to breathe.

My eyes burned, and water filled up my irises. Tears formed and spilled over the bottom of my eyelashes before I even realized I was crying. I tried to force them away by shutting my eyes. I didn’t have the time to cry.

“I can’t see,” Lily screamed from behind me. Apparently, I had passed her.

I forced my eyes open and stared at a
thick gas as it floated off of the city streets and into the ravine. They had shot tear gas into the river.

“Climb,” I screamed as
my feet stabilized on the shaky ground.

I stumbled upwards, my vision continuing
to fog over in a delirious haze. Solid objects became shadows, and the blackness became the only thing I could see. Reaching around for anything to put my hands on, my fingers grasped cloth. Before I could move away, hands gripped my arms and pulled me toward them.

I shouted as a black blog waved in front of me. It had five shapes that extended from it, small
, but familiar. A hand. The face of a watch flashed through the haziness of my vision. Broden
.
I pictured my best friend, only to have my vision slowly clear and reveal a totally different face. Noah. His lips moved as he spoke, but I couldn’t hear him. He was already so far away. He was gone.

“Sophie.” He shook me so softly that I barely felt it. “It’s me.
Noah.” His fingers moved to my neck, and I winced. The sinking pressure had crushed my collarbone. “What happened to you?”

I blinked
once, and my vision cleared, but he was no longer looking at me. He was focused behind me, and I turned my head around, still in his grasp.

Rinley caught up,
but only her blue eyes had color. Everything else was covered in mud. She froze a yard away, unable to move, and Noah dropped his hands from my arms.

He left me and
rushed over.

Rinley’s arms were up before he ever reached her. She clutched onto him when he finally did. Her fingers dug
into his sage-colored coat, and she buried her face into his chest. Even with the sirens, her sobs were heard.

H
e laid a hand on her short, black hair as if he couldn’t believe her long, blond strands was gone. “You’re okay, Rinley,” he said. “I got you.”

“Noah,” his sister crie
d as I pressed my hand against my lips, trying not to cry myself.

“Hold it together
,” Noah ordered softly, pulling her back to look at her. “We aren’t safe yet.”

She sniffled and rubbed her nose on her black jacket. The mud rubbed off.
“I thought—I thought you might be dead.”

“I’m right here,” he repeated,
shaking her hand as if to prove his presence. “We’re getting out of here.”

She nodded and
embraced Noah once more. She didn’t speak. Instead, she stepped away, squared her shoulders, and focused behind us, “Who’s that?”

“We have to keep moving,
” Miles shouted, waving his arms frantically. Lily ran beside him, and they gestured for us to follow them.

Rinley
followed the twins, running behind until she passed them. “Stay with Miles,” Noah shouted, sprinting after her as if she would get left behind again. I ran with Noah, closing in on all of them, and then, we flew over the ground together, synchronized to the same plan. Get Noah and Rinley out. That was the only thing that mattered.

“Dogs,” Lily shouted.

I looked back to see two giant dogs nearing us.

“Got it.”
Miles dropped his backpack, and his belongings splattered the ground. Bottles of pills rolled out. Tomo
.
Miles had been carrying the drugs all along, and the dogs tore the backpack apart as we continued to run.

W
e neared the tracks, curving into oblivion, and hopped over them to run on the outside of the metal rods. Lily tripped, and Noah picked her up without hesitation. They stumbled together as flashlights scattered the area, shouts coming from every direction. The ground shook from an explosion or gunshots, or people running, or something else entirely, but it wasn’t good. We knew that much.

“What was that?” Miles shouted.
Lily grabbed onto him as another explosion erupted.

Dirt filled my mouth, and I rolled around on the ground, unsure of how I ended up there. I tasted blood, and the tracks shook violently beneath me. Lights shone through the clouds of d
irt, and my throat constricted. I half-expected a train to run over me as Rinley crawled to my side, “You okay?” she asked, ignoring the lights.

The lights were officers, not a train.

I nodded numbly, and we started to stand up. But gunshots blasted the dirt, and I pulled Rinley to the ground.

W
e crawled, scraping against the stones. My ankle tensed, begging to rest, but I bit my lip and tore through the injury. My knees carried me as Rinley scooted herself in front of me. Her small feet disappeared as I coughed, unable to catch my breath in the chaos.

“Sophie,
” Noah’s whisper echoed over me as his hand wrapped around my wrist. His green eyes appeared out of the darkness, and he pulled. I kicked, trying to help him help me, and soon, we were crawling and keeping as low as possible. Even when he stopped, he yanked me up so that I was next to him. “Trust me, okay?” he asked, his expression wild.

“I think we’re past that,” I said.

Somehow, he found the energy to smile. When he jumped to his feet, he took me with him. We ran, and his grip never loosened on my wrist. My pain didn’t have a chance to register.

“Keep going, Sophie,
” Noah shouted, never looking back.

I wobbled, beginning to fall when
the dust began to clear. I breathed, my lungs relaxing as my eyes landed on the small platform the others stood on. They were yards above us, but the thick door was sprung open for us. Rinley was already on top, gaping back at us. The others were pale, covered in soot, but Rinley stared at her brother as if she was sure he would die.

He had come back for me.

Noah knelt down and put his hand out for me to step on. “Jump,” he instructed, “Now.”

I stepped on his hand, leapt
into the air, and reached for the edge. Knowing I couldn’t reach it, my heart stopped, and I waved my arms, only to have Miles catch me. “I got you,” he grumbled as Lily leaned over the edge. The twins pulled me to safety. I collapsed on the landing, and Rinley dragged me through the open door. Noah followed unscathed.

Once we were all inside, Miles leaned on the door and pushed it
with all of his might. It barely budged, and bullets cracked against the bottom of the tall platform. Noah and Lily rushed up to the gate, pushing it closed together, and Rinley locked it.

I didn’t move a muscle. My ankle was broken. Somewhere in the explosion, I had hit something, and i
t had enough. I could see bone.

Noah skidded on his knees when he landed next to me. His green eyes accessed
the damage. He didn’t have to tell me what I already knew. “Don’t look at it,” he said, reaching out for me.

When I didn’t grab his hand, he forced me to. “We aren’t leaving you here,” he said, never breaking eye contact. He didn’t give me a chance to fight him. He yanked me to my feet, and my screech tore against
my grinding teeth. “You got this, Sophie,” he spoke directly into my ear. “Come on. Keep moving.”

His hand was under my arm, and I hobbled against his side. I thought of Broden to distract myself. And Argos. And my dad. And my mother’s face popped up. She was sleeping on the kitchen floor.

When Miles rushed past, he tore my memory apart.

We weren’t standing in the kitchen in Albany. We were in the main station of the Topeka Region – the one that the State prided
itself on for delivering resources to the rest of the regions. A series of small gates separated each platform, but Miles leapt over the first one and ran to the podium that controlled the floor. He yanked a key from his neck, and within seconds, every gate leapt open.

Rinley ran
to the front of the train station. Lily jogged ahead of us, and light reflected off a piece of metal that had lodged in her forearm. The blood trailed after her, and my gag reflex pushed against my throat.