The Run Away

I dialed the number and slid the grimy quarters into the slot. My heart sank with the touch of each key. I regretfully picked up the slimy public pay phone. The fear of what was happening on the end of the other line terrified me more that the multitudes of germs crawling just on the tips of my cold pale fingers.

It rang only once. They must have been waiting, expecting me to cave in and come crawling back.

“Hello?” her raspy voice said.
She waited for a response but my vocal chords had been shut off by my fear.
My lips moved intently yet without a sound.
“Hello. Is anyone there?” She barked.
“Yes…” I managed to share in a shaky voice.
“Okay, with whom may I ask, am I speaking with then?”
There was a long silence.
All my chapped lips could muster to say was a simple, monosyllabic response. “Me.”

The pay phone cut off. “You’re out of time” the voice inside my head seemed to say in a sarcastic tone. It couldn’t be true. There went the only money I had seen in a week. Things have gotten really bad lately and I had finally mustered up the courage to call home. I knew they didn’t want me back, but I wanted them back. After I ran away their lives must have blossomed like a flower: full of joy and excitement after endless darkness. The idea of me almost making contact with them after three miserable months made my stomach coil up like a snake. It was useless.

“They’re the ones who ran out of time,” I said trying to convince myself that I didn’t need them. I was never coming home.