Runaway

Runaway

Author’s Notes: this was the
second prompt challenge and I had to write a story about a narrator that runs
away from his/her family and sees another family through a window and thinks
about why that family is happy. A friend that read this piece thought that it
was one of my Gundam Wing fanfics until she read to
the end and that it was from Duo’s point of view. That is a very good idea and
I’ll get right on that…

          They’re happy. Or, at least, they appear to be happy. I
wonder what that’s like. People think that I’m always happy, but sometimes
appearing happy is easier for everyone involved. Though, acting happy, when all
I wanted to do was run away from my life, was so hard. So, I couldn’t take it
anymore, watching my family with bright, interested eyes when I desperately
wanted to break away. I ran as far as I could, and it had felt good for awhile,
the wind in my long brown hair, but I had never been away from my family before,
and even though I was glad to have a little bit of freedom, I also missed them
a little. They were undeniably stupid and always asking things from me that I
wasn’t sure I wanted to give, but I still missed them. As I walked down the
street, the bright sound of laughter filled the air and I followed it to a
house. My family had laughed like that a lot, though I had never joined them. I
couldn’t really, I didn’t know how. It was a family I saw through that window.
They were sitting down at dinner and talking energetically. They reminded me so
much of my own family that I felt my heart ache for them. There was a mom and a
dad, three kids, and even a dog, just like mine. My family wasn’t so bad, was
it? Sure, sometimes they didn’t pay attention to me, but they could also be
affectionate. Pretending to be happy was painful, but so was loneliness. I
started to walk back the way I had come. Maybe they were looking for me. Maybe
they were worried and frantic. I had only been gone a few hours, but I missed
the mall terribly. I suppose that I needed them, even though they were stupid
and forgetful. They were still my family and what is a dog without his loyal
family?

A/N: This story used to be
called ‘Hair of the Dog’ but I didn’t want people to realize it was from a dog’s
point of view until the end.