Runaway Pt. 01

"No, I'm not... I'm not at the train station. I d-decided to... I wanted..."

I was getting flustered, my face turning red. Noah came up beside me, looking alarmed, and touched my arm. My eyes must have looked wild, completely unhinged.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Who was that?" my father demanded. "Lacey, who are you with?"

"N-Nothing, Daddy. I'm not—"

"Sweetie, just tell me where you are, I'll come—"

"Barbara, shut up." My father's voice was growing colder, louder, and more terrifying than I had ever heard. "I swear, Lacey Marie Stephens, if you are lying to me, there will be Hell to pay when you get home. Now, where are you and who was that man?"

I swallowed hard. My entire body seemed to tremble, my heart pounding. My father was two provinces away and yet I felt as though his eyes were on me, boring deep within my soul as he demanded answers.

"Roger never came to the train station," I began. "H-He was... it was a joke. I was... embarrassed. I didn't w-want to see anyone for a while."

"Where are you?" my father demanded.

"I took the train anyway." My throat felt like it was closing.

"Lacey, where in the Hell are you, and who was that with you?"

"Don't tell him," whispered Noah, and I realized my father was speaking so loudly that Noah could hear him from where he stood.

"I'll b-be back soon," I choked.

"Goddamnit, Lacey, it is a downright sin to lie to me! God will condemn you for daring to try to deceive me. Are you ready to burn in Hell for eternity? Or will you tell me where you are?"

"I can't."

"You will burn, Lacey Marie. You will be Satan's whore, you will be condemned to an afterlife of pain, unless you—"

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

He was still yelling when I hung up the phone. The moment his voice was cut off, I burst into tears.

Noah's arms were around me in an instant. I buried my face against his chest, the denim of his jacket rough against my cheek as I cried. My entire body shook, but Noah held on tightly as I gasped for breath.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled when I finally regained the slightest bit of composure. "You must think... I can't even imagine what you must think."

"I think your dad's a dick," he said bluntly.

"It's stupid," I sniffled. "I said I couldn't go home, but I chose to leave. You must think—"

"You don't know what I think, so why don't I tell you?" he interrupted.

I sniffed again and nodded. Noah's voice softened, comfortingly warm as he spoke.

"Some guy was an ass to you, and that was the last straw in a long line of bullshit. You don't want to go home and deal with that shitstain who just screamed horrible things at you."

"Yeah, but it's not like... it's not like you, I'm not—"

"Don't compare yourself to me. Just because the hand you were dealt is different than the one I was dealt doesn't mean it's not a shitty situation. No one should talk to you like he just did. That isn't okay, Lacey. That's not right."

It was a real struggle not to start sobbing again. I took a deep breath, wiping my cheeks as I sniffled.

"You're not judging me for running away?" I asked.

"Not running away. You're running to something better. Can't judge you for that, I'm doing the same."

He guided me to a bench outside the store and went back in. When he came back a few minutes later, he had a bottle of water and some tissues. My chin trembled as I wiped my face and sipped the water, but soon enough Noah was leading me back to the train station.

"Let's go find your brother," he said, and we stepped back onto the train.

**

My phone rang four or five more times before my father gave up, and I tucked it away in my bag. We spent the rest of the day en-route to Jasper. The nice thing about passing Edmonton was that the landscape changed. Up to that point, the world was shades of dusky gold and vibrant yellow, wheat and canola, until it met pure blue skies as far as the eye could see. It was immense and beautiful, a lonely land stretching far past where the eye could see until it met that thin line in the distance that connected the ground to the heavens.

The fields extended past Edmonton for a while, but soon things changed to green. One moment we were surrounded by farms; around the next corner, trees shadowed the train tracks and leggy pines danced as the engine stirred up the air around them. We darted in and out of forests until mountains began rising around us. The world went from green to grey to green again, the colours deeper, the air richer. I was humbled by the sheer enormity of the rugged Rocky Mountains that pierced the sky.

Noah laughed at my face as I turned away from the card game we had been playing, my eyes huge as I plastered myself against the train window.

"That means I win," he said, collecting the cards off the table.

"Sure," I mumbled distractedly. My cheek was pressed against the cool glass as I strained to see more than the window would show me.

