Runaway

IX. Runaway, Runaway Girl

This chapter is also known as How Many Times Can Riley Use the Word “Runaway” In the Same Chapter/Story Title? ;D

Onto the story!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a gas station in Alabama, where Charlie and I were splitting the last of the money we had left on what we hoped was enough gas to get us home into two last stops, I did something that I hadn’t done in almost two weeks—I turned on my cell phone.

It pinged like crazy for the first thirty seconds, trying to gather up all of the messages I had gotten, and it didn’t even register when I tried to turn the volume down. People turned to look at me like I was making an extreme disturbance and my phone wasn’t just ringing with messages that must have been sitting there for way too long. I felt my heart sink as I looked at all of the missed calls, all of them from the people I hadn’t thought about what it would mean to leave them behind.

I had missed over fifty calls from my father. Horror sank into my stomach.

I didn’t know how I could have possibly forgotten that, no matter how much I wanted to leave and never come back, how much it would mean I was tearing apart the things I left behind. Fear was ice cold in my stomach as I browsed through a million text messages from my father and friends alike, all asking me where I was, come home, was I running away, and then finally one asking me if Charlie was with me. There was one from KC, too. But, like always, it was cryptic and now was not the time to hear it.

I looked at the button for a long time before I pressed it. But eventually I did, and I was calling Dad.

He picked up on the second ring, sounding frantic. “Bee?” he cried into the phone. “Bee?”

I closed my eyes, his fear and anxiety and relief sinking into me like razor sharp claws. “Hi, Dad.”

“Bee,” he muttered, and then took a deep breath. “Where the hell have you been? Where are you? I’ve been scared to death over the last couple of weeks not knowing where you are, not knowing what had happened to you. Charlie’s mom said the two of you went on some kind of road trip? Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were leaving? What makes you think that you could just take off and leave as simple as that?”

And for all the wrong reasons, with a big smile on my face, the tears came.

“I’ve missed you,” I whispered, my voice choked with emotion. “So, so much.”

My dad paused in his interrogation for a long moment, listening to my sharp breathing and my slight laughter of almost relief every time I exhaled. The next time he asked me a question, his voice was flat and confused. “Sweetie, is Charlie forcing you to go? Does he have a knife?”

I laughed so loudly the people who had been looking at me in annoyance before now were taking steps away. “No, Dad,” I chuckled. “Not like that. It’s . . . It’s hard to explain why I left.”

But I had forgotten that my dad was my best friend, and of course he understood the things I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud. I could feel the atmosphere around our conversation change from accusation to pity and sadness, and I wished I could have said that was a better way for it to go. I closed my eyes for a long moment before I opened them again, and Charlie was leaning against the car door, watching me stand there just breathing. I offered him a sad smile and he smiled back, climbing in the car and closing the door to give me as much privacy as he possibly could.

My dad could have asked me a million and one questions. He could have yelled at me until his voice was hoarse or my phone died, whichever one came first. I would have listened and answered and done everything I could to explain to him how badly I had needed to run away, but I didn’t need to. My father was just like me, trapped in our little snow globe of a life, and he was sick of getting shaken up. He was sick of walking into the glass every time he tried to get out. I wondered to myself if my dad had thoughts of running away, even if he knew he would never be able to.