He ran away.
It wasn’t hard when no one was watching and no one cared where he went. He ran away to go on an adventure. He ran away to see the world. He ran away to find her. He knew PA was east, so if he just kept heading east he had to reach it eventually, right?
Albert was sixteen years old.
On a staircase, in a skatepark, in Longmont, CO.
He had spent the last few years following a ghost across a couple states and learning just how difficult seeing the world actually was. He’d met people who’d thought he was an idiot for trying to make it on his own. He’d met people who’d offered him rides and couches and help, and he was grateful, but he never stayed with anyone long. He learned quickly that those who wanted to help secretly wanted to stop him. He was young and unaccompanied, and that wasn’t acceptable.
He stayed long enough to sleep indoors and eat nice food, but never long enough for the cops to arrive. Never long enough for them to believe they’d helped him too much. He pitied them, and he supposed he was afraid that if he did become a ward of the state he’d be taken back to his mom. Or worse, given to a stranger he couldn’t escape. Those who didn’t want to help were better because they trusted Albert to do what he was going to do regardless. They wanted to use him for themselves and he found that suited his needs just fine. They had him do things adults couldn’t, or go places where their faces were already too well known. He found that line of usefulness took him farther on the road than his legs ever could, and sometimes it even made him some money.
He sat on the stairs, the stairs he’d sat on several times already that month, and sold stuff. What stuff? Nothing too awful, just junk that skatepark kids would waste their money on. Cigarettes, Cheap fireworks, bootleg concert tickets…
Locust was with him, but she was always with him. Her challenge was there in his courage to walk up to total strangers and pitch his not-not sketchy goods. Her verbosity was there in his confidence to fill larger shoes than he actually wore, to speak with people he hardly knew about things he knew little about. To convince them he was someone else. Someone older, someone smarter, someone who was useful. She was there in every step he took to get a little farther toward finding her. He’d made his way, very slowly, to where he was through chance and grit alone. Perhaps he was lucky after all.
He was sixteen years old, resting his overworked bones on the stairs as the sun went down. The night was coming, he loved the night, but that meant the park would be closing soon and his business would dry up. The dark usually meant bad things. It meant fights that were too easy to get roped into, and people too lost in the otherworldliness of the time when the sun's rules didn’t apply. He’d been couch-hopping and traveling for two years and he’d seen some frightening things happen at night. He couldn’t bring himself to care as the approaching dark carried the chill, the stillness, the difference that always made the real world feel like it didn’t exist.
The nearby kids began packing their things to head home, fearing the dark, planning their next game the following day, all except for one.
She was on rollerblades, tracing the ramps like a professional figure skater. Albert had glanced at her a few times but she was hard to miss now that she was the only one not scrambling to escape the menace of night. Even from a distance Albert could see her glance at him and keep going as if he weren’t watching, as if he didn’t exist.
He suddenly couldn’t take his eyes away.
It wasn’t long before the last streetlight blazed to life, flickering for a moment before completing a circuit along the road. It wasn’t long before the last middle school skateboarder had packed their thermos into their backpack and sulked home. They were the only two left, and he could hear the quiet creak of the tires approaching. He didn’t move as the single cop car approached the lit ramps, aware that he was hidden enough on the stairs so long as he stayed still. He could hear her clearly, as close as his seat was to the spectacle. She was already roughly placating the officer before he’d even reached her.
“I know. I’m going.” She said shortly. “Ten more minutes.”
“Curfew was already ten minutes ago.” The officer dismissed, shaking his head with pursed lips. “You gotta go.”
“Man you’re-”
“On foot or in the car?” He interrupted her impatiently, flexing his authority. It didn’t look like this was their first time meeting.
She tossed her messenger bag over her shoulder angrily, and Albert almost blew his cover snickering when she actually gave the cop the middle finger as she took a defiant seat on the bench. The cop looked briefly at the sky as he gathered his patience.
“Car it is.”
“I’m going, just let me get my skates off.” She was indeed untying her rollerblades on the bench, but the cops' voice was raised in aggravation.
“Take 'em off and then get in the car.”
“Is she being arrested?” Albert stood from the bench, unsure what his plan was but unwilling to sit out. He’d felt something strange at the strangers' defiance and it stirred him. Not much stirred him anymore.
“Stay out of this, you can’t be here either.” The cop looked suddenly exhausted but the girl looked up through her hair in shock. She either thought Albert had left with everyone else or didn’t think he’d bother saying anything. Her expression held expectation and although he’d never spoken to her or even met her, he felt the need to rise to it.
“Pretty sure she doesn’t have to get in the car unless she’s being arrested.” He had no idea if that was true, especially so many states away from home, but he wasn’t trying to tell the truth. He was walking toward the incident now, knees groaning in protest from already standing all day. The cop’s attention was fully on him now that he’d stepped out into the floodlights of the park. He’d been left worse for wear by his journey, in his tattered pants and oil-stained hoodie, but for the first time, it was the exact impression he needed. The officer took one look at him and forgot all about the girl.
