Running Away
An Abby POV about her sixteenth year on this earth.
The ER staff are teenagers and all attend the same school
Sixteen; the perfect age, or so everyone would think. You can drive, have a boyfriend, and you are not considered a child anymore, but a young adult. You are given responsibilities and in return you are rewarded by your parent's trust. My sixteenth year on this planet was different. Actually my whole life was pretty much different, and trust me no one would ever understand. They might know about how hard my life is, and they might have a small grasp of how hard my life is, but they would never understand.
January 10, my birthday the perfect day. The day I was supposed to get my license and show up in a brand new car my parents had just bought me. John's parents had, Susan's, and some of the other people I hung out with. It was not like I wanted a car, I liked running, and it wasn't as if Maggie could afford to buy me a car anyway. Maggie had completely forgotten it was my birthday until Eric started seeing happy birthday at the table during breakfast. I watched my mom all morning, and she had not taken her medicine, so I didn't even know if she would be home tonight. Life was hard with her, she made everything so complicated. When Eric and I were younger we would have to go and beg for food from our neighbors, but now I knew how to cook some basic stuff and if not, Susan and John were more than happy to have us join them for dinner.
My friends had helped me celebrate my birthday. We had gone to a club, one of the better ones. It had been a pretty wild night and John and Susan looked blown away as they watched me dance. I was pretty good, one of my so called "god given talents". After a few hours of dancing we all sat outside, and I had a smoke. Yeah, I smoked. I still do. Life didn't get much better, a perfect cigarette in one hand, and on my right and left my two best friends. After a little while John had us come back to his Gamma's mansion and we decided to go swimming in his huge pool. The water was warm, it always was. Even though it was February, we could always count on the pool water to be like that of a baths. Susan and John always looked great in their swimsuits. Susan could always pull off the bikini look, as for me, I couldn't. I just didn't have a chest to flaunt, or even that matter, a chest to put into the bikini. I wore one anyway though, I was skinny enough that I still got some attention from it. In the pool we just relaxed, and talked. Talked about drinking, sports, and of course dating. But by the end of the night that was going to change.
As we talked I could just feel John's eyes were on me. He had always looked at me or Susan, but we just thought he was curious, and he was our friend, so we didn't mind. But this felt different, like he was staring at me, my face, not my body. Wrapped in towels and sipping hot chocolate, they sang happy birthday to me. We laughed and then talked some more before Susan's mother called saying she had to go. I was spending the night at John's, my mother had gone out, and Eric was spending the night at his best friends house. Later that night John and I talked. He asked if I had a crush. I kind of did, and it was on him. The new foreign exchange student Luka had been eyeing me lately, but I didn't want a relationship that could end up becoming long distance. I told him yes. I could see the twinkle in his eye. He then told me he had had a crush on me for a very long time, and that he was wondering if we could go out on a date. I smiled and nodded. It was about 1am by the time we went to sleep.