On The Run

Chapter Twelve - "Honest Truths"

Sarah

I ran away once.

Well, if I’m being honest, I’ve run away far more than once, but the one that sticks out is from when I was in college.

It was the anniversary of my mom’s death, and I’d gone home to visit my dad. We were still very close then, but that day was especially hard for us, so we sat on the patio of our Hamptons home and downed a fifty thousand dollar bottle of whiskey. Not all of it, but enough to provide a panacea for the pain.

I’d been heading back to my dorm the next night and I’d driven past the cemetery. My blood went cold and my heart raced as it always did when I went by – which wasn’t very often. I could feel the memories wriggling and writhing to reach the surface but I wouldn’t let them.

When I’d gotten back to the Columbia campus, there was a crowd gathered outside the residential hall building I lived in. I saw the flashing lights of a police car and ambulance and my heart skipped a beat.

As I sat there – still, and wondering whether to get out of my car, I saw somebody being pulled out on a stretcher. I couldn’t see who it was, but I could tell she was still alive, as they carried her by, into the open ambulance.

I opened up my window and asked one of the girls standing around, “What’s going on?”

“Some girl was attacked,” she said, looking terrified, “I don’t know who she is, but apparently, it happened out here a few hours ago.”

I backed up to make way for the police cars, and soon, I found myself backing up all the way back to the main road and the entrance. I got onto the highway before I realized I had no destination. And suddenly, that seemed like the best thing, because it meant that I could go anywhere.

I chose Australia. It was far enough that I would truly be getting away.

There, I met Roland. He was the most free-spirited person I’d met in my life, and he didn’t seem to have a care in the world. We surfed, we swam, we ate, and we explored extended periods of debauchery. It was one of the best times in my life.

I had college, and I had an internship at my father’s firm, yet there I was, miles and miles away, with no end in sight.

It lasted three whole weeks. Then Roland killed the dream.

“I have to go back home tomorrow,” he said, as we lay in bed after a manically exciting day of scotch, surfing and sex. It was all wrong; I was wrong, but I was lost and searching and running, and I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

I sat up, “What?” We hadn’t had enough conversations for me to know that this wasn’t his home.

In his beautiful Australian accent, he replied, “Yeah, I have to go back to Canada.”

A chill went up my spine; it was the end of my holiday too. I wasn’t ready.

“Okay,” I replied feeling my heart sink lower by the second. I had no feelings for the man whatsoever, but the heavy disappointment I felt weighed so heavily on my heart, it was all I could do to keep from screaming.

“You going to go home too?” he asked me.

I didn’t answer.

“What are you running from, Sarah?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t look up.

“I mean, what are you running from?”