Runaway

A Story by Forbidden Love

A short story about a runaway teenager.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. The ticking of the clock was all the noise I heard in the entire house. My heart raced as I frantically threw my belongings in my duffle bag. I'd packed everything I could possibly need. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, money, etc. If I needed anything else, I could always come back during the day when no one is home. But I didn't want to have to come back. I never want to see this place again, I thought to myself. I looked over my checklist.

I heard a sudden grunt from the room directly across the hallway, my parents' room. I froze. If they woke up, everything would be ruined, and I would be dead meat. As quietly as possible, I tip-toed to the kitchen and filled up a bottle of water and grabbed the box of chocolate chip cookies and my keys. When I returned to my room, I looked around. This was the room I had grown up in. Was I really about to leave, without any intention of coming back? No. I'll come back to visit someday. I picked up my things and unlocked the window. I had to make a move before I changed my mind.

"Running away is the worst thing you could ever do, and you'll be an embarrassment to the family when you go back home," one person had said on one of those teen forums. "Running away won't solve anything," Another responded. I didn't care about any of that. I knew I would have to face my problems at some point, I just didn't want to do that right away. The statistics on the internet had said that many runaways are ne'er-do-wells or come from abusive, alcoholic, or drug-abusing parents. It's not always like that though. Sometimes, you have parents that are entirely too perfect. They make a decent salary and have a decent house in a decent neighborhood. Those parents that would do anything for their child, no matter what. The parents that are extremely over protective and strict because they "have your best interests at heart." I have those parents. I make almost perfect grades and have never gotten so much as a detention in school. The problem was that they didn't understand me. I'm the complete opposite of them. They are more religion-based, while I'm more science-based. I'm more open-minded, and well, my mother and father, are not. Which is why I could never hold a deep, serious, conversation with them. I could never tell them about my sexuality either.

You see, I am bisexual, and I am currently dating a girl. For a while, my parents though she was nothing more than a close friend. Once they realized, however, that she dressed very much like a boy, they figured she was gay, and I could no longer be friends with her. Of course, we were very much in love (and still are), so I couldn't stop talking to her. This brought many problems into our once beautiful, carefree relationship. We could no longer spend time with each other - well, at least not in a way that my parents knew. I had to lie to my parents about my whereabouts and sneak out of the house in the middle of the night. Before I knew it, I was caught up in a web of continuous lies. They were getting harder and harder to keep up with, and my parents were getting more and more suspicious. I could not handle all the lies and deceit anymore. I was too much of a coward to come out with the truth. So I decided to run. I wrote an impressive and immaculate letter and ran away into the night.

So where was I going? I was going to my girlfriend's house. It would be no problem staying at her house for a few days. I counted 85 cent worth of change until I realized that it was 2 o' clock in the morning and no buses would be running at that time. I had to walk. Her house was 10 minutes away...driving distance. I would be walking for hours.*