“You hate fried chicken,” said Austin as he leaned against the kitchen counter.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to make it,” replied Kara. She put the pieces into the cast iron skillet one by one. Leaning back, she made sure no one was no one was around the kitchen before she lowered her voice. “I don’t think mom is coming is back, and it’s my dad’s favorite dish.”

Austin smirked. “You miss your mom’s cooking.”

“I don’t miss anything,” she replied… Except maybe Julia. Austin went to hug her from behind, but she shrugged him off. “Not around a pan of hot lard.” His nose crinkled at the idea of lard being in the dish. “It’s the only way to do it.”

A few days had gone by since Kara had come back to life. Britney had been acting like her usual self. She was the Britney that she was before Eli had messed with her head, and Kara was thankful for it. The two of them even told their parents that they were spending the weekend with friends. That actually meant the Britney was going back to her house with Tyler and Kara was going over to Austin’s.

She didn’t mind playing house with Austin. Sure, there would be sex, but it was more that Kara wanted the time to sort her life out. A month of her life was gone. Her sister was dead. What there was to do with her life now, she didn’t know. At least she had senior year to figure it out.

They had dinner as a family and she and Austin left. He didn’t pressure her into anything. All they did was watch a movie and go to sleep. The next morning, she made a big breakfast, they went out on a hike, and did nothing but talk about nothing. It was honestly the sweetest date that she had ever been on.

“Any luck getting a signal?” Austin was sitting on a fallen log and eating one of the sandwiches they had brought with them. He tossed a piece of bread to his dog, Winston, and smirked as it was snatched right out of the air.

Kara was holding her phone up high. There was a waterfall that the two of them wanted to see, and they had gotten their trails mixed up. Her phone let out a beep, followed by a series of beeps as dozens of notifications had come in.

“Something up?” Austin went to stand, but Kara waved him off.

“Lost signal again.” She frowned at her phone and stuffed it in her pocket.

Austin gestured down the path. “I hear a river down that way. We’ll keep heading upstream and we’ll probably find it that way.” She didn’t look like she was certain. “Winston will guide us back if we get lost. Won’tcha, boy?” He knelt down and started to shake the husky mix by the cheeks. “Yes, you will, you good boy you.”

Kara shook her head with a laugh and continued on ahead. Her dad loved animals, but they never had any due to her mother not wanting to clean up after them. The most they had were the caterpillars she and her sister kept each summer. They used to love to raise swallowtails, but they ended up getting too busy to do it anymore.

She and Austin located the river and continued along it until they spotted the waterfall. It was a short thing, barely taller than Austin, but at least there were some boulders around to sit on. They shared one together, both staring at the waterfall and admiring the beauty of nature.

“There is no way that this is the right waterfall,” muttered Kara after a few minutes.

Austin nodded. “We absolutely fucked this up,” he replied. “But this is better, isn’t it? Who needs to see a twenty-foot waterfall that’s supposedly haunted. We’ve got…” He gestured to the pathetic looking drizzle of water in front of them. “And this is our waterfall.”

“I don’t think it’s ours.”

“I know for a fact that no one would have bothered to name this,” he said with a smirk. “So this is our waterfall. Our little place of beauty in the world that doesn’t belong to anyone but us.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “What should we name it?”

Kara leaned against him. It looked like a normal waterfall to her. “Disappointment Falls?”

“Nope.”

Kara let out a sigh. “Lost Lover’s Falls.”

Austin held up an okay sign with his hand. “Perfect.” He pulled out his phone. “Get a picture of me and Winston?”

They took a few pictures and began to head back to Kara’s car. It didn’t take long for Kara’s phone to get blasted with messages again. This time she was able to go through them while Austin packed Winston into the car.

“Anything happen?”

Kara put her phone up to her ear. “I have a voicemail from Miss Grove.”

Britney’s mother sounded excited as she began talking. “You won’t believe what happened, sweetie. Don’t be mad, but a few weeks ago, I entered you in as a candidate for Spring Queen, and guess what! You won! The package came in the mail today with all of the details in it. Now, you will need to write a speech, but we can get someone to you help with that.”

She continued to babble into Kara’s ear while Kara became increasingly surprised at how long a voicemail could last. The Spring Queen, although sometimes it was the Spring King, was a teenager selected to reign over a major arts festival that happened every year. They represented an issue that concerned their generation, such as last year’s king who discussed climate change.

Miss Grove had entered Kara without her permission and her social issue was teen suicide. As someone who “had lost her sister” to it, she made for a prime candidate. But that also involved performing a speech, representing the issue for a whole weekend, as well as possibly a radio interview at the local radio station.

“Are you going to do it?” Austin put his arm around her waist and pulled her close.

Kara was troubled by the idea. “Julia is dead. It would seem like I am profiting off of her and Eli’s death. Not to mention that Julia would say that I was only picked because I’m black. Something something, racial equality, blah blah blah.” She rolled her eyes at the idea.

“If you explain that you weren’t the one that sent in the application, they’ll probably be happy to cancel it.” Austin pulled her even closer and wrapped her up in a hug. “You don’t have to force yourself to do that.”

She shook her head. “Are you kidding? Britney is probably livid that she didn’t get picked. I could easily step aside and let her use her powers to get herself fame, but she’s the reason Julia is dead. I’m not going to let her get away with it.”

