Runaways- Runaways 1

Chapter 2: Peyton

It was a crazy idea. I knew it was a crazy idea. I'd considered it before, about a month ago, but not seriously, and certainly not to the same extent I just had. I mean, what teenager hadn't considered it? I may only be fifteen, a young teenager, but still a teenager. I pulled off my hoodie and climbed into bed. After talking to Marcus, the idea had seemed to just pop into my head.

We could run away. We could run away from the coronavirus. Away from social distancing. Away from rules and laws. Away from the government. Away from strict parents and churches. But not away from our problems. We'd run with our problems. Literally. It would be me, him, Aaliyah, and Luke, even though I'd never met Luke. Marcus said he was in tenth grade, which meant he was a year older than us.

I couldn't believe Kristen and Michael Reid were doing that to him. I'd known Marcus and his family for almost four years now, and they'd always seemed so nice. If I had to compare, his family seemed less conservative than mine. I knew my father had finally given up on trying to pull him out of bisexuality, and his parents had never even seemed to try. They had never attempted to oppose it or support it, at least to my knowledge.

When I'd told my parents about Marcus being bisexual back in January, they had told me I should ask him to tell his parents. I told them I would, not knowing any better. I ended up telling Marcus the next time I saw him, which just so happened to be the very next day. His fifteenth birthday. He had invited me to go roller-skating with him, Aaliyah Spencer, and a few of his other friends. A conversation had opened a door to the question, so I'd told him to come out of the closet. I regretted it, considering Aaliyah had been standing right there and I'd known she was bi too. If I could go back and change that moment, I would. 

I also knew Marcus had a crush on Aaliyah. Or he did. I didn't think that was the case anymore. Anyway, it was so awkward to say it in front of her. I told him he had a month to tell his parents, and he'd ended up giving me the cold shoulder the rest of the day. The whole situation was awful. It was strange to look back and see how much I'd matured since then. I didn't think I would do something like that now.

Much later, he told me how mad Aaliyah had been. She apparently still hasn't told her parents, so I suppose it was pretty uncomfortable for her to stand there and listen to me drill Marcus on his sexuality. I was also still actively talking to my parents about everything that was going on with him, making it a full circle and breaking his trust. We fought for over a week, and we both struggled with suicidal ideation the whole time. I'd come scarily close to running away. Or rather, I came scarily close to trying to get to the nearest bridge in the middle of the night. That was probably slightly different. 

But so much had changed since then. That was in mid-March. It was now almost May. And it seemed like things were only getting worse for him. After he had told his parents that Saturday night on his birthday, he said that they told him he was too young to try to become something like that. Then they seemed to forget about it. At least, from my perspective they did.

A little over two weeks ago, we finally came to terms that I wasn't going to try to change him anymore. It was like I'd been enlightened. My eyes were just opened, because up until that time, even though Marcus had "broken up" with me almost two months ago, I was still in love with him. As they say, once you fell in love, there was no going back to being just friends.

But at that moment, it was like something clicked. I had only ever been close to him for myself. The only person I'd ever been thinking about was myself. I wanted to go back to how things were last summer, when I was just starting to befriend him.

So, I let them go back. After all, I didn't want any kind of romantic relationship until I got close to him. Yet, even when I got close to him, I felt like I didn't have a choice. Truth was, I wasn't giving myself a choice. What I was looking for wasn't something I needed to look for right now. I could just live life as a teenager. I'd let the future handle itself, just as scripture said. Now we just seemed more like siblings.