Author's note: This is chapter two, in which there are several run-on sentences and which is considerably better than chapter one, at least in my opinion. It's finally on the road. I've begun to write the rest of the chapters, adding bits and pieces of what will someday be over ten pages for each. I'm toying with both the Branko twins and an OC right now, to possibly arrive in one of the later chapters. We'll see. For now, I am planning on eight chapters with an epilogue that will be shorter. My goal is for it to be completed by the New Year. And, in 2009, maybe a sequel, which will be titled Almost Time, if I can manage to finish this one.

Disclaimer: I do not own Charlie Bone.

the escape

x marks the spot:

here's where we make our escape

hop in, slam the metal doors gratingly

feel the rusty purr grow and grow to a full-on roar until we're flying

see the burnt rubber smeared on the asphalt as the other car fades into the shadows

--and I was too late for love—

Exam day dawns bright and searingly early, hot sunlight flooding through the gables of the wide windows of Bloor's academy, awakening unsuspecting teens and permeating the entire school with the cries of panic it induces. Children reach parrying hands for their notecards, whizzing through them in a mad flash-autocracy flash-hydroxide flash-Ophelia shuffle, and back again, spinning on near broken cogs, cranking out a tick-tack-tock-helpmeI'mgoingtofail noise that echoes over and over. The teachers, vexed beyond belief, fold their arms and do their best to look imposing while the semi-decent students gulp formulas and dates instead of breakfast, ignoring the warnings of "You can't take a test on a full stomach!"

It is the last day (oh, did I tell you it's the last day?!) but this itch of exhilaration does nothing to still everyone's hammering hearts. Tancred, after sitting still as a stone with his eyes wide open and goggling for the best part of breakfast, suddenly leaps out of his chair and begins yelling unintelligible nonsense, much to the chagrin of the prefects at the Art table. Olivia Vertigo, her hair mousy brown, her normally impeccable face devoid of makeup, and wearing pink bunny slippers under her school skirt, starts singing show tunes at the top of her lungs, causing Manfred to lob his copy of Hamlet, which had been previously jammed so close to his nose that Zelda had been afraid for his sanity, sky-high. It is flung the length of the Drama table, finally coming down with a splat in the butter dish. Charlie Bone bangs his head on the Music table again and again, muttering to himself, while a concerned-looking Fidelio Gunn hums the Eccles violin Sonata at warp speed in a panicked attempt to calm both Charlie and himself. Unfortunately, it fails to produce any sense of serenity for either of the two boys.

Back at the Art table, Emma Tolly begins going over vocabulary notecards with Lysander Sage. She holds the stack directly in front of her face and flips one over. "Pandemonium," she intones brusquely, her pink mouth forming each syllable into different words. "Pan-de-mo-ni-um," she repeats, this time even slower and crisper. She rocks back and forth on the seat of her chair, a slightly deranged look in her blue eyes.

Lysander is perhaps the only mildly calm one of the bunch. He leans back in his chair and crosses his long legs at the ankle, yawning luxuriously. "Pandemonium." He says it for the third time. Emma widens her eyes in crazed exasperation. And again, he repeats the word, before finally pronouncing the definition.

"Pandemonium: the state of Bloor's academy on final exam day."

Form XII British Literature Exam, Part VIII- Essay Prompt: Who is Hamlet? Is he mad, or merely carrying out the dying wishes of his father? Write a 5-page essay detailing your thesis, and remember to double-space. No calculators will be permitted during this section of the exam.

Asa almost starts bawling. I might as well not even have studied for all the remembering I'm doing! C'mon, Pike, channel your inner Zelda… be the Zelda… om. Om. Ommmmmm. OM! Shit, meditation's clearly not going to work. If only Zelda were here… sitting right beside me… yeah, that'd be the day. He glances toward Zelda, who is sitting in the front row and scribbling furiously with a pencil, her black head of hair twitching as if it's alive. Tapping his pencil in agitation against the desk, he stretches his lips into a pathetic excuse for a smile when Mr. Carp stares sternly down his droopy nose at him. Carp clearly isn't fooled, giving a disbelieving grunt before returning to his paperwork, but this time with one eye firmly trained on Asa Pike.

