Runaway

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” she asked. 

I turned around, stuffing all the clothes I liked into my bag. I wouldn’t speak, because I knew if I opened my mouth I would start crying, and once the flow began, I didn’t know if it would stop. I didn’t want her last memory of me to be weak. 

I stormed into the bathroom, heart beating so fast that I was sure it would burst out of my chest as it pumped me full of adrenaline that made my hands shake. 

“Elaine Jennifer Bridgenson!” she yelled, grabbing my hand and twisting me around to face her. 

How could two people who looked so similar be so different? Maybe that was a part of it. She hated herself so she took it out on me. I shook my head to clear the thought and ripped my hand out of her grasp. 

I wouldn’t do that anymore; feel bad for her because she had a hard childhood and excuse everything she was doing to me. 

I threw all of the money I had into the side pockets, ignoring her as she screamed, trying so hard to get me to stay when she was the one pushing me out. I slid my feet into sneakers and hefted my bag over my shoulder, walking towards the door. The room shook with her stomping as she chased me. 

“Elaine!” she threw herself in front of the door. 

“Let me out,” I said, voice shaking as I grabbed my keys. She didn’t move, staring me down, twin eyes meeting mine. “Move over.” 

“No.” I turned around. I could climb out of the bathroom window, lock the door so she couldn’t stop me. She ran around, reading my mind, reading me the way I had never been able to read her. “Elaine, you are not leaving this house.” 

“Then give me a reason to stay!” I yelled, whipping around. 

“I am your mother!” she matched my volume. 

I sighed. “That’s not good enough.” 

“What are you going to do? Run away with your little girlfriend? Let me tell you, the real world is a lot worse than your horrible mother,” she said with an eye-roll. 

My blood boiled. “I don’t have a girlfriend, Mom! I barely have friends! You made sure of that!” 

“Oh, so it’s my fault that you’re lonely! Maybe if you hadn’t chopped your hair off like a boy, your cheer friends wouldn’t have stopped talking to you.” 

“I stopped talking to them!” I ran my hair through my short hair. “They were toxic, and I only did cheer because you made me! That’s the only reason I ever did everything, except to cut my hair. It’s the one thing I did that was for me, and not you.” Tears made their way to my eyes, and I swallowed trying to will them away before-

“Go ahead and cry about it, just like you cry about everything. Go talk to that woman in school and pretend that you have an awful life so they pity you-”

“This! This is why I’m leaving!” my voice cracked. 

“And suddenly you’re so expressive!” she continued like I hadn’t ever said anything. She wasn’t used to it. Usually, I let her scream and take her anger out on me until she left and went to her room, never talking back out of fear of prolonging the lecture. “Where was all of this fight when those girls beat you up for kissing your girlfriend?” 

“It was gone because you taught me to sit there and take it,” I growled, venom lacing each of my words. 

Her nostrils flared as she stepped forward, raising a clawed finger in my face. “I never hit you.” 

I looked her in the eyes, hoping that these words would help her in whatever relationship she formed once I was gone. “That doesn’t mean you never hurt me.” 

I took the opportunity of her stunned face and ran into the bathroom, locking the door. I climbed onto the toilet seat, shaky body nearly falling as I knocked soaps over to reach the window. 

Her fists banged against the door. 

“Elaine!” she screamed, pounding as she called my name. My hands fumbled with the lock until I opened up the window, sliding it open with a squeak. 

“Do not leave! Do you understand me?” her voice was angry. I listened for anything. Anything but angry desperation, for sadness, for any part of her that wanted me to stay because she loved me and not because I was company and she was terrified to be alone. 

I didn’t hear any of that. I hadn’t for a long time. 

I swung my legs outside of the window and dropped down, sprinting across the grass to my car. I unlocked it and sat down, starting it and locking the doors as she tumbled out of the house. 

“Elaine!” 

The car peeled down the driveway, the only sound my heavy breathing. 

Neighbors came out of their houses, looking on as our family broke. 

“I am your mother and you will not run away from me!” she screamed one last time, starting to run down the driveway. I wondered what she would tell everyone in the town when they asked where I went. 

I took one last look at her face as I reversed onto the road. 

She was stomping, her light blonde hair freeing itself from her ponytail, hazel eyes bloodshot with anger, face red as she wrapped her cardigan around her short torso. I scrubbed a hair through my light blonde hair, hazel eyes bloodshot with anger, face red as I wrapped my hands around the steering wheel.

The difference was in our eyes.

Hers were furious, widened with fear because I was leaving her, because somebody else was leaving her and she would be alone again. 

Mine were furious, but tinged with something happier. I would be alone too, but to me, loneliness meant freedom, not entrapment. 