Noah tapped the deck of cards against the table. "Think you can tear your eyes away for two minutes?"

He led me away from our seats and towards the back of the car. We stepped through the partition onto the next one, and again to the next, until we were in a carriage I hadn't entered before.

There were seats there as well, but the main difference between that car and the one we were sitting in was the set of stairs in the middle.

"This place has an upstairs?"

To his credit, Noah didn't laugh at me. He chuckled, sure, but it didn't make me feel bad the way it would have if it was anyone else. When Noah laughed, it wasn't at my expense.

"Sort of," he said, and started up the stairs.

I crashed into his back when we got to the top and nearly fell back down the steps, but he turned and caught me just in time. Had I been less distracted, I probably would have gone red, stuttered in embarrassment, and spent the rest of the day thinking about how his hand had nearly grazed my breast as he grabbed my arm.

I didn't notice any of that at the time. Instead, I was speechless as the train car gave way to the mountains. Windows surrounded us, heavy glass that gave a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains.

My heart swelled and I nearly cried. The beauty was like nothing I had ever seen. Stone jutted out around us, reaching and reaching far past the heights any man could build himself, tips of white snow meeting the clouds that dotted the cool blue sky above us. There were trees everywhere, thick and dense forests that beckoned me to explore them, to see what treasures were hidden around the trunks of trees older than any person I knew.

Noah let go of me and I stepped down the aisle, eyes wide. When I reached the end of the car, I stood still and silent, letting my eyes take in the creation around me. I touched the cross around my neck without thinking. In no church had I ever felt so humbled. No Psalm had left me feeling the glory I did in that moment, and no sermon could possibly compete with the whispers of God that flowed through the world He created.

This is what God is, I thought. My mind was clear, the words strong and steady in my head. He was not what my father said He was. He was not going to condemn me, or my brother, or Noah or anyone. He was not a set of rules in a book written thousands of years earlier.

God was love. He didn't care who people loved, as long as they loved. He didn't want us to suffer. How could any being that created such beauty want people to burn in Hell simply for existing as He created them? He created beauty, and He had nudged me onto this train in His mysterious way so I could realize that. He had sent me to Noah so I could learn.

I had never felt so certain of anything. I had never been so sure that what I knew was wrong, and never felt so comforted in finding out the truth.

Noah came up behind me. "You all right?"

I snapped out of my reverie. My fingers fluttered from the cross around my neck to my cheek. I was relieved that I didn't find tears there, though I had never felt so emotional.

"It's just... overwhelming." There was no way to explain what I had truly felt.

The corners of Noah's mouth turned up, a soft expression in his dark eyes. "It's pretty cool. Never seen mountains before?"

"I've never left Manitoba before. What they call mountains there aren't really... I mean, they're just very large hills, I guess."

Noah knew a lot about mountains. It made sense. His childhood was spent in the Kootenays, not so far from where we would be stopping in Jasper. We settled in two of the seats, the dome of windows around us as he pointed out at the ranges and named them, telling me things I had never known about the world.

We stayed there until the train pulled into Jasper. The town itself was small, not even as big as the small town I'd grown up in, but we took the chance to walk around for a few hours while we could. After I took pictures of almost everything, prompting Noah to shake his head at my touristy ways, we stopped at a small bakery for a snack.

"Should figure out what we're going to do when we get to Vancouver," he said, picking at a bear claw I had insisted he split with me.

"There's still lots of time," I replied nonchalantly.

Noah raised an eyebrow. "Well, I mean... we'll be there tomorrow."

"What?"

"About 24 hours from now. It's only about two days from Winnipeg to Vancouver."

I stared at Noah as the realization hit me.

"It's only been a day since I met you?"

Three people turned to look at us as Noah doubled over. I blushed, but ended up giggling along with him.

"That was a stupid thing to say."

Noah shook his head, wiping his face as he regained his breath. "Nah. Time seems different when you're on the train. And you've had a lot of shit happen since yesterday."

He wasn't wrong about that. All the crazy things that happened in the previous twenty-two years of my life added up weren't equal to the insanity of the past day.

As it turned out, the insanity wasn't done, either.