Well, I might as well write my name, right? That's the first step to writing a good essay, right? Right? Asa grips his pencil between his thumb and forefinger and scrawls his name on his first sheet of paper.

Asa Pike

RIGHT?!

Asa scratches his head and wonders about his thesis. He remembers Mr. Carp saying something about a thesis back in Year three… what was it he had said? 'A thesis is an introductory statement that outlines your essay and captures the essence of it in a mere sentence?' Well, that sounded an awful lot like something Mr. Carp might say, but that didn't mean it was right. Mr. Carp said a hell of a lot of things, most of which were wrong. Asa's mind goes to autopilot as he stares harder and harder at the sheet of paper, blue and pink and white blending into a sickly fluorescence like the electric bulbs above… What would Zelda do? Zelda would write the essay like the scholar she is. What would Manfred do? Manfred would write down anything at all, and walk out. Right. Like that's going to work. I'm not Mr. high-and-mighty Manfred Bloor, with a job all laid out for me when I graduate.

Asa's stomach suddenly does a little flip. IF I graduate. Well, I'd best get cracking. He looks at the clock, squinting to make out the black numerals. Eleven forty-five… well, he still had half an hour to finish!... Oh GOD. Asa blinks once, twice, three times, before almost slamming his head downward and beginning to jot down what he knows is the worst kind of drivel known to man— just as Zelda hands in her finished essay and heads out the door.

You ask me about Hamlet, eh? Well, I've got to hand it to you, Carp. This prompt's insanely easy. Yep, you heard me right. E-A-S-Y. This'll be a piece of cake. Strawberry cake. I like strawberry cake. Anyways, back to the story. Hamlet's an interesting guy… he has all sorts of enigmatic things happen to him during the play. Well, we actually put on the play this year! First, we held auditions. Manfred Bloor was first up. His monologue was rather inspiring, but his singing was uninspiring. (Note that Inspiring and Uninspiring are antonyms. I'm having a vision of extra credit… hint hint.) Second was me, Asa Pike. My acting was bad and my singing was worse, as described by Zelda Dobinski. Olivia Vertigo was third to audition. She was fabulous, as always—

Seemingly five minutes later, the introductory paragraph well on its way, Asa is hailed by a cry of "Time's up, boy!" and is shocked into jerking his eyes away from the paper. He finds himself nose-to-nose with a purple-faced Mr. Carp and an otherwise empty classroom.

Writing was like kissing, Zelda decides as she skims the writing prompt, bright verbs, concrete nouns, and flowery adjectives already blooming in her mind. There were so many things to experience, so many sensory details to retain. She grasps the pencil almost gingerly, taking in the puffy pink eraser; the silvery spirals of metal; the sunflower painted wood; and finally, the sharpened end; dappled, almost watermarked, soft wood ending in a sharpened graphite nub. She smoothes the paper with her left hand and tightens her grasp on the pencil with her right, taking in the patched, translucent whiteness of the paper and the electricity of its blue raspberry and red raspberry stripes, before poising her pencil above the paper, her hand already beginning to move of its own accord.

All of her senses heighten—the creamy feel of the sheet of paper, the sight of Manfred's rather adorable frustrated expression two seats down, the smell of dirty eraser scrubs, the taste of almost-success on her tongue, and the ticking of the clock the only sound to be heard. Zelda, a slight smile playing about her lips, starts at last to write, delighting in the little tea-leaf scented bubble of happiness that expands inside of her as her pencil scratches its way through an amazing essay and the front-and-back of all five sheets of paper.

