*mentions of drug use towards the end (it's not bad, don't worry)

drapetomania - an overwhelming urge to run away

June 24th:

Elias is blinded by the sunlight as the urgent ringtone wakes him up quite early in the morning. Tiredly blinking his eyes open, he groans at his headache, rolling over to grab his phone. It isn't his phone ringing, though, it is Mara's. The name reads Genevieve, frustrated, Elias picks it up.

"Hello?" He croaks, squinting his eyes. He glances over to Mara, who is peacefully sleeping. Her limbs are entertained in the navy blue blanket, her hair sprawled around her head and tossed over her shoulders. The golden ray of light shines on her frame as her chest rises and falls at a steady pace, her breathing even. She's dressed in one of his jerseys.

"Who is this? Where is my daughter?" A desperate voice hurts his ears. She is talking loud and fast, Elias has to hold the phone away from his ear. His hair is distressed as he runs his hands through it, messing it up more.

Elias looks back over at Mara's peaceful sleep, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He quietly walks into the en-suite bathroom, closing the door partially behind him. He doesn't want to wake her, knowing she needs the rest.

"What now?" Elias speaks up, his voice still gravely. He glances at his reflection in the mirror, wincing at the bags forming beneath his eyes. He and Mara had stayed up late last night, talking about nonsense. Avoiding the bigger questions that filled the tension.

"I'm looking for my daughter, Emanuella. This is her phone number," this voice is desperate, pristine. Elias blinks slowly in the mirror, his mind drunk on tiredness.

"Who?" He sighs, rubbing his forehead. Emanuella-

"Mara, I'm looking for my daughter, Mara Gray," the woman cries. Elias nods, looking through the crack in the door. Mara's back is to him, her shoulders moving with her leveled breathing. He smiles, looking back into the mirror.

"Yeah, she's here. She's asleep, though, so you'll have to wait-" Elias sighs, rolling his eyes.

"So she's there?" Genevieve sounds wild, her words morphing together. Her voice is thick like she's been crying all night, wobbly around the edges. Elias is slightly wary, he's never actually met Mara's mother before. Of course she was at the wedding, but Mara had made it a mission that they avoid her for the most part of the night.

All he knows is what Mara tells him, and she's never painted a gorgeous picture. In fact, from what Mara has told Elias, her mother is the devil even hell can't handle.

"Yeah..." he drawls out, furrowing his eyebrows. He and Mara never talked about why she showed up drenched on his doorstep last night. He could just tell she didn't want to talk about it, but now he wishes they had.

"Can I talk to her? I need to apologize to her," she exerts powerfully.

"I just said she was asleep," Elias puffs. Rubbing his eyes he finds himself openly annoyed with the women for waking him up this early. Yawning, he scratches the stubble peppering his chin, working his tense jaw.

"Well wake her up," she yells. Elias shakes his head in slight amusement. It is obvious where Mara gets her stubbornness from. They are a lot more alike than Mara will ever admit.

"Okay," Elias sighs, pushing the bathroom door open with his foot. He's stopped by an empty bed and no Mara in sight. The blankets are strewn across the floor, her backpack, which had been thrown by his dresser, is gone.

"She's not here. Mara left," Elias says, somewhat bothered. He still has her phone.

"Do you know where she went? Can you find her?" Genevieve talks worriedly, her voice panicked. She sounds like she is crying, choking towards the end of her sentence. She is afraid, it is obvious by the way she pleads for him to find her.

"No, I don't," Elias utters more clearly, his own worry building in his chest. His breathing is heavier, his mind clearer as he runs to the front door. Throwing it open, Mara isn't anywhere in sight, like she doesn't want to be found.

She vanished into the morning sunlight.

"She's gone," he muttered into Mara's phone.

---

She heard him speaking to her mom, she wasn't asleep. Enraged, she feels bitter that Elias would go behind her back like that. So she goes to the only place Mara knows she could be free from it all, the one place where she can trust everyone.

Walking up the carpeted stairs her steps are slow. Her skin is slightly sunburnt from the hours she's spent just walking. By now, she is tired of the way the birds chirp and the car engines roar. Last night was the best sleep she's had in a while, and it was ruined by her mother.

Always her mother, she just never expected Elias to be in on it too.

Standing in front of the door, with the three numbers she memorized, her knuckles hovered over the wood. She shifts her backpack on her shoulders, still wearing Elias's jersey. Her hair, which was down minutes again, is now tied up into a ponytail. Mara realizes she must look like a wreck, but she doesn't care.

The voices told her to leave, they yelled it in both of her ears. So she accepted, after weeks of ignoring them, she listened. Propelling her feet forward, digging her shoes into the concrete, she went to the one place nobody would look for her. The place she always found herself when trouble arrived at her doorstep.

The dark wood door swings open, revealing a tallish boy with cocoa brown skin. His sable-toned hair is buzzed down to his scalp, his hands playing with a stud nose piercing. He looks at her crazily, blinking slowly, before a smile takes over his confused expression. His dark brown eyes, squinting at her, a deep chuckle escaping his lips.

