"Get in the car. We're leaving."

It was dark, and that was all anyone cared about. It had to be dark to do what they were doing. No one committed crimes in broad daylight except for the trained professionals. Four eighteen-year-olds who had just barely graduated high school were not in the running for trained professionals.

Eddie Hadden started the engine in his battered 1992 Buick LeSabre, gesturing for the other three to climb in. They listened, jumping in the car and slamming the doors shut before Eddie took off out of the woods.

"Don't your parents have money, Hadden?" Victoria Marcum asked from the backseat, "Why do you drive this thing?"

"You know that I don't feel comfortable taking money from them." Eddie muttered as he squinted at the dirt road ahead of him, "I don't want them to have any pull over me."

"Shut up." Neil Conrad ordered from the passenger seat, "You're going to make my headache worse."

"Oh, poor Conrad with a headache." Erin Green's voice joined the rest of theirs, "I'm still angry that we went through with this at all."

"Shut up, Erin." Victoria retorted, "I don't even see why I had to come at all. You all made me an accessory."

"Stop saying things like that." Neil snapped, "You don't know who could be listening."

"I didn't think that was going to be a problem anymore. Didn't we specifically ensure that it wouldn't be a problem anymore?"

"No, I ensured that it wouldn't be a problem anymore." Neil told Erin, "You all just stood there. I actually did it."

"You didn't have to do it." Erin muttered.

"Oh no? And what would have happened? Did you want everything getting out? Everything we know about our families? Things that even we don't know about our families?"

"That could have been a bluff."

"It wasn't a bluff." Eddie shook his head, "We've learned the hard way that it doesn't bluff."

"Thank you." Neil said, "See?"

"I still think there was a better solution," Eddie commented as they pulled out onto the main road, "But what's done is done."

"What's done didn't have to be done while I was there."

"Victoria."

"Whatever."

It was an odd entourage, the four of them: Eddie Hadden had been captain of the football team in high school and had briefly dated Erin Green, an up-and-coming socialite with a schedule fuller than a chapel on Christmas Eve. Neil Conrad had been one of the lower-lying characters of Barnum High, never in the spotlight but occasionally known to get detention due to talking back to a teacher or spray painting the outside of the building. Victoria Marcum, despite being one of the few Barnum students from a low-income family, had made a name for herself as a cheerleader—albeit a pretty awful one—during her junior and senior years.

The four would never have been four expected to see each other outside of the school hallways, and yet there they were: in the car at 3:00 in the morning in the beginning of June, barely graduated from high school and already returning to their old ways.

Or rather, going much further than their old ways ever insisted.

The four families were at the core of every secret and every scandal in the city of Easton, Maryland. Everything they did was noteworthy, and the many members of the four families ensured that nothing was ever quiet for very long.

Thus, the four were together on this chilly morning. Or night. Or whatever they considered 3 AM to be.

"How much longer until we get back?" Erin spoke after the car had been silent for a few minutes. "This whole thing is freaking me out."

"Once again, you didn't even do anything." Neil muttered, leaning his head against the car window and promptly jumping away from it again; it may have been the beginning of June, but nights still got cold and windows were not immune.

"We were all there, Neil." Eddie snapped. "Stop acting like you're the only one who could get busted for this. I'm literally driving the getaway car."

"Would you have rather done it?"

The other three shook their heads slowly.

"I didn't think so." The Conrad boy folded his arms and leaned back in his seat, staring at the road ahead. "We're not speaking of this again."

"Of course not. I wouldn't have anyone knowing I willingly went out with the likes of Neil Conrad." Erin shuddered.

"We're not in high school anymore, Green. No one cares about who you're seen with."

"Would all of you shut up?" Eddie groaned, "There's a car ahead of us and I'm not trying to get run over because I'm distracted by the three children in my backseat."

"Technically, I'm in the front seat."

"Neil."

The road that the four convenient friends were on was one of the longest roads in their town, stretching on for a few miles surrounded by only the forest on either side. There were no roads to go off on, nothing to turn down, no lights except for the headlights of whatever car was dense enough to be on the road at such a time. When no one spoke, the only noise was that of the crickets in the forest and the humming of the LeSabre's ancient engine.

There were three cars on the long, sparsely-travelled road on that particular morning, and the teenagers in the LeSabre could only see one. It was directly ahead of them, driving well over the speed limit and getting further and further away from the four with each passing second. Surely someone out at this time wouldn't wonder why another car was there.

The third car was coming from the other direction, and wasn't quite yet in the LeSabre's line of sight. It was dark, black or blue, with tinted windows and no license plates. One of its headlights was broken, and there was a large dent in its left side.

No matter. Its left side was about to get far worse.

"There's another person out right now?" Neil rolled his eyes as the third car's single headlight started to come into view. "This is actually ridiculous. No one's ever out on this road."

"By the looks of it, this person shouldn't be out on this road." Victoria craned her neck to see out of the front window, "They're swerving all over the place; they're probably drunk."

Eddie rolled his eyes.

"I hate getting around drunk drivers." He sighed, moving further to the right side of the road, towards the forest and away from the opposite lane. "It freaks me out."

"You'll be fine." Erin promised her ex-boyfriend, "It's not like they're purposefully trying to swerve everywhere. Just avoid their lane."

"I know how to drive, Erin." Eddie snapped as the car came closer, both vehicles hurtling towards each other faster than the speed limit called for. "Let me concentrate."

His right side was practically touching the trees beside the car as he tried to get around the other driver, but they were coming fast and their single headlight seemed to be aimed directly at Eddie's seat.

"Eddie!"

Victoria's shrill shriek was the last thing the four of them ever heard. The blue or black car with the tinted windows and broken headlight crashed into Eddie's door, forcing the old LeSabre off of the road and into the forest, the force of the impact sending the car crashing through trees, tumbling over and over again until it came to a stop at the bottom of a ravine.

The police reports would say that a 1992 Buick LeSabre lay still at the bottom of a ravine in the old forests of Easton at 3 AM, run off the road by a drunk driver who lost control and kept going after hitting the four teens.

The four teenagers inside of the 1992 Buick LeSabre couldn't say anything at all.

The driver of the blue or black car with the tinted windows and broken headlight could say anything they wanted.

A/N: Let me know your thoughts on the prologue!

-Katherine