It is only once she has turned in her finished essay and made her way to the Drama cloakroom, where she lounges on a pile of discarded costume pieces, that she has the awful realization: I did something horribly wrong. I know I wouldn't have allowed myself to skip out on Oxford unless I hadn't made it in the first place. If only I hadn't done well on that essay, if only I hadn't done well on all of my exams, if only I were stupid, like Lydia, or lazy, like Asa, if only… if only I were allowed to stay here forever… because now I know. Now I know that, at the end of the summer, I have to go. And she thinks, haltingly, that maybe writing isn't really like kissing after all. Maybe it's like loss and love and exuberantly flying away while feeling so, so empty.

Tears come to her eyes, and she is grateful, for once, that Manfred isn't here to see her cry.

All around him, students sigh and students brainstorm and students breathe harder than is absolutely necessary before students finally get down to the nuts and bolts of the actual writing, and all Manfred can do is stare at the paper without really seeing it. He sees only Zelda, both the real Zelda and the much less serious one in his mind's eye, as he replays every detail of last night over… and over… and over.

And she draws herself up before crossing her arms and pulling off her top… Manfred smiles at the memory of her, all for him and only for him, and he, in turn, all and only for her. He imagines how their summer will go, and frowns at the thought of it ending. Why on earth does Zelda have to leave? Why does she need college? (God knows she's smart enough…) Why does she want to go there instead of getting married as soon as possible? Manfred has always taken it for granted that he and Zelda will be together for forever; it is an undeniable fact. He has been forced to accept that Zelda will be going to college, and that they will have to prolong their forever four extra years. He is prepared to wait for her, that is certain. He will wait for as long as it takes for her to be ready too; he will wait for all of eternity if necessary.

But oh, the long horrible days of nothing but plotting and scheming and yelling at Charlie Bone… he knows already that they will be unbearable. There was a time, not too long ago, when he looked forward with bated breath for the time he and Zelda and Asa could go to college and escape Bloor's. He had hated the school, and when he is being honest with himself, he knows that he still does. Hates the vile-smelling cloakrooms and the bland, doughy teachers and his god-awful father and his decrepit grandfather and hates, most of all, being Satan reincarnated to children not much younger than himself. He hates everything about Bloor's except Asa and Zel, and tells himself that they are the only ones keeping him in it.

But, in this mirror-world of brutal honesty, he knows that Asa and Zel are not the only reason he is still here. He is here because he needs to be sure that his mother, if she ever returns, will be able to find him if she does. Manfred hates Charlie Bone for taking his mother away, and regularly expresses this hatred, but he knows that the person who really drove her away was not Charlie, or Ezekiel, or even his father. It was himself. Now he can only remember her glossy blonde hair, scented with wisteria and magnolias as she bent to kiss his forehead when he was a boy, and the high, clear strains of her violin. He doesn't like thinking about the night he crushed her hand, and all the days after, when he witnessed her fall into depression. And Manfred, try as he might, can find nothing but to stay in Bloor's, so if his mother ever comes back for him, he can apologize.

Many have speculated that Manfred Bloor is incapable of love. But he of all people knows that he is not. He loves his mother, and Asa, and Cook, and even little Billy, who can be endearing when it suits him. He loves Zelda most of all. He loves her more than life, and he cannot begin to imagine it without her. Manfred can't let himself imagine that she won't return to him after one of her flights. And so he knows that letting her go at the end of the summer will be the hardest thing of all.

He looks impassively at the paper before rising from his desk and turning it in blank. It's only one section of the exam, and he knows that he could have written a very good essay if he'd wanted to. He just… didn't. It's a funny thing, having your future straight and sure and true, set out for you like a row of black-on-white dominos. It makes it all the more surprising when someone sticks out a finger and knocks them all down.

For birds this beautiful—birds that are, in fact, as beautiful as swans—cannot live their lives behind bars. And even the beast will leave someday—he cannot stay here either. But fire can, and fire does, and fire will.

Mama was wisteria and magnolia, but Zelda is all sour apples and raindrops, black patent leather high heels on an empty dance floor, complicated calculations and Shakespeare novels, white feathers and inky eyelashes, buttered popcorn flavored jellybeans and water so hot it scalds you until there's nothing left but your soul, everything right and true and uncomplicated, but somehow, everything I'll never really know.

