Runaways by V.C. Andrews Page A

after that I had to rely on Crystal and her maps. Once we were on the main highway and I saw a sign that read, NEW YORK CITY 90 MILES, my heart fluttered. The realization that we were actually doing this, that we were on the highway putting miles and miles between ourselves and the only lives we had known for years settled in and for a few moments made us all quiet, made us all look deeper into ourselves.
    All our lives we had been watched over and protected either by adoptive parents for a while or by the system. It was always difficult to makesomeone who had lived with their parents all their lives understand what it was like to be one of us. Without family, we felt without history, felt as if we had just been plopped down someplace and told to eat, sleep, play and grow like normal children. It was hard to live as a ward of some giant entity called The State. When we were afraid or lonely, when nightmares trickled into our dreams, when failures and disappointments rained down on our lives, we couldn’t run home to Mommy or Daddy. We could talk it over with a counselor when our time came, of course. We could be analyzed and given some textbook prescriptions to cure our common sense of meaninglessness, but they hardly ever made us feel better about ourselves.
    Once, when someone at school made me angry, I accused her of being spoiled and not knowing what it was like to live without a real family. She just smirked until I leaned into her, our faces only inches apart, and said, “Just imagine sitting in front of the television set every night and seeing these commercials about children with their parents going to Disneyland or sitting around a breakfast table. Just imagine looking at it and thinking as far as you were concerned, it was science fiction.”
    Her smirk evaporated and everyone around us looked down, ashamed because they had been born luckier than me.
    I never really felt like anybody special. Except for the time I spent with Pamela and Peter. But if being special meant I couldn’t be me then I didn’t want it. I’d rather be lonely old me than someone’s special project, poked and prodded into the mold they’d made for me.
    Now, driving this car, rushing with my best friends in all the world through the night, I felt asense of freedom. It was as if we had all thrown off the chains of who we were and what people tried to make us into and had finally become free. As recently as a few hours ago, we were better known by the numbers on our files. We were, as Crystal often said, “in the system,” labeled and described by some official, our little histories summarized in a few pages that included biological facts about our blood type, our eye color, our inoculations.
    None of that mattered to us now. We were launched, sailing into space, searching for a new planet, a new place to call home. We would soon make our own histories, fill our own files. For the first time, I felt like I was in control of my destiny.
    â€œWatch your speed,” Crystal said. “Even at this hour, there could be a radar trap, and we can’t get pulled over, Brooke.”
    â€œI know,” I said and glanced down at the speedometer. The truth was I hadn’t been watching it. I had been daydreaming and I was going too fast. Good old Crystal, I thought, always thinking.
    I glanced in the rearview mirror. Butterfly had slumped down in her seat, her head to one side, her eyes closed. She looked like a rag doll, so vulnerable, so dependent. I think all three of us saw something of ourselves in Butterfly and that was why we were so protective of her.
    The radio droned on. Miles and miles of highway rolled out before us and then disappeared into the darkness behind us. Occasionally, another vehicle drew closer and then passed us. I held the wheel steady. We were making good time. I felt like the pilot of a space ship, launched and moving closer and closer toward that point when we would break out of