Runaway

Runaway

Kindergarten

From the moment I saw Her, I knew she was the one. Her beautiful blue eyes resembled the colour of the sky on a bright summer’s day. They twinkled every time she smiled, and she smiled a lot. Her blond hair was silky soft. It was cut on a short bob, and Her mother had given her a tiny hairclip to keep her bangs from covering Her eyes. God bless that woman.

One day, our group went on a picnic in the park near our kindergarten. I had asked my mother to give me some of her homemade strawberry juice to take with me. With that sweet nectar, I planned to woo my sweetheart.

The day worked out even better than I had imagined. The teacher told us to find ourselves a walking buddy. This was my chance. All I had to do was to ask Her to be my buddy before anyone else got there. I looked around but I couldn’t find Her. Where could she have gone, she was just there…

“Wanna be walking buddies?” a soft voice sounded from behind me.

I turned around and saw my beloved standing in front of me. I looked straight into Her eyes and became utterly mesmerized. I nodded slowly.

“Great! Let’s go then!” she said, and grabbed my hand. We took our place in the line. She still hadn’t let go of my hand. I had heard the phrase “butterflies in the stomach” before, but until that moment, I hadn’t quite understood what it meant. I quite liked that feeling.

When we got the park, we sat down on a stone wall together and started our picnic. This was my moment. I offered Her some of my juice.

“Really? Thanks!” She drank some. “Wow! This is really great juice! Where did you get it?”

“My mom made it.”

“Really? Cool. My mom made me some carrot cake, you want some?”

“Sure,” I responded with a smile.

It was the best carrot cake I ever had, but I’m pretty sure it had very little to do with the actual cake.

From that day forward, we became best friends.

Primary School

After kindergarten, we both went to the same primary school. Unfortunately, we weren’t in the same class, so we only got to see each other on recess. It was still tough, because both of us were being asked to join in on all kinds of games. If you didn’t join in, they’d throw in the mud. Needless to say, the playground wasn’t a very nice place. But we got by.

Soon I made a new friend. I introduced her to my sweetheart, too, and they got along pretty well. Mostly they talked about this cute boy in our class. We started hanging out after school, the three of us, since we all lived relatively close to each other. Everything was alright, until one day I called Her to ask her to hang out, just the two of us.

“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me. You wanna hang out?”
“Uhm… actually, I’m hanging with Becky today.”

The words struck me like a knife. With… Becky? That bitch! In an instant, one of my best friends became one of my worst enemies. I wanted to hurt her, wanted to hurt her bad. It was the first time I had ever felt so jealous.

“Oh, okay…” I tried to sound normal, but I could tell my voice was quivering. Damn it!

I put down the handset, picked it up again. I dialled another friend’s number and asked if she’d like to come over. She didn’t have anything else to do, so she did. To this day I’m not quite sure why I called in the first place, I suppose I just didn’t want be alone.

We went to the playground and hid in the playhouse. We just sat there without saying a word. My head was a mess. All I could think about Her and Becky, what they might be doing and what I would do to Becky next time I saw her.

“So, what do you wanna do?” she asked, breaking the somewhat uncomfortable silence.

Something in my head snapped and I turned to look at her.

“This.”

I closed my eyes, leaned in and pressed my lips softly against hers. I tried to imagine I was kissing the one I really wanted to kiss, but it wasn’t really working. She felt different. She smelled different. All wrong. I backed away and opened my eyes. She looked shocked.

“I… I have to go.”

She left the playhouse and ran all the way home. I watched her go. Deep down, I knew I had made a big mistake.

I was right. She had told two of the girls in our class about what happened in the playhouse, and they had made sure everyone else heard about it, too.

The other kids chanted “Lesbo! Lesbo! Lesbo!” all through recess. It was like living in my own private version of Welcome to the Dollhouse. Everyone laughed at me and made fun of me. Except one. Her. The one who should have been the only one I needed.

I forgot about Becky and how angry I was at her. I forgot about my beloved. All I could focus on was convincing everyone that I was not gay. Looking back, I think the only person I was trying to convince was myself.

One day after school, She asked me to come to Her mom’s flower shop. I went with Her, and Her mom gave us money to go get some pizzas. We went down into the store basement to enjoy our meal together. We talked about school, our teachers, the latest gossip (except the ones being spread about me), the boy She and Becky had a crush on…

“You know what I like most about him?”

“Yeah?” I asked, even though the whole conversation was making me freeze on the inside.

“He kinda looks like a girl.”

Those words made me freeze completely. I couldn’t make myself look at Her, but I could feel Her eyes on me. All I wanted to was run. Run as far as I could. But I also wanted to reach over the table and kiss Her, right there and then. These too desires battled inside me and finally running won. I got up, thank Her for the pizza, and ran out of the door. Ran all the way home, ran to my room, myself on my bed, and cried my eyes out.

That was the first time I had ever truly hated myself.

High School

After Her, I had a few other crushes. They all had one thing in common: they all looked a lot like Her. Blond hair, blue eyes, et cetera. But none of them could compare. We were still in the same school, still in different classes. Now I only saw Her at lunch.

I never approached Her after that day, but I admired from a far. She kept getting more and more beautiful every day, or that’s the way it seemed like to me anyway. She had grown Her hair long, but it was still silky soft. Her eyes still twinkled when She smiled. She was incredibly slim, which made Her look a bit like a model.

Of course, I was still keeping up the act. I got so good at keeping up appearances I started to believe the lies myself. That nearly destroyed me.

Epiphany

I made the biggest mistake of my life the day I chose to run away. And I have to live with it.