Asa thinks to himself, as he waltzes down the Drama hallway and into the cloakroom, that there is nothing better than finishing up your last inkling of schoolwork and knowing that you'll never have to do another speck of it again. He whistles a slightly off-key version of Officer Krupke as he opens the cloakroom doors with a bang and takes in the sight of Zelda dozing on a pile of capes and Manfred staring at the opposite wall while sitting cross legged and morosely eating a striped lollipop.

"HOW'D IT GO?!" Asa yells, high-spirited in his glory. Zelda wakes with a start, jerks up, and promptly hits her head on the wall behind her.

"Clever, Asa," Manfred says as Zelda, eyes reeling with incandescent sparks, rubs her head and mutters curses under her breath.

"Clever is my middle name. It went beautifully. And again, how'd yours go?"

"Not too bad," Manfred says with a guilty grin.

"Tell him the truth!" Zelda shouts, crawling drunkenly over to them to lay her head in Manfred's lap and grab his lollipop, jamming it into her mouth and scowling up at him. "Ang Asa, neber wake me uhp like that UGAIN." Her words are muffled by the candy in her mouth.

"Okay, Zel, but really, how'd it go?" Asa peers questioningly at Zelda with a goofy smile.

"Horribly, actually. Manfred, tell the truth."

Manfred looks heavenward. "I turned it in blank. And Zelda. Yours did not go horribly. I know that for a fact."

"Oh?" Zelda props herself up on an elbow to look at him.

"I know because I heard Carp talking to Miss Chrystal about it and he said, and I quote, that it was the most creative interpretation of that particular writing prompt he'd seen in years."

"He was trying to flirt, I'll wager," Asa puts in. "But he did say it. I was there."

"Oh. Alright." Zelda sucks dolefully on her candy and drops her head again. Asa settles down to sit beside Manfred, his back pressed against the wall. "What time was it?" she asks suspiciously.

"Right after dinner. You should've been there! It was amazing, there was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and those yum candied carrots… oh, and those red cupcakes with vanilla frosting that I loooove. I had three. They were delicious." Asa's eyes are slightly glazed over as he discusses the food. "Have you been in here sleeping all day?"

"Yes. And those cupcakes are called red velvet, and the icing is not vanilla, it's cream cheese. And Manfred, you stole that lollipop from our dorm. Lydia keeps a little jar of them on the windowsill. What were you looking for up there, anyways? And Asa, I don't believe you about your essay going beautifully. Tell me how it really went after Manfred tells me exactly why he was in the senior girl's dorm."

Manfred, nonplussed, replies, "I was looking for my purple tie. Father got mad at me for not wearing it today, and I remember you took it with you when you left the costume room last night at 3 a.m."

"Ackkkk! TMI!" Asa shouts, pressing his hands over his ears. "I don't want to know why you two were in the costume room."

"Good," Zelda says after another lick of her lollipop, "because we weren't going to tell you. Manfred, did you find the tie?"

Manfred whacks her cheek lightly with the tie that is now hanging around his neck. "Yes, silly. Why exactly was it in your bed?"

Zelda's cheeks turn scarlet before she recovers, shaking her head and paling considerably. "I haven't the foggiest. Asa?" She raises her eyebrows expectantly. "Tell me your exact first sentence in that essay. And then tell me your thesis."

"I think it was something along the lines of, 'You're asking about Hamlet to me, eh?'"

Zelda rolls her eyes and smacks her forehead. "Asa. What will I do with you? What was your thesis?"

"Where's that going to be?"

Zelda's eyes widen until they resemble those of a bug. "Don't you have any idea? Did you even have one?"

"I won't know for sure until you tell me where it's supposed to be. Then I'll think about my paragraph—"

"Paragraph?" Manfred says incredulously, letting out a bark of a laugh.

"—and tell you what it is." Asa finishes, crossing his arms and sulking defiantly.

"The thesis statement," Zelda begins, "is customarily located at the end of the first paragraph and explains to the reader what the body paragraphs of the essay are going to detail."