"Mara!" She's embraced into a warm hug, pulled into the petite apartment. The smell of marijuana on Cairo's flannel instantly attacks her nose, almost calmingly.

She used to love the high when the world appeared eternally lighter. Like she could fly above it all, escape it if she had to. It had become her sanctuary, for a while at least. Until one night he found her, passed out in an alleyway.

"You bitch," a high-pitched voice rings out as she's released from the embrace. Mara smiles, looking over Cairo's shoulders. There stands a girl with short black hair and blunt bangs, her eyes lined thick with liquid liner. She isn't tall, but her proportions make her appear that way from a distance. Her torso short, her legs long and tanned.

"Hey, Ryn," Mara beams, running into her open arms. Ryn laughs, embracing Mara whose grin overtakes her features. Her head feels fuzzy with all the smog, the open windows not doing much to air the room out.

She feels instantly at home, falling into the little circle as if she never left it. None of them ever acknowledge when Mara's gone for months without a trace. How she seems more level when she comes back. They just accept her with open arms and warm smiles, back into the lifestyle that has become her addiction.

"How's my wify," a wiry arm wraps around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. She grimaces with a smirk, pushing Will away, who offers her a blunt. She takes it, filling her lungs with its euphoria, puffing it out between the slits in her lips.

Ryn is older than Mara by several years. They met at a party when Mara was fourteen, in the middle of her first manic episode. Ryn had been charismatic, pulling Mara into her tight-knit group of friends. Mara would admit she had a slight crush on her at the beginning of their friendship. Ryn had a way of drawing attention to herself, and Mara had been lured in.

"Cathryn, here, thought you were dead," Cairo smiles. Ryn smacks him in the chest, her slap hard and painful. He coughs, frowning as she kisses his cheek in remores. They are on-again, off-again ever since Mara has known them.

"And Cairo, here, cried like a baby," she teases. Mara giggles, accepting another drag that Will offers her. She had a small thing with him a long time ago, but it never amounted to anything.

Although she gets the sense that Will thinks there is something more between them. She doesn't have it in her heart to tell him that she can never love him like that. That she can never really wholly love anyone because of her...disease.

Elias is the closest she's gotten to letting anyone near her heart, and he betrayed that. Rationally, she realizes that he probably didn't know, but her mind twists it into deception.

"So what brings you here. More mommy issues?" Ryn pouts mockingly. She has less of a filter than Mara and isn't afraid to call anyone out. She is brutally honest and to the point.

When Ryn first met Mara, she was more Emanuella than anything else. She was soft with a wild side that she seemed nervous of, uncontrolled. Ryn took Emanuella under her wing, introducing her to things she would have been afraid of otherwise. She transformed her into someone who could stand up for herself, someone more like herself.

Ryn created Mara, discarding Emanuella like a piece of old clothing. She showed Mara how to embrace her crazy into a more controlled setting, always ready to provide damage control.

"Mommy issues, boy issues, daddy issues. The list goes on." Mara exhales, rolling her eyes unamused. She takes another deep drag, letting her mind cloud over in a buzzing haze. Letting the happiness engulf her as she lets loose.

"What boy?" Will demands, taking the joint away from her. Mara never understood the attraction guys and girls alike had to her. The way she saw herself in the mirror, she had no defining attributes. She looked plain, boring, to go as far as to say ugly even.

"I thought maybe I could love him," she shakes her head, laying her head down on Will's lap. "Turns out he's working with the devil."

"Common, I love your mom," Cairo laughs, pushing away Mara's feet that landed on both Ryn and his lap. Cairo met Genevieve once in a very drunken state. He'd mistaken her for Julia Roberts, going as far as to ask for her autograph.

That was the first time Genevieve banned her from the group. 

"Yeah, well, turns out I have a different dad," she bites out, chewing the insides of her lip. She brings her nails close to her face, picking away at her light pink nail polish.

"Must suck, having three parents," Ryn coughs, looking at Mara expectantly. Ryn was adopted when she was twelve, and although both her dads are loving people, she always has that hole in her heart. The idea that her birth parents rejected her, that they didn't want her. Ryn never really got why Mara worked so hard to detach herself from the parents she does have.

"I just feels like it is all a lie. I always felt out of place, and now, eighteen years later, I find out that I really was." Mara snaps out, squeezing her eyes shut. She feels a chill run through her spine as the fresh breeze blows into the living room.

It isn't the lying that got to her, it is the idea that her mother made her feel so misplaced all this time. She made Mara appear like she was a burden to the family, the one who tainted the perfect image. And Mara, at one point in her life, only wanted her mother's approval. She never got it.

That's why she fits so well into Ryn's group of friends. They don't make her think like she has to be anyone but herself. Even with her bipolar, they make her feel equal. For once in her life, she doesn't have to compete for attention.

"You're always welcome here," Ryn smiles as both of the boys nod. So Mara does, she falls into their little group and ignores the growing feeling in her chest. A part of her feels like she is leaving for good.

She is really saying goodbye this time, with no plans of coming back.

---

Authors Note:

We met some new friends- Cathryn (Ryn), Cairo, and Will

Thoughts?

Like, comment, and follow for LOTS more to come.

Nia

Edited 4/4/22