We reboarded the train at the set time, only to be told there would be a slight delay. An hour later, we were told it would be just a little longer. We ate dinner in the dining car together, where Noah teased me for bowing my head to say grace quietly before eating my turkey sandwich, then resumed waiting. We fell asleep a few hours after that, assuming we'd start moving in the middle of the night. When we woke up early the next morning, we were still sitting at the station in Jasper.

A conductor came by shortly after that.

"I have some bad news, folks."

I didn't quite understand why they didn't bus us to the next stop in Valemount, where we could catch a train that hadn't broken down, but our only option was to backtrack to Hinton about an hour in the opposite direction. Resigned to our fate, Noah and I boarded one of the coach buses the train company was providing.

Our luck didn't turn around in Hinton.

"Two days?" I cried.

"I'm sorry, miss," said the lady behind the ticket counter. "There just isn't enough room on the next train for everyone. We can offer you and your boyfriend a voucher for accommodations..."

I flushed as she called Noah my boyfriend, but he just waved it off.

"Take the voucher, Lacey," he said. "I got another idea, but just in case it doesn't work out."

There was a Tim Horton's nearby, and Noah told me to hang out there for a couple of hours.

"Where are you going?" I asked, alarmed.

"I got some friends in the area," he said. "Gonna see if they can help us out."

"Why can't I come with you?"

He smiled tightly. "You're good people. They're... well, they're all right, but you might make 'em a little nervous."

I wasn't entirely sure how I, the least confrontational and most cowardly person I knew, could make anyone a little nervous, but I went to the Tim Horton's as directed.

I spent the time trying to track down more information about Sean. The internet wasn't much help, so I tried contacting any of his old friends from school that I could find, hoping someone might know where he was. The ones that got back to me didn't, and the others never responded.

I tried spelling his name every which way I could think of. Sean Stephens. Sean Stevens. Shaun Steven. Shawn Stephans. Nothing.

I tried looking through the Instagram accounts of local gay bars, thinking maybe they'd have a picture of frequent patrons and hoping he might be one of them. All I discovered there was that I really, really wanted to see a drag show.

I was nearly ready to find out how much a private detective would cost when Noah rolled into the parking lot in a beat-up brown sedan with a cracked windshield.

"Where... how... who gave you a car?"

"Told you, I got some friends in the area. It'll be a long drive, but we can get to Vancouver before midnight. You got money for gas?" He pulled the keys out of his jacket pocket, tossing them lightly in the air before catching them again.

I nodded eagerly and followed him out to the car.

**

The mountains were beautiful, but they sucked for cell reception.

My phone cut in and out as we drove, so I couldn't keep trying to find Sean online. Over the next four hours, Noah and I talked, sharing stories about growing up, opening up to each other in ways that didn't seem real for people who had only known each other a day. Noah's advice had been not to trust anyone, but he was wrong. I trusted him. God had set me on a path to meet him, and he had been a better friend to me than anyone else in my life.

He told me stories of a life I had no experience with, yet shook his head when I said I had nothing to complain about. He tried to make me understand that what my father said and did wasn't right, wasn't normal—even by religious standards—yet handled the hardships he had faced with a stoic sense of acceptance. When he spoke of picking Christmas presents from Santa's Anonymous, I thought of all the donations I'd placed in cardboard boxes for the less fortunate. It was painful to realize that those toys went to people like Noah; that he was the person behind the faceless "less fortunate" who we tried to help.

I refused to pity him; I knew he didn't want pity, nor did he need it. What I wanted was for him to stop the car so I could hug him again, feel the roughness of his jean jacket against my skin. I listened quietly to his stories, knowing he shared them not to make my own problems seem lesser, but because he trusted me as much as I trusted him.

That drive was life-changing in some ways. Not because Noah was there to save me. He wasn't responsible for my salvation. Nor was he responsible for teaching me a lesson. He wasn't some mystical being who came into my life simply to guide me to the realization that other people had it worse than I did.

No, it was life-changing in that I realized how quickly people can grow to care about each other when they're being honest. If someone had asked me who the person I cared about most in the world was at that moment, I would have said Noah.

That realization was as terrifying as it was life-changing.

Despite my fear, I quietly thanked God for bringing him into my life.

We were both getting hungry and had agreed to stop in Barrière, which was about a half-hour away, when my phone started ringing.