"Um, it was something like, 'Olivia Vertigo was third to audition and her audition was fabulous, as always.'"

Zelda covers her eyes with her hand. "I don't know why I ever woke up. I should just go back to sleep So you didn't do a good essay after all. Did you even finish?"

"I finished my paragraph! I explained everything I'd set out to explain in one paragraph. It was… oh, what's the word… it was one of our vocabulary words and it means something like short-and-sweet…"

"Succinct," Manfred says, checking his watch. "And now, my partners in crime,it is time to embark on our journey to the King's Room."

"Urgh." Zelda says, turning over and burying her face in Manfred's lap—an action which causes him to bodily stiffen and Asa to smirk. Manfred gracelessly pulls Zelda to her feet when he stands, allowing her to wrap her arms around his neck as she refuses to support her own weight for a moment. Asa clambers up, and the three are off.

On the way there, Asa thinks that it is such freedom and such the best day to be with his best friends, walking to the King's room for the very last time. He clears his throat and, impulsively, starts to sing.

"Happiness runs in a circular motion

Love is a little boat upon the sea

Everybody is a part of everything anyway

You can be happy if you let yourself be."

Asa's voice, when he is trying, is quite nice, a coppery baritone that is raspy in a pleasant sort of way. Manfred adds his gold-y tenor to the mix and sings the next verse along with Asa.

"Slow down, you're running too fast

You gotta make the morning last just

Skipping down the cobblestones

Looking for fun and feeling grooooovy…"

The two boys end the last note in their falsettos, sticking their noses in the air and afterwards doubling over with laughter. Zelda gives up and smiles helplessly at them, twitching spastically to hold in the giggles.

"Silence in the halls…" she finally laughs breathlessly.

"I think the rules are referring to talking," Manfred whispers to her. "C'mon, sing with us!"

"I'll start it up," Asa encourages, and begins singing in a jittery fashion, quick and light on the tongue.

"Some men are born to live at ease, doing what they please, richer than the bees are in honey…"

Manfred picks up the tune.

"Never growing old, never feeling cold, pulling pots of gold from the air!"

Zelda, shrugging, her eyebrows going up alarmingly, continues.

"The best in every town, best at shaking down, best at making mountains of money…"

Her soprano is hoarse on low notes and silvery-spiky on the higher ones. Asa finishes up the verse with a theatrical air, singing with all of his wind and most of his bravado.

"They can't take it with them, but what do they care?!"

Zelda and Manfred laugh hysterically at Asa's over-the-top impression of what is clearly meant to be a male version of Olivia Vertigo, and, after a while, so does Asa. The three are still laughing, to the ultimate horror of most of the younger children, when they enter the King's room, and Manfred, still chortling, picks up his clipboard to tally the roll.

They meet, panting, at the crossroads of the Drama hallway and the route to the senior boys' dorms (Asa suddenly remembered, conveniently after homework period, that he had forgotten his pajamas) at precisely 8:42. When the final bell had rung, it had been a general shout of jubilance from all of the endowed children except Manfred, Zelda, and Billy, a flurry of chucked notebooks and pens, and a stampede to hop onto buses or catch rides with parents as fast as humanly possible.

Manfred and Zelda are now laden with two leather suitcases each, Asa with a pair of red flannel pants patterned with blue plaid. Billy Raven sprints up, his glasses askew and his white hair sticking up in tufts. "Are you leaving now?"

"Yes," Zelda tells him simply. "We'll see you at the end of August. We plan to call here once we reach our final destination, so don't tell a soul except maybe Cook that you knew about this in advance."

"Vacation?" Billy looks longingly at the suitcases and the three older children.

"Maybe someday we'll take you with us," Manfred says in an unexpected display of fondness. "For now, it's goodby—" His words are cut off by the screech of the Matron, who is waddling at an unusually fast rate down the long hallway.

"Manfred Ignatius Bloor, where are you? Your father wants to see you in his study! And don't bring that Dobinski girl and the Pike boy with you; this is private!"