Austin tightened his grip on her and lowered his voice. “Or, just an idea, love, we don’t piss off the psychopath who had you hang yourself.” He kissed the top of her head. “We still have to survive another year with her. Let her have her fun, we don’t start a fight, and we both move to Boston and never see her again.”

“... I do want to move to Boston,” she muttered.

“Exactly.” Austin let her go and looked down at her. “Let’s go back to my place, take a few hours to fuck, have a shower, and then figure out if you want to spend the night or not.” She frowned at him. “... Kara.”

She rolled her eyes. “... Fine.” Kara didn’t exactly mind the plan since that’s what she wanted to do anyway, but he didn’t have to be so upfront about it.

They went back to his place and have their fun. Afterward, Kara fiddled around with her phone. She was debating which pictures she wanted to put up on her social media accounts when Britney called her.

“Hello?” Kara sat up in bed and instinctively pulled the blanket up around herself.

“Congrats on being picked Spring Queen,” replied Britney. Her tone wasn’t her usual chipper self. She was barely speaking with her usual chipper tone.

“Ah… Thanks?” Kara waved off Austin as he crawled back into bed with her, but he ignored her.

“So when are you turning down their offer?”

Kara froze up. “Uhm… I-I…” Something was off. The way Britney was talking was making her uncomfortable.

“Call up my mother right after I hang up. Tell her that she shouldn’t have signed you up for Spring Queen and request that they find someone else.”

“... No.”

“Why?” Britney was speaking through gritted teeth. “Why would you tell me no?”

“Because I have a chance to do some good with this opportunity,” whispered Kara.

Britney took a heavy breath in order to calm herself down. “I can use this opportunity better than you can. What do you want? Do you want news reports? Trending on Twitter? I can use my powers and Spring Queen to catapult me to an international level. We can set up a charity to help out Eli’s family, or one in Julia’s name. That’s why you’re doing it, right? Because you feel bad for taking part in your sister’s murder?”

Is that how she remembered it? That their plan to murder Julia had succeeded? “...” Kara already felt guilty enough about Julia switching places with her. She didn’t want Britney to believe she had taken part in her murder.

“Why aren’t you saying anything? Tell me that you’re going to reject their offer.”

Kara felt herself getting angry. “No.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“I don’t care, Britney. You can find some other way to be popular. I’m not letting you use Julia and Eli’s deaths to do it. Both of them, and Mackenzie died because of our stupidity. You don’t get to be rewarded for showing off our mistakes.”

“... It’s a shame, Kara.” She let out a weak laugh. “All you needed to do was trust me.”

Kara was hung up on before she could reply. She sat there, clutching the phone in her hands while her mind went blank with fear. Austin immediately sprung out of bed and started to pull on his clothes. He then gestured for Kara to do the same.

“Go to my closet and grab any of my clothes that you think will fit you,” he said. He then raced to the hallway so he could find where the suitcases were stored.

“We’re leaving?”

Austin peeked his head through the door. “You’re the one that said that Britney has a cult at school who will do anything she says. Hell, she even had Carter and me summoning demons because she told us to.” She still didn’t understand what he meant. “We live in Roosevelt. Literally everywhere here owns a gun, and she has a group of my friends under her thumb. Friends who know nearly every place I would go if I needed to hide. We need to leave.”

Kara shook her head. “Where?”

“My parents flew to San Francisco to take care of my grandmother. They’ll think we headed that way, but we’re going north to Washington. I know someone in Puyallup that will take us in.” Austin dropped a suitcase in the room and began to fiddle with his phone. “Hey. Code Batshit is a go.” He flailed an arm about the air. “Yeah, I know it hasn’t been a week yet. She’s a psychobitch, and I’ve had a bag packed and ready to go since the day after the ritual.”

Kara got up and got herself dressed. She had planned to stay the weekend over at Austin’s, so she at least had some amenities and a change of clothes. A few clothes and sweatpants were pulled out and tossed into the bag, along with her own belongings. As Austin clarified the details with Carter, she went downstairs to grab a bag of dog food and put it in her car.

Austin grabbed the bags and joined her afterward. “We’ve got a four-hour drive to Puyallup. You’re going to need to turn off your location services on your phone. She’s going to be able to use social media to track where we are. Once we’re in Puyallup, we’re going to store your car in a garage and not take it out. Her next move, once she realizes she can’t get in touch with us, is to report the car stolen.”

“Why do you know so much about this?”

He paused. “Turns out that following the advice someone needs to do in order to get away from a hostile relationship is the same as what you would do when you need to get away from an insane cult leader.” Austin slashed his hands through the air. “Since we’re minors, we can be reported instantly. It’s likely we’re going to have an amber alert on us before we reach the border.”

“Oh god.”

“Text your dad and tell him that you’re heading to a concert in Portland tonight and are spending the night there in a hotel. That might delay it, but I don’t know.” Austin patted himself down. “I have about two grand in cash. We should be able to last for a while until we can figure it out.”

“You sure you want to do this?” She watched as Austin pulled out an envelope from his jacket pocket and begin to count it.

“I love you, Kara,” he replied firmly. “And even if you run off on your own, Britney is going to target me. I don’t want to be tortured to death because they don't know where you are. That’s why Carter is leaving as well. Neither of us wants to die.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t worry. We’ll spend some time figuring it out, and we’ll find a way to make sure that we stay safe.”

He gave her a kiss, and she hugged him in return. Lovers on the run. Everything was so sudden, but she knew exactly how quickly Britney acted. Britney had already murdered her once before, and Kara refused to be a victim again.