“Sir, can I see some identification?” He said it firmly like it wasn’t a question. Albert didn’t have an ID, so he shook his head.
“Don’t have it on me.”
“How about you check the backpack?”
“I do not consent to a search.” He’d had to use that one before. The officer stepped back to his car, saying something quiet into the speaker on his shoulder. Albert took the opportunity to start backing up as obviously as he could muster. The girl looked quickly between the officer and Albert, hands still hovering over her half-untied skates. The cop noticed his retreat.
“I’m gonna need you to stay where you are.”
“Oh yeah?” He backed up faster, jogging backward before spinning and breaking into a run through the park. The cop chased him, surprisingly quick for an older man. Albert wasn’t an athletic kid, but adrenaline could make a fence way more climbable, and he used it to his advantage as he hit the ground and sprinted through the open backdoor of the corner bar. He almost clipped the table near the front but narrowly avoided it as he bolted through the front door and in a wide swerve around the building. He jumped onto the metal trash can and grabbed the ladder to the roof, too high to be reached from the ground. He hoisted himself up at a breathless pace, flattening himself against the roof at the top and holding his breath. His heart raced from the chase and the adrenaline and his lungs burned from the oxygen deprivation, but it was rewarded as he watched the cop walk out of the bar's front door, glancing up and down the road and visibly winded. He gave up with a huff and turned back to circle the building, presumably to get his car.
Albert had never truly run from the police before, and he may have overthought it, but it was successful and that endorphin hit was downright addictive as he slinked back down the ladder. He didn’t know why he’d done it, in retrospect. Was it to impress a girl? He already put his Locust on a pedestal higher than any other. After six years it was difficult to justify without feeling insane and obsessed, but it was just as strong.
Was it for fun? He wasn’t some thrill seeker or adrenaline junkie, was he? He didn’t think that was it. He did dangerous things now, but that wasn’t what he’d set out to do when he ran away. He set out to find his way back to his Locust and got caught up in distractions. He felt the cool night air on his sweaty skin as he walked on the street opposite from the bar. He wasn’t going to go back to the park, he wasn’t an idiot, but he wondered if the girl had taken the chance and gotten away. He didn’t think she would’ve been in as much trouble as he would’ve been if he’d gotten caught, she was just trespassing, but he didn’t want her to get in trouble regardless.
There was something about how she skated. About how she existed in a world where no one else did. How she seemed to revel in the nighttime as much as Albert had learned to, and understood that it was a separate world entirely. She wasn’t afraid of the dark.
He must’ve thought of her too much, as she appeared on the sidewalk ahead of him. She didn’t notice as she turned a corner and walked in the same direction as him, a few yards away with her skates dangling loosely from her hand. He was momentarily surprised. Just as quickly he was glad to see she hadn’t gotten detained, but he didn’t say anything. He watched her walk, silently wondering what his Locust would think of her. Would she think the girl was cool? Would she have felt the same groundless fascination?
Who knew what his Locust was like, after so long?
It wasn’t until the girl stopped in front of an apartment building that he realized he’d been actively following her. She clenched her hands at her sides nervously as she rang the bell for the lobby.
“I have Mace.” She said thickly, and Albert recoiled at the memory. Though he’d avoided direct involvement in many horrible things over the last two years, pepper spray was something he’d unfortunately experienced. He asked his Locust what he should say, now that he’d succeeded in looking like a huge creep.
‘Stop being a creep and you’ll stop looking like one.’
“You don’t have to use it, I just…” He floundered for something to say that would ease her clear discomfort, explain what he was doing even though he wasn’t sure, and express how he thought she was cool back at the park. “I didn’t have the nerve to talk to you at the skatepark.”
Nailed it, he had absolutely no confidence in that, but he chose to believe he’d nailed it.
She turned around a little bit to look at him, her posture becoming less tense after she recognized him.
“You’re the kid who ran from the cop.” She turned around firmly, crossing her arms at him. “But you were too scared to talk to me?” She asked in disbelief. He shrugged, sheepish at her deduction.
“You’re easily more intimidating.” Smooth.
“Well, it was pretty impressive.” He felt the compliment intoxicate him like wine for a dizzying few seconds. “For a kid.” She looked him up and down and something about her eyes trailing over him affected him in a way he was unfamiliar with.
“I’m not a kid.” He found himself saying without thinking. Since when? Why was that suddenly important?
“What is in the backpack?” She asked mischievously, taking several steps until she was right in front of him. She was slightly shorter than him, and her hand brushed his arm as she lightly grabbed his backpack strap. He could see how red his face was in the reflection of her studded nose piercing.
“Wanna see?”
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