"Quick!" Zelda hisses, pushing Manfred and Asa, who sprint in front of her to the front door. Behind them, they can hear the stuttering voice of Billy trying to explain to the Matron that he hasn't seen Manfred since homework period and would she tell him where the bathroom was because he'd forgotten where to find it. It was quite obvious that Matron didn't believe Billy's show of temporary amnesia, and when the three get out of the front door and close it behind them, they halt for a while, looking in awe at the still-blazing sky.

They are shocked into running by Matron's unmistakable shout: "I don't believe you, Raven!" and they tear down the path to the gates, which Zelda opens telekinetically, and the three don't stop until they are seven blocks away, in front of Zelda's house, number nine Darkly Wynd. Zelda tentatively wrenches open the ornate silver doorknob round, pulling the heavy door open with a creak.

"I knew it'd be unlocked," she mutters, stepping hesitantly in. Manfred and Asa follow, setting down their suitcases impulsively in the doorway. They are greeted by a fog of cigarette smoke and the sour, permeating odor of cheap liquor. Zelda looks ashamed, tiptoeing over smashed bottles and shards of Venetian glass, leading Manfred and Asa to a room painted a once-loud-now-faded cherry red, in which a dusky green velvet sofa lurks ominously. Upon it slumps a man who is all planes and angles. He is perhaps in his early fifties, his once black hair fading to a salt-and-pepper. His head is lolled over his neck in a sickening parody of a sleeping marionette, and Zelda begins to tremble.

Manfred puts his arm around her. "Zelda," Asa whispers. "Why the hell are we here? I thought all we needed was to get the car and go."

"The keys are in his pocket," Zelda says. "And I can't see them so we're either going to have to manually take them out or wake him up and ask for them. Which do you propose?"

"We need to wake him up." Manfred's tone is low and steady, and Zelda knows that he is right.

"Okay." She draws a shaky breath.

"D'you want me to do it?" This is from Asa.

"Okay." It seems that this is all she can say.

Asa places one hand on each of the man's shoulders and shakes him as hard as he can while yelling, "HEY!" Ruben Dobinski opens his bleary eyes and focuses.

"Long time, no see, eh Malia?" he slurs.

Zelda winces. "I'm Zelda, Daddy."

"Oh, right. And who are these two fine young men? They'll have to leave, in any case. Give us a kiss, Zelda. You've grown, I see." He casts an appreciative glance at Zelda's chest, reaching for her with a dirty hand. She goes rigid.

"Look. You either give us the keys that are in your pocket, or I get Harold—you do know Harold, don't you?—to come and check up on you, collect his debt, shall we say." Manfred knows that Zelda's father only ever hit her, but Manfred had made sure of it that she stayed with him at Bloor's from the time she was twelve up to age seventeen, using detentions and school projects as excuses for his own father. Mr. Dobinski, it seems, hasn't been fully conscious since a very, very long time ago.

Ruben squints at Manfred. "Harold? Bloor? You do look a bit like old Zeke, don't you? You're the Bloor boy. Awful familiar with my daughter, aren't you?"

"Remember your debt?" Manfred continues, taking no notice of Mr. Dobinski's previous comment. "Harold will be here tomorrow to collect it if you don't give me those keys right now. I think it's somewhere around seven thousand now."

Ruben pales, and scrabbles frantically in his pocket, finally drawing up a single silver key. "That's right…" Asa croons as Ruben drops the key into his daughter's waiting hand.

"Daddy," she whispers. "I think there are some Tylenol up in my bathroom. And there's about thirty bottles of wine up in my closet. I was stupid enough to think that maybe you wouldn't be drunk if you couldn't get to the ones you brought home."

"Thanks, Malia." Ruben smiles, long and lazy, the empty joy creeping round his mouth and crinkling his age-spattered face. This time, Zelda doesn't bother to correct him.