I drove the car, and where music would normally be blaring, it was silent. My breaths shook with each inhale and exhale. I didn’t know how long I had been driving, only that it was dark. The roads around me were familiar, autopilot taking over and bringing me to a park that I usually went to when I felt like this, when everything felt too much. 

My breaths began to pick up as I made the turn onto the road, heart thundering and tears beginning to drip from my eyes. I didn’t know where to go. Would I be allowed to go to school if I wasn’t living at home? How was I going to go to college? What was I doing?

She was right. 

“No,” I said out loud, dismissing the thought. I put the car in park and immediately leaned forward, bracing my hands on the steering wheel. As soon as my face touched my hands, it was like a dam broke. Tears turned from rain droplets, to a stream, to a roaring river as they traced their way down my face, loud, ugly, sobs filling the silence of the car. 

I wrapped my arms around my body, letting all of the rage and pain I normally saved for the silence of the shower out. Soon, the sobs grew in volume, ripping their way from my throat in bursts of utter agony, until they turned, crescendoing into one scream. My life story was painted into that sound, each time my mother hurt me pairing with the cracks in my voice. 

When it ended, there was just silence. 

I sniffed, allowing myself a few more moments to grieve the life I was stepping away from and wiped my tears on my sweatshirt sleeve. 

I put the car in drive, and as I floated down the roads, the sound of the engine began to sound less like an end and more like a beginning. 

-One Month Later-

I walked out of the store, deciding to grab a small bouquet of flowers with the tips I had made. Our apartment was small, and the smell sometimes helped to brighten it up. It was a nice day, so I smiled, the grin stretching across my face. Some people found the city to be dirty, but I thought that there were nice pockets of it if you knew where to look. 

Luckily, the walk from the coffee shop I worked at wasn’t far from our apartment. The smell still clung to me, mingling with that of the flowers as my feet slapped against the concrete, a bounce in my step. 

I was sure that I looked strange, a person in a polo and khakis shouldn’t look this happy, but I was. I dog barked at me, the little pink vest not matching how angry it sounded as I waved at it. The owner apologized, but I just smiled at them, finishing the walk down the two blocks it took me to get home. I waved to the old man as he sat outside his door at the top of the stairs. 

“It’s nice outside today, Mr. Jennings, you should take a walk,” I said, smiling at him as he frowned at me. 

“Meh, it’s going to rain, I can feel it in my bones.” 

I shrugged. “I don’t think so, but maybe you can get some water for this if it does.” I pulled out a flower from the bouquet and handed it to him. He stared at it like it was a foreign object, as if we didn’t give him a flower every time we bought a bouquet. 

“Thanks,” he said. He groaned as he got up from his chair, mumbling as he walked inside his apartment. 

“No problem! Have a good day!” 

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked our door. 

It was quiet inside the space, meaning that Vicki was in our room and Theresa and Rain were in theirs. I tossed my keys in the bowl and made a cup of tea before pulling my laptop off of the shelf as I turned it on. Before I could do anything, an email notification caught my attention at the bottom of the screen. 

I opened it, and read it again. My jaw dropped as I read it a second time, and a third. 

“Guys,” I called out. Someone grunted from their room. “Guys come here!” 

My three roommates came running, their footsteps thundering down the dorm. 

“What? I was sleeping, I work a late shift tonight,” Rain said, their eyes heavy with sleep. 

I held a hand to my face as I reread the email. “My book won the contest!”

“Which contest?” they asked. Then their eyes widened and they grabbed Theresa’s shoulder. “Oh my God! The contest!” 

“Elaine is gonna be a published author!” Theresa cried, lacing her arms around me. “I’m so proud of you!” 

“See?” Vicki said, leaning against the doorway, a small smile on her face. “I told you you’d win.” 

Rain ran over and joined the hug Theresa had started, and even Vicki walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder. 

“Just don’t forget us when you’re a bestseller, alright Lanie?” she said. Vicki tried to act aloof, but I saw her through her and noticed the tears glistening in the corners of her darkly lined eyes. The four of us were an odd crew, but they had been more family than any of the people I’d called family before I left. 

“Go call Emmalyn!” Theresa said, releasing me from her grip. I ran off to my room, snatching the phone off of the shelf. Before I called my girlfriend-

My brain paused. 

Girlfriend. 

The thought was unattainable a month ago. All of this was unattainable a month ago. This feeling of happiness, real, good friends, a place that genuinely felt like home, getting my novel published, it was something that I thought wouldn’t come until I was an adult, grown up with loads of money in my pocket. But here I was, just a month later, living the life that I’d wanted to forever, on my own. 

Or, not exactly on my own. I pressed my girlfriend’s number and listened to my best friends talk in the living room. 

“Hey, Lanie? What’s up?” her sweet voice answered. 

I paused. “I’m really happy.”