Up to that point, I had been ignoring my phone every time it rang. My father had tried to call a few more times, but had given up earlier that day. Half the time, it was in the bottom of my backpack and I didn't hear it anyways. But after losing reception while trying to find Sean online, I had placed it in the cupholder.

So when the screen lit up with an area code I didn't recognize, I frowned.

"Your dad again?" asked Noah.

"No."

I debated letting it go to voicemail, but curiosity got the best of me.

"Hello?"

"Lacey?"

I knew his voice instantly. My hand flew to the cross around my neck as I teared up.

"Sean?"

"Hey, sis."

I burst into tears. Big, ugly, slobbery tears of joy and relief and happiness streamed down my face. Noah looked alarmed, but I waved a hand at him and turned towards the window.

"Where are you, Lace? I've been trying to call for hours. It keeps saying you're not available."

"W-We're on the highway," I sniffed. "I keep losing reception."

Our luck had finally turned around. Noah came up on a rest stop at that exact moment and immediately turned off, pulling into a parking spot so we didn't risk losing reception yet again.

"Are you okay? You're safe?"

"I'm safe," I repeated. "Sean, I can't... I'm so happy to hear your voice. I'm coming to find you. I wanted... needed to find you."

"Why didn't you just ask Mom for my phone number?"

"Mom has your phone number?"

"Yeah, of course. She... wait, you didn't know that?"

"They never talk about you. I thought... didn't they... did you leave on purpose?"

"No, of course not." Sean sighed, and I imagined him as I'd last seen him, scrawny and gangly and brushing curly hair out of his eyes. "They really never talked about that day?"

"No."

"Well, you heard what happened. You were there."

"I only heard yelling. Then saw you leaving."

"Dad kicked me out, Lacey."

"I-I thought... I mean, I didn't know if he kicked you out or if you left or..."

"Bit of both, I guess. It was leave or go to gay camp."

"Gay camp?"

"Conversion therapy."

I cringed. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay. It's not your fault."

"I miss you."

"I miss you, too, Lace. Shit, it's so good to hear your voice."

"Mom really had your phone number all this time and never told me?"

Another sigh from Sean rattled through the phone. "She has it. We don't talk very often. I tell her to leave Dad every time but she just won't."

It was all news to me, and I could barely process what was happening.

"Listen, Sean, we're not far now, can I come see you? We'll be there in about... what, Noah, like four hours?"

Noah nodded. "Four or five."

"Who's Noah?" asked Sean.

"A friend of mine," I said.

"From home?"

"No, from..." I had no idea how to explain it. "From somewhere else. We can talk more in person. I think we're about a half-hour from Barrière."

"You mean Barrie? No way you're making it here in four hours. It's gonna be at least six, probably more like seven. Are you going through Peterborough?"

"Peterborough? Where's that?"

Sean paused. "Lacey, where are you right now?"

"I told you, half an hour from Barrière. I'm pretty sure that's how it's pronounced, not Barrie. It's got the funny French accent thing on one of the Es."

"Lac-Barrière? What are you doing way up there?"

"What do you mean, way up there? It's right on the highway."

"Where the fuck..." he mumbled. "Where do you think I live?"

"Umm... Vancouver?"

**

"Montreal?! Are you serious?"

Noah's face was red.

"I'm sorry! I really thought—"

"That's on the other side of the country. We literally are on the wrong end of the country right now."

"I'm sorry, I'm so—"

"They're not even anything alike. One's French, the other's Vancouver!"

"I'm—"

"You've got to be kidding, Lacey. It's a joke, right? We didn't actually spend all this time going the wrong fucking direction?"

"N-Noah please, I-I'm s-s..."

I couldn't get past the stutter.

You fucked up. You pissed him off.

The thought was insistent, intrusive. Suddenly terrified, my heart began pounding, then racing, then fluttering so fast I couldn't distinguish one beat from the next. Every bone in my body was telling me to run, but there was nowhere to run to. We were on a highway, at a rest stop, surrounded by trees and mountains and probably bears. Tears were pouring down my face again and my stomach was knotted, so tense that I felt like I was going to puke. I hunched over in the passenger seat, nausea overtaking me.