"Goodbye, Daddy," she offers as a parting. She turns then and almost runs out, pulling Manfred with her. Asa tails them as the trio breaks into a run again. Zelda hops into the front seat of the truck and sticks the key in the ignition as Asa throws the luggage into the backseat, climbing in after it. Manfred claims shotgun, and they are off, in a grinding and clanking of a rusty engine and a spin of antique tires.

"Who's Malia?" Asa asks.

"My mum. Daddy pushed her off the roof when I was six," Zelda answers, matter-of-fact.

What happened at Bloor's, as told by Billy

Billy shakes in his shoes as Zelda, Asa, and Manfred disappeared around a corner. The matron is getting closer and closer, her silver hair quivering in suppressed anger and her bulky black shoes making a clip clap clop on the wooden floors.

"Have you seen Manfred, boy?"

"N-no, Matron."

"That's a pity. If you tell me where he is, I'll give you a piece of chocolate," Matron says, her crackly voice dripping with sickly-sweet honey. Billy swallows hard.

"I said I didn't know where he is! Don't you believe me?" Billy cries, almost whining on the last 'me'. He holds his red eyes open wide until they begin to water.

The Matron blinks, surprised. "Of course I believe you…" she answers nervously. Unfortunately, the reassurance has no effect on Billy.

"No you don't! You never believe me, do you? I'm just like a… SLAVE to you, aren't I? And Blessed used my bed as a bathroom and I can't find the bathroom and you hate me!" Billy slumps over, exhausted from his bout of drama. "My life sucks!" he screams, and then falls dramatically to the floor, covering his face with his hands and pretending to sob.

"Now, now, stop blubbering!" is all Matron can say. She can't tell Billy that he isn't like a slave to her, because he is, and she frowns upon lying except when it is used for her own personal gain. "I'm sure it isn't that bad," she adds.

"But it is!" Billy shrieks, his words muffled by his hands. Apparently his act was convincing. He covertly has a look at his watch. 8:09… hopefully I've bought them enough time.

The two are startled by the footfalls of Dr. Bloor, who comes stomping down the long hallway toward them, pushing Ezekiel in his wheelchair. "Lucretia!" he bellows. "Load up the Cadillac. Ruben phoned. Apparently his daughter just stopped by, along with Manfred and Asa. They forced him to give up his car keys and left. I think they've escaped."

"Yes, sir!" Lucretia cried, taking Ezekiel from Dr. Bloor and rushing toward the front door.

Billy lifts his head hesitantly from his hands. "Boy!" Dr. Bloor barks.

"Yes, sir?"

"Get yourself up off the floor. We wouldn't want to have to scrape you off it with a spatula after the punishment that's going to take place when I get back. I know you had a hand in this." Dr. Bloor grins ominously, and Billy picks himself up and runs for his life in the direction of the kitchen.

Zelda cruises down Frog Street, past the Pet's café, skirts around the Cathedral, and is racing down Filbert Street at an entirely comfortable speed of 25 miles per hour. Manfred puts his feet up on the dash and sighs. "Zel, can't you go any faster?"

Zelda grits her teeth. "Sure, if you want us to die, I can speed it up to about 40."

"How long has it been since you've drove?"

Veering to the left, Zelda narrowly misses hitting an oncoming car. "Last summer. And it was in the Ruins. It's my first time on the actual road, so shut up. I can't concentrate."

Asa starts and, quaking, says, "Zelda, you're going to have to concentrate. Real hard."

Zelda is about to ask why. Looking in the rearview mirror, she makes out a black Cadillac with Lucretia Yewbeam at the wheel and Dr. Harold Bloor in the front passenger seat, looking utterly furious. She presses her foot on the gas pedal, jerking forward when the car speeds up considerably. "What are we going to do?"

She is panicked, but Manfred is dangerously calm. "Keep driving, Zel. You're going to have to sit on my lap." Manfred unbuckles and moves to get into the front seat.

"Why?" Zelda shrieks. The car is swerving dangerously now, and the Cadillac, Asa informs them, is gaining speed.

