Clothing: Grey short-sleeved t-shirt, light blue baggy jeans, and brown sandals.
Azazel was last seen in her hometown of Bramford, West Virginia, getting in a green Chevrolet Cobalt with a seventeen-year-old white male with dark hair and eyes. She may be traveling with him still.
Anyone with information should call the Bramford Police Department at (304)555-8392.
Jason and I drove through the night, out of Bramford and through the winding roads, tree branches like skeletal limbs hanging in our path. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky. I felt the darkness pressing around me from all directions. It was going into my mouth. It was going into my eyes, my nose. I was drowning in it. When dawn began to burn across the sky, it banished the darkness, but not the feeling I had. I could hardly breathe. It hurt to exist.
I didn’t look back, not literally, but as we drove my father’s car farther and farther away from my home and my family, I felt like that was all I did. I sifted through my memories of the past few weeks. It seemed so obvious now, how everything had fallen apart. The moment when Jason appeared in my life, my world had cracked. I hadn’t seen it, but with every moment since the first time I’d seen him, the crack had widened and splintered my foundations. It was no wonder everything had come crashing down. I felt almost stupid that I hadn’t seen it before.
Jason’s jaw twitched in the driver’s seat. He gazed at the road. I wanted to be angry with him. I thought, “If Jason had never shown up, none of this would have happened.” But when it came to Jason, I didn’t think clearly. I recognized that now. Looking at him made me dizzy. His dark, intense eyes. His powerful shoulders. I couldn’t think clearly when I stared at him. How could I be angry? In fact, I was grateful. All I’d left in Bramford was dust. Jason was the one real, brilliant thing in the world right now. I had nothing left. Except Jason.
“You’re quiet,” Jason observed, after we’d been driving for over an hour.
I was quiet. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to think without running into jagged edges in my brain. All my thoughts hurt right now. Everything was wrong. How could I possibly speak when I wasn’t even sure how to exist anymore? “Sorry,” I mumbled.
“You don’t have to talk,” he said softly.
I nodded once, a lump forming in my throat. It was all I could do to stare forward.
“Sometimes,” Jason said. “Sometimes it helps to just focus on surviving.”
Surviving? Was I still alive? Did I exist in this world where nothing I knew was the way I thought it would be?
“For instance,” he said. “We do need money. You wanna help me rob a convenience store?” He smiled at me.
I tried to smile back. The corners of my mouth felt too tight.
Somewhere between Winchester and Martinsburg, Jason took an exit off the interstate. It was nearly desolate, so early in the morning, just a country 7-Eleven. Nothing else around but mountains and trees. I stayed in the car, unable to help. I remembered that some part of me thought that stealing from people at gunpoint was wrong. I wondered why I didn’t feel guilty now. It took Jason less than five minutes, and he returned to the car with a handful of bills which he made me count.
We’d stolen a little over three hundred dollars.
“Now we’re criminals,” I said. Funny. It didn’t upset me.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Jason. “The Sons cover up whatever I do. I’m their problem, really. Besides, officially, I don’t exist.”
I remembered that my family hadn’t been able to find any record of Jason anywhere when he’d moved in with us. Then I remembered something. “You do!” I said. “My parents got you registered with the state so that you could be their foster kid.” I winced. I hadn’t wanted to talk about them. My parents.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t buy that. They were planning on killing me, so they had me registered with the state? Besides, that whole process was way too easy. I signed some papers. It was a smokescreen. They were trying to keep me from being suspicious. Damn it if it didn’t work.”
Devious people, my parents. Something else Jason had said, though. It was my way out. Something to focus on. The Sons. That was it. Who were the Sons? And how did they cover this stuff up? “What do you mean, the Sons?” I asked.
Jason just shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Jason,” I said. “I think I deserve some answers if I’m going to be helping you commit armed robbery.”
He considered. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Soon. Just not now. I’m too exhausted to get into all of it now.”