On The Run

Chapter Thirty - "Knock, Knock"

She smiled, with a small nod, “Yeah, you’d be good at that.”

“What about you?”

She looked away in thought, “I’ve never really thought about it; I always thought I’d be dead before I turned twenty,” she said, with a casual laugh.

I raised a brow, “Morbid.”

She shrugged and looked up at me with an intense gaze, “I don’t know. I don’t like to give in to imagination.”

“Why can’t you sleep?” I asked before she could start to pull away.

She sighed, “The elephant in the room. I can sleep; I’d just rather not.”

“So, you’re not tired?” I asked.

“That’s two questions,” she said with a slight smirk.

“Fine,” I said, holding a hand up resolutely. “What’s yours?”

She swallowed nervously, “What is this? This . . . thing with us,” she asked.

“Ah. The other elephant in the room,” I said, as casually as I could muster. How the hell did I explain feelings I was trying to make sense of? And I knew that whatever I said would probably scare her off, so I was slightly worried.

She snorted, “There is no way two elephants would fit in here,” she said, her eyes scanning the room.

I laughed, “And one would?”

She smiled and looked back at me with a look that said, ‘so?’

“I don’t know,” I replied, “I mean, I know how I feel, but . . . I really don’t know.”

Please don’t ask, ‘how do you feel?’ I thought to myself. But I kind of knew she wouldn’t; I don’t know how, maybe I was starting to actually know her.

“One elephant just might fit,” she said quietly, looking over at the door.

I frowned in a mix of disbelief and amusement; there could be no one else like her, it was simply impossible. As I began to doubt whether she’d even heard my response, she looked back at me and said, “Your turn, Fitch,” and her eyes held a knowing gaze.

I leaned in closer, enjoying this rare closeness to her, “Where would you rather be right now? Like, anywhere in the world.”

She frowned in thought for a second, “Nowhere,” she said quietly.

“Really? You wouldn’t get out of Brooklyn . . . or even, America, if you could?” I asked curiously.

“I don’t have that much of an imagination, so really, nowhere else. And . . . it’s not really about where I am anymore,” she said, giving me a firm look. She didn’t need to say it, but I could hear it plain as day, ‘more like who I’m with,’ and it kind of made my heart float in my chest. I knew it wasn’t necessarily about me, but our makeshift family had given her a sense of belonging that I could barely contain myself.

“What’s the best day you’ve ever had?” she asked, cutting into my thoughts.

I let out a breath; that was a hard one. Before my dad went to prison, we’d had so many great years together, and when I’d gone to live with Rick and the Jacksons, those had been some pretty great years as well, until it started to crumble, but great nonetheless. So, I wasn’t really sure what memory was most significant.

But slowly, a day began to stick out to me:

March 2001

My dad had always been a very spontaneous man, and what some would call irresponsible. He never looked through my homework, he’d give me a beer whenever I cried, I didn’t have a bed time or a curfew, he’d let me skip school whenever I wanted, he never went to any Parent-Teacher conferences, and honestly, I really wouldn’t have had it any other way.