"No, I'm telling you, they know everything," Sam almost shouted into her phone, pursing her lips. Diana just didn't get it. "You don't even know everything that they do."

"Sam, chill. So they know you were in juvie. You stole a car. Big whoop."

Sam shook her head. "No, Di, you don't understand. Look, just call Shane and get him to come to the loft."

Sam fumbled with the pajamas that she had put on to say goodnight to her mom. She couldn't go out in those, so she changed back into a t-shirt and jeans. Her door was closed except for a crack, just like she always had it to sleep, and she had unlocked her window. It was time to go.

"What? Now? It's almost nine! Can't it wait?"

"No, I have to tell you guys something about the whole juvie thing. It's important. I just can't tell you over the phone because it doesn't feel right." Sam arranged the blankets on her bed so it looked like she was sleeping there. Hopefully, Mom or Dad wouldn't look to close if they checked on her.

Diana sighed on the other end of the line. "This better be worth it, Sam. I already got busted for the unexcused absences last month when I wasn't sick. If I get caught, I blame you."

"Yeah, sure. It'll be worth it. You wouldn't blame me anyway, because you love me too much."

"You overestimate my level of understanding. But I'll see you there." Then the phone beeped, and the line went dead.

Sam sighed and slid the phone into her back pocket. She wouldn't be bringing anything else with her to the loft. She had to bring her phone with in case Mom did happen to notice she was missing. She would be in trouble enough without the added bonus of not answering her phone.

Hopefully, though, she wouldn't be caught at all. That was Sam's last, hopeful thought as she pulled open her window and eased up onto the ledge. She sat down on the frame and closed the glass partway behind her, leaving it open a crack so she could get back in. Then she lowered herself down to the ground below, about four feet below the window because of the house's crooked construction.

Checking that her phone hadn't fallen out of her pocket, Sam nodded to herself and headed off. The neighborhood sidewalks were bright enough to be navigable, though they weren't as well lit as they would be by sunlight. Instead, street lamps along the road kept Sam on her path as she jogged towards the center of town.

To walk to the book store would take about half an hour or forty-five minutes, during the daytime. Running in the dark, it could take closer to fifteen, but Sam would be out of breath if she did that. Instead, she jogged and tried for a twenty minute trip, careful not to get hit by cars. That would be one good thing about the new city designs—almost all transportation would be automated, so getting hit by a car would be practically impossible. At the very least, one would have to try pretty hard in order to succeed.

The book store was still open when Sam arrived, just like she had hoped. It would have been bad had it not been, though there had been a slight chance. Though the sign on the door said that it was open on weekdays from eight in the morning to eight at night, Mrs. Penelope rarely closed it then. It was normal to find the elderly woman reading a book in one of the store's old chairs at even ten at night.

Not that it was a regular thing for Sam to come to the store during the late hours of the night. She tried not to at least. But sometimes there was just nothing to do, and she just couldn't sleep, and at least Shane or Diana would come meet her, if not both of them. Tonight, though, Sam had her fingers crossed that both of her friends would show. Her heart hadn't stopped beating faster than it should and her stomach hadn't shed the clenching feeling after her meeting with Miss Green.

That woman had known things. Up until actually talking with Miss Green, Sam had been guessing that she would have to jump through hoops to figure out what the Counterparts Program knew about her. But she hadn't. Instead, everything had been thrown out there in the form of a clear message: help us or regret it.

"Hello, Mrs. Penelope! Are you having a nice evening?" Sam was proud of how little she let her worry show in her greeting to the bookkeeper.

"It is not evening anymore, Sam, and you are out late. I am having a nice night, but I feel like your parents would not be if they knew you were out," Mrs. Penelope said softly, more disproving than angry.

Sam shook her head and resisted rolling her eyes. "No, Mrs. Penelope. But this is important, I promise. I wouldn't be here if it weren't."

"Yes, Samantha. But be careful at night. And if your important thing is being alone with that boy Shane..."

"Oh, no!" Sam let out a laugh as she started moving towards the back of the store. "Shane and I broke up like a year ago. Don't worry about us. But Diana and him should both be coming too. Can we use the loft to talk?"

"It looks like you already assume you can."

Sam blushed at that and dropped down from where she was already climbing the ladder to the loft.

"But yes, you may. Do you must get home soon, so don't stay too long. Your parents would not be happy with me if they knew."

