Runaway

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Authors: Anne Laughlin
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lived here?” she asked.
    “I was raised in this house. It was my grandparents’ place, but they both died a few years ago. The mortgage is paid off, but at this point, you couldn’t give it away.”
    He led her into the dark house and straight down to the basement. As she walked behind him through the living room, she thought it smelled like an old person’s place. She used to visit some elderly shut-ins with her grandmother, and she’d get scolded when she scrunched up her face at the smell. Apparently, David hadn’t done much to the place since his people died.
    He showed her to a dark corner of the basement, her “quarters,” and pointed out the sink, shower, and toilet, all open to the rest of the room. The musty smell was strong. She worried that the mattress thrown on the floor would be damp.
    “Sleep well, my sister,” David said, clapping her on the shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
    “Well, thanks.”
    “I’m serious. You are my ideological soul mate. No one else understands what we’re really trying to do. I’m thinking of having you write something up, a manifesto of sorts, because you’ve got the ability to sum things up brilliantly.”
    “I write code, David, not words.”
    He smiled at her. “We’re all going to be multitasking. Going beyond our comfort level in so many ways. But we can talk about all that when we’re better rested.”
    Maddy fell on the mattress fully clothed and slept deeply.
    She woke in the morning to hear David calling for her to come upstairs. She used the toilet, worried he’d come down to get her and see her with her pants down. When she got upstairs, she found a group huddled with him around the kitchen table, all of them staring at her as she entered. These were the people she’d be living with, she thought, and found it less reassuring than the look of the mattress downstairs. She felt like the newest house member in a reality show, forced to live with people with wildly different backgrounds from hers.
    “Good morning,” David said, sounding cheery and hopped up, hopefully just on caffeine. “Grab a cup and join us. I’ll introduce you.”
    Maddy slipped into a folding chair next to David. The table was meant to seat four, but now there were seven squashed together and Maddy felt claustrophobic. She drank her coffee and took quick glances around. She hadn’t seen much of anything when they arrived in the middle of the night. She hadn’t seen that the walls of the kitchen were pink, that the floor seemed to have every other tile missing. The window over the sink was largely obscured by swaths of duct tape holding the glass together.
    “We’re having this special meeting so I can introduce you all to Maddy and we can get on to the next stage of our planning. Maddy and I had a hard night’s travel, and though I might normally ask you to go easy on a sleep-deprived newbie, she’s twice as smart as all of us put together so I know she can take care of herself.”
    There were two women in the group, both about the same age as David. The one sitting next to her was stocky and pierced at eyebrow, nose, and lip. She looked tough as hell.
    “What the fuck, David. This girl looks twelve years old.”
    “I’m not twelve,” Maddy said matter-of-factly. “I’m eighteen.”
    “Right. And I’m Lady Gaga,” the tough one said.
    One of the men snorted. He was skinny and had big veins popping out all over his arms. His sky blue shirt said “Warren” over the shirt pocket. “Well, you ain’t no lady, Kristi.”
    Kristi reached over and whacked him on the arm, but they were all laughing. Maddy resented the closeness of the others, but desperately wanted to be accepted. As always, she felt clueless as to how to go about making friends.
    “Listen, I know I look young. But I’m old enough. And I know a shitload about computers,” Maddy said.
    “Why do we need computers? We’re going to be in the middle of fucking Idaho. Do you think they’re

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