Run Away With Me

How to Run From The Lack of Mess You Made

I rushed out to my car and closed the door behind me. Now that I knew my dad was awake, I no longer feared him catching me leaving in the dead of night. Starting the car, I took one last longing look at my home. For the next few weeks I no longer wanted the late-night studies or the movie nights on the couch with my mom. I didn't want staying in on Friday nights or browsing the book store as my idea of fun.

I was going to be someone completely new. The girl I saw walking around the school hallways for the last four years, the one who wore all of the best clothes and had perfect hair. The girl who had all of the self-esteem and confidence in the world. They never looked worried about anything and was friends with everybody. I was going to be that girl for as long as I could.

In the last few weeks I had spent my time at the mall, telling my mom I was at the book store and slowly smuggling clothes into my room and under my bed. Stores like Sephora, American Eagle, Victoria Secret, and any other cute boutiques I walked by that had something cute in the window. I didn't care about the money I spent. My only thought was: would I usually wear this? No? Good, buy it.

Gone from wardrobe were plain t-shirts and skinny jeans. Goodbye dark clothes and two-sizes-too-big tops that I could hide behind. In its place were short shorts and crop tops, rompers and sundresses, flowery patters and bright colors. My comfortable and reliable sketchers were replaced by wedges and a pair of sandals to match every outfit I bought. My typically make up free face has been replaced by YouTube and Sephora techniques that are complex but will make me look irresistible.

These next few months I will no longer be Madeline Parker: nerd, goodie two shoes, Harvard bound, Barnes and Noble regular, Netflix binge watcher. No, I would be Maddie Parker: Social butterfly, adventurer, sun chaser, and carefree lover of all thing summer.

"Ok next stop. Jack's house." I whispered to myself as I drove down the street light lit roads, tapping my fingers anxiously on the steering wheel.

Jack Abraham is the schools prized possession. He is the quarterback, he is the ladies' man, he is the partier, he is the teacher's pet and he will be attending Yale in the fall. Somehow, with little convincing, I got him to agree to sneak away from sleepy Colorado to sunny California with me. But now that I think about it, who would say no to California?

I pulled up in front of his house and shut off my headlights so I wouldn't wake up the neighbors. I looked to my dash and saw that it was just past 3:30. When I looked up again, I watched as a shadowed figure, that I could only assume to be Jack, climbed through a window and landed feet first on the ground with the grace of a superhero. He shut the window and jogged over to my car. If this wasn't Jack, I was surely about to die or be kidnapped. And I hadn't even made it out of this tiny town yet.

He flung open the car's back door and threw his things in next to mine then lowered himself inside the passenger seat. Switching on the overhead light, he smiled brightly at me as if it were perfectly normal to be awake at this hour.

I won't lie, the boy is gorgeous. Like, 'are you sure you're only eighteen and not a model' gorgeous. It's not fair. But in the entire 13 years of school that I had known him I had never been even the slightest bit attracted to him. Especially not in his brace-face pre-pubescent years.

I knew he was attractive sure, but I wasn't the kind of girl that went swooning after boys I knew I would never have. Other than the fact that I would never have him, I knew that almost every other girl that went to our high school did. Jack didn't have 'girlfriends', he had hook ups and one-night stands. And I wasn't about to be the next girl for him to cut a notch in his bedpost for.

"Hey Madeline." He winked at me and turned to buckle in. "I didn't know this sweet ride was yours." He said admiring my BMW. "Should have said something back in our glory days, then maybe you would have been sitting with us at lunch instead of with... Wait who did you hang out with during school?"