Sam smiled as she climbed into the loft, taking the favorite seat of the three in one of the bean bag chairs. No one but Diana and Shane actually knew they came to this little store to hide, so Sam knew her parents wouldn't be angry with Mrs. Penelope. They didn't know she even existed, probably. Diana wouldn't tell her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Midrose, about the hideaway, and Shane was good at keeping most secrets.

As she waited, Sam rolled her phone back and forth between her hands, hoping that no one would call. If someone called, it would almost certainly be her mom asking where she was. Then she would be in deep trouble. Sam jumped and cursed under her breath as her cell started ringing. Great. This was just great.

"Sam, first of all, you suck so much."

Sam let out a deep breath as she heard Shane on the other end of the line, sounding like he had been running quite a bit. She wasn't quite sure what she would have said if it were her mom, but she had still frantically answered the call without even checking who it was.

"Second of all, I'm almost there, and I think Di is too. She said that you said this was important, and it better be. I had to tell my dad that I was going on a 'night run' because he was in the living room so I couldn't sneak out."

"Yeah, it's important. I've got a story for you." Leaning out of the loft, Sam could see the front door of the store to catch Shane and Diana when they came in.

Shane sounded like he was going to punch something. "I swear to god, Sam, if you have called us here to tell us a story I will throw you into a river."

"It's an important story. Just get here and I'll tell you and Diana at the same time." Then Sam hung up, tossing her phone back to the beanbag while staying where she was, hanging just a bit out of the loft.

It was only a couple more minutes until Diana showed up, trailed by Shane almost on her heels. They waved a quick hello to Mrs. Penelope, who looked a bit mistrusting, like she always did when they came there after her technical closing time. But she still always let them in and was friendly the next day. Diana had come to the conclusion that she was worried for them being out late, but Sam was pretty sure she didn't trust them quite enough to think that they were not doing anything illegal. Well, they weren't.

"Shane says that it's story time. This better be worth the walk, Sam." Diana stole the seat where Sam had been sitting and she let her, dragging a different beanbag over to sit next to her. Shane grabbed the last chair and sat down, facing the girls.

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing her eyes for just a moment to calm her heart. She needed to tell them, yeah, but it also made her nervous to actually do so.

"You guys don't know what happened with all the stuff that ended me up in trouble," she started, scooting her beanbag so she could talk to both Shane and Diana.

Diana frowned and said, "No, yeah, we do. You stole some dude's car and they caught you after that. You were going to ditch it but you didn't have a chance. Do you mean you didn't tell us why you took it? 'Cause I figure it's because you were bored or something."

"You seriously think I just go around stealing cars because I get bored?" Sam raised her eyebrows. She wasn't expecting that one. She wasn't psycho, she just blogged and played video games when she was bored. "But no, I don't mean that. Well, sort of. Not the part where I was bored, I mean I want to tell you why I took the car, and some other stuff."

"What other stuff?"

"Shut up, Shane," Diana snapped, turning to Sam. "Go on. What do you mean?"

"Look, what happened was that I was trying to walk all the way around the outside of the city because I was bored and it was summer and what else was I supposed to so. So I was trying to walk around the outside of the town from my house and back again."

"What, like last summer?" Shane interrupted again, but Diana didn't shout at him.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. But the thing is that I underestimated the distance by, like, a lot and I had to cut back through the town so I wouldn't miss dinner by like two days. So I cut through this alley that led to the parking lot down by the cluster of fast food places. It was pretty creepy so I was listening really close to make sure there wasn't a psycho waiting in the shadows or something.

"So I was listening and I heard a car, but I was like whatever it's a parking lot there are going to be cars. But then there were footsteps, fast, running away from the car. I saw this lady run past the alleyway and then a car with a guy in it go after her. It freaked me out so I ran and hid behind this ladder thing on the side of the building, and I climbed up so I could see what was going on and no one would see me from the ground. I mean, no one thinks to look up, right?"

"So you hid?" Shane asked.

Sam couldn't quite tell whether the question was innocent or accusatory, so she defaulted to the latter. "Yes, Shane, I hid. What would you have me do."

Diana shushed them both and motioned for Sam to continue.

"I hid. There was this little ledge up at the top of the ladder, and I hid up on it next to this window. That guy that was in the car, he got out and followed that lady. I wasn't watching them, I was just trying to get into the building through the window. Then I saw that there was this thing, like a bucket that someone left concrete in and it hardened before they could use it."

Sam paused and took a few breaths, closing her eyes for just a second.

"Then that lady ran down the alley and the man ran after and I just, I kicked the bucket down. Because he had stopped and he had taken out a knife and the window wasn't opening and I just... I didn't know what he was going to do. But the bucket, it hit him and he went down. I thought he was dead. I don't know.

