My Father's Daughter (a mr. O'hare fanfic)

Part II- the escape

My father's name. Aloysius O'Hare, the mystery man. Tears stung my eyes. My mother continued, her eyes fixed on the horizon like she was recalling my father.
"I'm glad you never met him, Y/N. I did everything I could to keep you from him. He died just before you were born. Or at least they think he died- it's a kid's movie so they couldn't show his violent demise on screen but it can be presumed that after being flown away in his jet pack he starved to death and/or fell from a great height." Her statement stung me like a slap to the face. The man whose name had been unknown to me not five minutes ago was dead? Hot rage bubbled up through my chest.
"Why would you keep him from me if he was already dead?" My mother reached out, but I slapped her hand away. "I hate you!"
I scampered back to our cabin. It took a while on account of how short my little legs are. The winding trees lashed at my face, retaliating against my freedom. If my mother called out or pursued me, I didn't notice. It was as if my body had a mind of its own- I grabbed a bag and began stuffing it with everything I needed, like I had been planning an escape for months instead of a few minutes. Phone, keys, wallet, toothbrush and sixteen changes of clothes hurled themselves into my Gucci checkered bag. Before I left, I changed my clothes again (fit can be seen in the exclusive banner image for this chapter).
I glanced at the screen of my IPhone 16 Lorax Pro Max Plus and determined that it was 2:44. That gave me sixteen minutes to catch the only bus from our settlement to Thneedville. It would be a ten minute walk for anyone else, but with my tiny legs and 2-foot platform Demonias, it took me fifteen (I am a master power walker). The bus was pulling up to the stop when I arrived. Like everything in the truffula grove colonies, it was rusted and decrepit. A young, smiling Ted Wiggins graced the side of the bus, with a Sharpie moustache marring his child star face. He urged the viewer to Save The Trees! and Recycle! in bright green font. In the beginning, he'd been an icon- a twelve year old boy who single handedly saved the trees with the power of love and friendship, bla bla. We'd done countless presentations on him in school. After that redhead girl left him, though, his life fell apart-  now, he was a burnt-out alcoholic, only trotted out for memorial events every few years under strict supervision. His glory days were remembered on old, peeling promotional images on the sides of rusty buses.
I stepped onto the bus, silently forking over twenty tarnished TruffulaCoin to the old driver. He regarded me, his bushy orange eyebrows low over appraising green eyes. When he spoke, it was with a thick New Truffula accent, rounded on the vowels and soft consonants.
" 'Ey kid, you travelin' alone?" His voice reminded me of Danny DeTreeto, that famous actor.
"Yes..." I said shyly, "Do you need my ID?"
"Nah," he said, "Let it grow." He hectored to the inside of the bus with a fuzzy orange hand.
I sat on a cracked nylon seat. Dirt caked the dinged metal floor. The only other passenger- a miner type in dirty overalls- sat slumped at the back of the bus, his ten thousand yard stare directed out the window. When he got off the bus in Naturetown, I was left alone. There was very little communication between the colonies and their mother, Thneedville- the formerly walled city had no practice governing others, and its higher-ups were too occupied covertly breaking up infights and pumping out eco propaganda to bother with us. I'd never set foot in the capital city, and knew no one who had- besides my own mother. Of the limited information on my father that I had managed to sleuth over the years, this was the most important- he was from Thneedville. Or, at least, that's where my parents had met. My mother, flaxen-haired and opinionated, and my father, short, dark, and devilishly handsome. There I was, on my way to unravel the mystery of my parentage, all alone.