Free Found and Lost by Amanda G. Stevens

Khloe half straightened and brushed her wind-whipped ponytail away from her face.
    None of this was happening like it was supposed to.
    Across the field, through a filter of ferns, sound and light drifted. Green lights rotating. Authoritative shouts. And once, a woman’s husky-voiced shout in response. Janelle.
    What made a person stay behind and let her friends go free? That had to be true brainwashing.
    â€œHiding out in the woods? Seriously?” Khloe whispered.
    â€œWhat’re you doing out here?”
    â€œFinding you, stupidhead.”
    Dumb loyalty. Violet shoved the phone back into her pocket. No luring Clay back. No “come get me” text to the con-cops. Not yet, anyway, unless she wanted Khloe to know everything.
    â€œOh. My. Gosh. Violet.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Khloe swayed forward. Violet slid toward her through the ferns. “Hey, it’s okay.”
    â€œOur purses. We left them.”
    Khloe’s purse. On the shelf. Shoved behind a box, but they’d find it. Even if Clay escaped, Khloe couldn’t.
    â€œIt’s over. My life. All over.”
    Violet snared her hand. “We’ll turn ourselves in right now. We’ll explain to them that you had no choice, your dad made you—”
    â€œI’m not going to re-ed, Violet. I’m not. Ever.”
    A chill washed over Violet, as if the rain had begun to fall. “They have your … our IDs.”
    â€œAnd they’ll search our houses first. We can’t go back there. We’ll have to go … somewhere … until all this blows over.”
    Khloe folded forward, gripped her knees, and cried. Violet wrapped her in a hug and rocked her.
    â€œShh, okay, it’ll be okay.” Violet rubbed her back. She had to go find a con-cop and identify herself as their spy. But she couldn’t walk away while Khloe clutched her shoulders.
    â€œDad and Mom, they’ll look less suspicious too, if I disappear for a couple days. Then they can say they didn’t know about me.”
    â€œAnd what’ll we do, sleep in a tree and survive on fern leaves?”
    Khloe shuddered against her.
    â€œThere’s nowhere to go, Khloe.”
    Khloe pulled back. “This is going to sound crazy, but like a month ago, Daddy told me that if something ever happened … I think he meant something like this.”
    What in the world was she talking about?
    â€œThere’s a house at the end of our block, with a big deck added on. He said somebody would come for me.”
    â€œSomebody.” Good grief. Khloe wasn’t talking about some random person’s porch. She was talking about one of their porches. A resistance haven.
    â€œThey don’t have to know I’m not a Christian.”
    No, they didn’t.
    â€œBut if you want to turn yourself in, you can, Vi. They might go easier on you if you do, who knows how it works. I just can’t start my senior year in re-ed. I can’t do it. By August, September, this will all be over. Things will be normal. We’ll laugh about it.”
    In the distance, but not far enough, voices shouted to each other. Khloe hugged herself, and Violet glimpsed the two of them at ten years old, when Natalia was about to discover that they’d used her credit card to buy forbidden concert tickets online. Violet still couldn’t say how they’d expected to get there, but their logic said that Khloe’s mom couldn’t deny them transportation once the tickets were purchased. Now, despite her speech seconds before, Khloe gave Violet that same stare, the one that said, How do I survive this? The one that said, Please don’t desert me now.
    The voices felt closer. Violet dragged Khloe several feet deeper into the trees, until Khloe started to run alongside her. Their fingers wove into a sweaty link.
    Khloe was soon panting. “Can’t we … stop? Climb a tree—or something?”
    â€œNo.” Violet tugged her