Was that exciting enough for everyone?

Asking questions to a blank sheet of paper is not so fun. They become rhetorical when you don't mean for them to be. You start to answer them yourself—yes, that was quite exciting; or no, that sounded like a poorly-plotted action film—and then you start to think you might be going insane.

Except I can't go insane, because I believe I already am that way. At least deep, deep down. I don't think you go through everything I've gone through without coming out the other end a bit damaged.

I know what you're all thinking, though.

"Kennedy, why did you have to escape? Why couldn't you have just waited for your trial? What was so bad about jail?"

Let me give you a little history lesson.

The death penalty has been around since the 18th century B.C.E. I can't even fathom how long ago that was. In 1608, George Kendall was the first recorded execution in the newly minted American colonies. In 1632, Jane Champion (ironic name) was the first woman to be executed in the colonies. And then states started doing their thing and trying to find their own footing when America became a sovereign nation. Jump ahead to 1972, and the Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia suspends the whole thing. But then, four years later, Gregg v. Georgia (damn, Georgia, make a decision) reinstated it.

1977 marked the first state to approve the use of lethal injection (Oklahoma.)

2007 earned New Jersey the award as the first state to actually abolish the damned thing since its reinstitution.

22 states in America don't use the death penalty. The other 28 still do.

4 of those 28 allow death by firing squad.

Oklahoma, Mississippi, Utah...

And South Carolina.

You hear a lot when you're stuck in a jail cell all day, every day. You hear the guards whispering about you.

I heard two of them whispering about me one week before I came up with my escape plan.

"The Abrams girl? Joanie told me the state's going for capital." One of them had said.

The other one had scoffed, like she couldn't believe it.

"Not for killing one dude."

"For killing one ADA and for killing her boyfriend. They're gonna combine the charges or some shit."

But that wasn't the best part. The best part was when the second one said:

"Think she'll be the first one for the firing squad?"

Nothing could have chilled me to the bone faster than that.

><><><

8:58 AM. Kennedy snorted in her sleep to the point that it woke her up and she jumped in the armchair, trying to remember where she was and how she had gotten there.

Memories of the past 12 hours flooded into her head with the force of a tsunami, and she looked over at the bed. Rebecca was still out cold; her snoring having faded into a soft hum between breaths.

The room itself looked worse in the daylight. The walls were a pale yellow that looked like they had once been white, and the carpet had clearly not been vacuumed in weeks. The bed looked relatively clean, and Kennedy hoped neither of them caught a disease from the place.

She glanced over at the television that she had left on. The images facing her gave her an overwhelming mixture of feelings: terror, anger...relief.

Both girls' mugshots were plastered on the screen, with their names beneath their respective photos. Kennedy unmuted the TV and turned the volume down to the lowest it could be without being silent.

"...escaped from the Oconee County Jail last night. Rebecca Eaves, a co-defendant in Abrams' trial for the murder of South Carolina ADA Jaxson Karl, is suspected to be the driver of Abrams' getaway car. Neither is thought to be armed or dangerous, but they did manage the first escape that Oconee County has seen in the last twenty-seven years. Call the number at the bottom of your screen if you have any tips on either of their whereabouts."

We made national news, Kennedy thought with an inappropriate sense of pride.

Making national news meant that they would be recognizable even in Florida. They were no longer fugitives in just one state.

Kennedy glanced over at Rebecca again, still sleeping peacefully. A large part of her chest filled with guilt over the pain she had caused Rebecca in the past few months. She didn't deserve any of it, and yet she continued to help, again and again.

Kennedy only hoped she would be able to get them both out of this particular mess.

><><><

11:39 AM. Kennedy walked back into the motel room with two plastic grocery bags in her hands. Rebecca—Kennedy thanked every deity she could think of—was still asleep. She had hardly shifted from the position Kennedy had left her in an hour and a half earlier.

