Not Quite Escaping

I was in highschool, and decided that I'd leave the school for my lunch break. I walked over to the local bar, unlike any bar I've ever seen in my life, the bartender was gruff; he had a beard and was wearing a black and red flannel shirt. He served me a rum & coke. I told him I was hot, and took off my coat (I was wearing my colorful fall coat with the orange lining inside.)

I slung the coat over the bar stool, and leaned my elbows against the bar. My friend Heather Price came into the bar, she too ordered a drink. I was surprised to see her there since we were both underage. She asked me what I was drinking, and then she ordered a rum & coke too. I noticed the ice in her glass, and felt mesmerized.

An older woman was standing at one of the tables in the bar. She was wildly drunk and screaming profanities. Heather and I decided that it was time to leave because we would be late for class, and because we didn't want to be involved with the woman.

I looked for my coat as we were leaving. The drunken woman was wearing it, and flailing her arms all over the place. I walked over to her and said, "excuse me that's my coat, bitch. Give it back." She spat in my face. I began to tear the jacket off of her body, but she resisted, and punched me, her bony fist deep into my arm. The bartender wouldn't step in. I had to leave without my coat.

As Heather and I left the bar, we saw police cars lining the front of the school. They must have been there because we were missing. We knew that we ought to hide as we had the sense that we would be in trouble with the law and school: we had alcohol thick on our breath.

I found a pick-up truck that had a tarp underneath it. We crawled underneath the truck into the tarp, and laid as far to the ground as we could. It was neither cold nor hot; there was nothing uncomfortable about playing this hide and seek. We stayed there, and watched from a strange vantage point as the police and their dogs circled. We whispered a little, still intoxicated.

A police officer's boots got close to the edge of the truck. He leaned down, and said, "hello ladies. I'm going to have to take you in." Again, I had no emotion.

Something blurry happened, and then I knew I had run away again. This time I was in the woods. A large attractive man walked by, and asked me if I knew where the surprise party was. I said "sure, it's at the Robinsons," and I took his hand, and began to walk him there, promenade style. Someone drove by in a golf cart. We walked up to the front porch, and I opened the door. A family was waiting inside, I asked, "is this where the party is?" The mother in the house, who I thought of as the wife, said, "yes, we're the only ones here, please come in." There were two teenage girls and a boy laying on the sofa. I decided that I would be in love with the man who I walked in with.

I left before the party started, and ventured further into the woods. I was nervous about the police finding me again. There were two wide rivers that I knew I wouldn't be able to cross. The man from the party, who I loved, turned out to be a police officer, he had been secretly following me. When I stopped at the river he came from behind a tree and told me, "I'm sorry, dear, you won't make it across." I kept on staring at the moving water: the rivers were like twins.