"The lady, she went down too. Fainted, I guess, because he didn't get a chance to do anything. Then I climbed down and I just felt like I couldn't leave the knife there. It felt wrong. When I took it from his hand, though, he was still breathing. And his hand was still holding onto that knife, even though his shoulder looked bashed where the bucket had hit. I took the knife anyway, and I was going over to check on the lady and he opened his eyes and I think he moved...

"And I threw the knife at him. I threw it right at his face and it hit him. And he stopped moving," Sam told them, finally looking up from the story that she was telling to a crack in the floor. She didn't look at her friends, instead moving her gaze all the way up to the ceiling. "And then I ran."

Diana and Shane were both staring at Sam, and she shook her head. Shane, after a moment, nodded and shrugged. Diana looked over to him before saying, "Yes, well, you did what you had to. Right?"

Sam nodded slowly and clenched her left fist. She didn't want the nonsense of crying about the past again. There was enough of that while she was in the first few few weeks of therapy and doing her testifying and the chaos that came with that. No. The past was in the past.

"I ran to the car, and I got in because I didn't want to stay and running wasn't enough. The guy, he left the keys in the ignition so I just left. I had already taken a practice lesson so I was pretty sure I wouldn't run into anyone. I just, I had to get to the police station."

The other two nodded. But the story wasn't done.

"But then I stopped at this stoplight, the one in the middle of town, like a couple blocks from here, and I heard something move. There was something in the back seat, and so I pulled over by the side of the road like two blocks from the police station. When I stopped, I heard this little voice, all muffled from something."

Diana put a hand over her mouth. "Oh my god, no."

"There was this kid, a little girl that was like six or seven, in the backseat. Di, she had tape on her mouth and her hands were tied and I... I didn't know what to do. I tried to untie her but she started getting freaked out but then this guy from the police walked by, heading towards the station and they, they arrested me. They wouldn't even listen to what I was saying for like half an hour. The little girl, she was okay, thank god," Sam said, hugging her arms across her body. "But that's why I ended up in juvie. I only stayed for a few weeks because they got it cleared up."

"Why would you get in trouble for that? You did what you had to," Shane asked, surprising Sam. He seemed the type to go on about how cool it was that Sam killed some guy.

"It was the fact that I stabbed him afterwards. I knew he couldn't move. I knew that he would be out. I thought his back might even be broken down lower. But I stabbed him anyway," Sam said, shaking her head. "I'm not in trouble anymore, everyone that knows about everything is just trying to coddle me. They think that it would inspire me to do more bad things. Little do they know."

Diana laughed at that. "I mean, you were just quick enough to not get caught in anything before. Still are."

"Hey, you're the ones telling me to play in construction zones," Sam argued, smiling.

Shane gasped in mock-betrayal. "Hey, when did I get involved in this. I am a perfectly good influence!"

They didn't blame her for anything. Sam let out a deep breath and scooted her beanbag so that she could lean against Diana's shoulder.

Sam finished with, "So, that's what I wanted to tell you. That's what Miss Green, the lady from the Counterparts Program, is holding above me. That and you, Diana, but I'll get around to telling my mom that one eventually anyway. I just can't have my mom find out about this. It would freak her out more, even more than thinking that I stole some guy's car."

"Is she still acting all cautious that you might go rob a bank? Maybe if you did tell her she would understand. I'm sick of her not letting me wear bobby pins every time I come over to your house 'because Sam might pick a lock'. Why did you tell her about the lock picking anyway?" Diana complained.

"Because she asked, and I told you. I only learned it because it was cool. I told her that too. Anyway, if I told her, she wouldn't understand. I think the frickin' courtroom understood that I had to do what I did more than Mom would." Sam was not going to be giving up this secret easily. It would not end well.

Shane hummed. "So what are going going to do about the CP lady trying to blackmail you? I mean, are you going to tell the cops or something?"

"CP?"

"Counterparts."

"Oh. No, I think she would really make sure my mom and dad found out if I did that. I don't think she's bluffing. No, I'll do what she wants. She just wants her program to go through to the public. I dunno, maybe she gets a raise or something." Sam shrugged.

Diana sat up so quickly that if she were taller, she probably would have given herself a concussion on the ceiling. "Or! Maybe I'm right and they want to get everyone all riled up about the counterparts thing that they don't pay as much attention to the genetic warfare. I think that makes sense."

Sam rested her face on one hand, shaking her head.

"I think it's getting late. Let's go home."