Rebecca waking up to an empty motel room would have been cause for quite a bit of alarm, but Kennedy had needed to make her trip to the nearest convenience store as quickly as possible. She was also banking on the fact that Rebecca had been up for nearly 24 hours before this rest.

She felt a small twinge of guilt about having to wake her friend from what looked like quite the peaceful slumber, but it was almost noon, and they needed to use the supplies Kennedy had grabbed from the store. They needed to use them immediately.

Kennedy set the grocery bags down on the side of the bed that Rebecca wasn't occupying before walking around. She crouched down beside Rebecca and realized she had never had to bother with waking anyone gently before that moment. She wasn't sure exactly what the protocol was.

So, she poked Rebecca softly in the arm. This did nothing but illicit a loud snore. Kennedy sighed and poked her again, in the same spot, harder. Rebecca's eyes shifted under her closed lids, but she didn't wake.

Well, I've tried everything.

Kennedy started rapidly poking Rebecca in her ribcage, the way she used to wake Jeremy up when they were kids. After around four pokes, Rebecca's eyes flew open and she looked at Kennedy as if she were the very last person she wanted to see.

It was understandable.

"Are the police here?"

Kennedy raised one eyebrow. That was a relatively lucid initial question to ask after being woken up via angry poking.

"No."

Rebecca rolled over so that her back was to Kennedy.

"Then why am I awake." It was said more as a statement and less like a question, but Kennedy answered it like a question regardless.

"Because they have our faces plastered all over the news and I bought hair dye."

This made Rebecca roll back over and prop herself up on her elbows.

"You bought what?"

"Hair dye," Kennedy repeated, standing to fish the products out of the two grocery bags, "I thought it would be best for us to make ourselves less recognizable. Less like any pictures they have of us."

Rebecca shook her head, her eyebrows crinkling together in confusion.

"I like my hair."

Kennedy stared at her in a strange sort of amusement.

"Do you like your hair more than you like not being in prison?"

Rebecca took a second to think before slowly shaking her head and sitting up further.

"No, I suppose not."

"Then get up. We don't have a ton of time."

The girls both walked over to the bathroom, Rebecca's steps a bit more of a stumble than Kennedy's. Kennedy set out the different hair dyes and a pair of scissors on the bathroom counter. Brown dye for herself, and red for Rebecca.

Exactly one hour and seventeen minutes later, neither girl was happy with their appearance, but both thought that was most likely for the best.

Rebecca's hair had gone from a dark brunette to a burgundy-red, and she had chopped it up into a bob that was more jagged than she would have preferred. Kennedy's easily recognizable white-blonde hair was now the same shade of brown that Rebecca's had been two hours previous, and where it had never been shorter than the bottom of her shoulder blades before, it now rested comfortably on top of her shoulders, just barely brushing them. She had gone the extra mile and cut bangs for herself, settling the shorter chunk of hair right across her forehead, skimming the tops of her eyebrows.

"I hate it." Rebecca muttered.

"You cut your own hair."

Rebecca glanced over at her friend, "I wasn't talking about my hair."

Kennedy ignored the jab and packed up the hair dye back into the grocery bags. She didn't need anyone finding them in the trash and knowing exactly how they had both changed their looks.

At 1:48, the girls had packed up their very limited belongings and exited the motel through a back entrance that Rebecca found. Kennedy slid behind the wheel of Rebecca's car and Rebecca threw their bags into the trunk.

"You know where you're going?"

Kennedy nodded.

"I've gone there a few times." Her father had bought a little vacation house in southern Florida a few months after separating from her mother, and Kennedy had gone for spring break on more than one occasion—and had also brought Hank there more times than she would have liked to admit. It was how she knew there were no cameras in the house.

She started the car and exited the motel parking lot. It was broad daylight. It worried her. Especially since her face had been plastered on national news stations, and they were driving a license plate-less car in the same state she had killed a guy in.

Driving the same car that she had killed him with.

Kennedy took a deep breath and looked at her GPS. Only 48 minutes until Naples. They could make it.