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Copyright © 2018 by Sonya Terjanian
Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Kerri Resnick
Cover image © AlexGreenArt/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Terjanian, Sonya, author.
Title: The runaways / Sonya Terjanian.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040618 | (softcover : acid-free paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Self-realization in women--Fiction. | Interpersonal relations--Fiction. | Life change events--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3603.O2257 R86 2018 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040618
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For Pierre, who makes everything possible
1
The Shell station was selling road atlases for $19.95, which was too much. But they had every state in there, and Ivy figured a lot of them probably fell somewhere between Pennsylvania and Montana. She glanced at the spray-tanned cashier, who was paging through a magazine and probing her ear with a long, fake nail. Ivy knew the atlas would fit under her jean jacket, around the side and under her arm, but she couldn’t decide if that was the way she wanted to go with this. Getting busted for shoplifting—barely two hours after her big getaway—would be a shitty and depressing way for this to end.
She opened the atlas, scanning the overview map for the line where Pennsylvania pressed up against the underbelly of New York, the so-called Southern Tier. She wondered how far she’d gotten that morning; she remembered seeing the WELCOME TO PENNSYLVANIA sign about an hour ago. Was she in the Poconos? Halfway to Philadelphia? She had no idea.
Ivy closed the atlas and held it against her stomach. It took a little getting used to, this new way of doing things: Stealing. Running. Doing what needed to be done, and to hell with everyone else. She felt like she’d been split down the middle and turned inside out, the real Ivy finally set loose on the world. The Ivy who didn’t care what was right or what was wrong. The Ivy with the black heart.
The cashier looked up from her magazine. Ivy put the atlas back on the shelf and picked up a smaller, cheaper map of Pennsylvania, which she brought to the counter with her Slim Jims and chocolate milk. “Don’t be a dumbass,” Gran would say. For now, she’d take things one step at a time. Put some distance between herself and Good Hope, wait for things to blow over before taking any more risks. She watched the cashier struggle with the register keys, her hand splayed, bejeweled nails threatening to push all the keys at once. Some people, Ivy thought. If you absolutely have to have nails like that, why in the ever-living fuck would you get a job that involved pushing buttons all day?
Back in the car, she sucked on a Slim Jim as she scanned the map and thought over her money situation. She was down to $62.84, and McFadden’s Buick drank like Gran. She needed to buy as much distance as possible, spend less on food. Maybe she could find a Chinese supermarket, like that place outside Binghamton, where she and her friend Asa used to fill five or six grocery bags with noodle packets and pork cake for a few dollars. A little water in the teakettle and bam—a feast for two, salt exploding in their mouths like Chinese firecrackers.
Or maybe she could find herself a soup kitchen or a food pantry. Keep an eye out for a long, slumpy line of half-asleep people, wait her turn, and fill up on charity. But those church people always knew everybody in their line, and if they didn’t, they would want to. Ivy’d have to make up one of her stories.
She nudged the car awake, rolled out of the lot. No Chinese groceries around here, that was for sure. Just a couple of vinyl-clad antique shops, an M&T Bank, a hardware store with cheap plastic sleds and some shovels piled out front, not even chained up. In the middle of town, a four-sided traffic light dangled from a drooping wire, flashing yellow. Ivy couldn’t remember what to do when it was flashing yellow. Stop? Proceed with caution? She stopped, to be on the safe side, then turned right.
A row of shoebox houses in ugly old-person colors, a chaotic jumble of body shops and high chain-link fences laced with shreds of pink plastic, and then the town just kind of gave up. The sidewalk crumbled into the dirt shoulder and guardrails appeared. Up ahead, thirsty woods met the gray sky in a blurry line. A sign in the shape of a football read CONGRATULATIONS, CARBONVILLE MARMOTS, and a bigger sign read WELCOME TO THE ENDLESS MOUNTAINS. Ivy could see the brown wrinkles in the distance, thin and repetitive. She imagined growing up around here—forties in back seats, bruises, feral cats, football. “Fucking endless is right,” she said, the Slim Jim waggling between her teeth like a cigar.
She checked the rearview, startled by