"Because I'm going to drive. But don't stop driving until you're on my lap, and then you can move to the backseat." Zelda doesn't question him again, lifting her body up and miraculously keeping both her hands on the wheel and her foot on the gas. She almost sighs in relief when she is sitting on Manfred, his hands taking over the wheel and his toe nudging hers aside to work the gas. Zelda crawls out from under his arms and vaults into the backseat. The truck speeds up to over ninety miles per hour as the Cadillac pushes one hundred and ten.

"What am I going to do?" Zelda asks, looking out the rearview mirror at the oncoming car.

Asa opens the window. A blast of air greets them, making it hard to hear. "You're going to use telekinesis and push another car into their path when we get to the crossroads," Manfred yells back.

"I can't do that! If the object already has an applied force, I can't make it move another way—"

"You're going to have to, Zel!" Manfred bellows.

They were nearing the crossroads—the city limits. "Should I climb to the back and phase?" Asa asks. "I bet that'd scare them. Maybe I could jump onto the car and smash the front window with my almighty werewolf powers…"

"THIS ISN'T A MADE-FOR-TV MOVIE, ASA!" Manfred screams. "Now, Zel, GET READY!"

The green truck whizzes past the crossroads, with the Cadillac right behind. A red Miata is coasting the other way, ready to turn. Zelda concentrates and…

Crash! The front end of the Cadillac smashes into the passenger side of the other car, causing the airbags to inflate and the blond woman in the other car's front seat to jerk forward, screaming obscenities at the Cadillac. Luckily, she isn't hurt. Zelda thanks God for that. Manfred wonders dully if his father is wounded, and wishes that Ezekiel could have been in the passenger seat instead, knowing that the impact of the airbag would have surely crushed his frail body.

"Wow." Asa says, and for a moment, that is all that is important. Wow, we did it. Wow, we escaped. Wow, we can spend our last summer together somewhere safe.

"I hope Billy isn't hurt," Zelda says after a while. Manfred and Asa privately hope the same thing.

Billy is curled on the alcove in the senior girl's dormitory, having ran there in fear as soon as he heard the front door bang open. It seems that Manfred, Asa, and Zelda have gotten away, and he is glad for them, if not more than a bit envious. He sees three flashes of bright fire streak through the steadily dimming night—a ruby-reddish copper, a loud glittering orange, and a softly shimmering lemon-yellow. The cats make their way to the frightened boy and surround him, purring and rubbing against him and nuzzling his little body with their soft ears. Billy knows, from merely their presence and by what they are telling him, that they will keep him safe until Dr. Bloor's rage subsides.

It is past ten o' clock, and Manfred is still driving. Asa lays snoring in the backseat, curled up under all three of their purple capes. Zelda sits shotgun, her stocking feet up on the dashboard and her head resting against the window. She smiles back at Manfred as he glances at her, and takes his hand, squeezing it once. They need no words; they can tell each other I love you with only this simple gesture.

For once, Zelda knows positively that all is right with her world. She reaches for the radio and fiddles with the dials until she finds a station. A love song by John Denver spools out of the rusty speakers, and Zelda revels in the slightly heart-wrenching romanticisms. The song changes and she grows drowsy. She leans her head back, closing her eyes, and then realizes that it is the sunset.

And she turns and looks at the sky, which is a myriad of colors unto itself. In the upper dome, deep periwinkle fades into clear, sticky-sweet Mountain Dew lemon lime, into the burnished orange cream hue of tiger lilies, which bleeds greyly into a smoky mauve that reaches down to meet the far-off but unfathomably close horizon—the edge of the world. The sunset is brilliant, making the feathery outlines of trees and the occasional house blackest black, like spilt ink against a pastel chalk background. Streetlamps glow neon in the twilight; the glaring saffron beacons make Zelda's heart hurt. She looks out the side window and sees her face silhouetted there, her sharp cheekbones and prominent nose portrayed in the thinnest ghostly gleaming white. The ragged tones of Led Zeppelins' Stairway to Heaven melt out of the scratchy old radio, winding themselves around them and trailing behind as the car races on, disappearing into the black.

What'd you think? Pleeeease tell me.