We’re both fugitives now, Gabriel says, so we have to live like fugitives. We’re at the roach motel because the guy at the front desk didn’t ask for ID. We’re eating food from drive-throughs so no one behind any counter will see us in full. We wear baseball caps and sunglasses when we go out, and we’re driving a pickup truck that Gabriel stole out of the parking lot of a strip mall because it has a different license plate than the one on Papa Pete’s car. And Gabriel keeps his gun loaded all the time, because if the cops do come for us, we’re not going to go willingly.

I feel so strange—as though I got dragged into someone else’s bad dream, and since I wasn’t able to fight my way out of it, it’s my dream now too.

I don’t hate Gabriel anymore. I’m not even that scared of him—not unless I see the lava, and I haven’t seen that in days. I can’t get myself to leave him, though. And that’s the thing that DOES scare me. Gabriel LeRoy is all I have in the world. Well, him and Jenny, but I’m not allowed to talk to her. Gabriel says for all we know, the police could have tapped the phones of the people watching Jenny, so we have to lie low until we can sneak back and steal her away.

Aurora Grace, my school’s senior prom is tomorrow night. Back when I was getting ready to break up with Gabriel, I was secretly hoping that this one senior boy would ask me to go with him. He’s tall and quiet. Blond curls like Peter Frampton. Blue eyes like David Soul. He isn’t like the other boys at my school, tripping me when I walk past, wolf-whistling and snickering or whispering stuff like “slut” or “white trash,” just loud enough for me to hear. When this boy passes me in the hallway, he says, “Hey, April, how’s it going?” Sometimes, he even carries my books.

He has a girlfriend. She’s rich and beautiful and mean. I think if she ever saw him carrying my books, she would pitch a fit. But then again, so would Gabriel. “Love makes you crazy,” Gabriel says. “I think of someone else touching you, my heart crumbles into dust.”