Writing Prompt

From Twitter: You see a picture of yourself in a foreign newspaper. You get someone to translate the headline for you: 

"Search for Kidnapped Child Still Ongoing"


***

I quickly thanked the nice stranger for their translation and darted off before they realized the picture was of me. 

My pace quickened, and I pulled my grey scarf higher, so it was covering my nose and stuffed my hands deep in my coat pockets. 

They couldn't have noticed I was in the picture. There's no way. That was two years ago, when I was barely fourteen.

Fourteen, why hadn't the headline said 'missing teen?' I did look young in the picture, and maybe people would be more sympathetic towards a child than a teen and, therefore, more willing to help. A child was innocent; a teen could be a runaway. I was a runaway. 

I am a runaway.

I was never kidnapped.

The false trail helps keep me hidden. Big, bold headlines in black and white let me stay in the shadows.

My only fears now are getting caught and trying to be returned. But I will never return. I know that, the way I know the sun will come back out on the morning. It's a certainty.

I can't help but laugh, thinking how a runway life, a life of looking over my shoulder, can be so much better than my old life.  

The deceit has allowed me to be me. It's given me relief from pain and fear. Well, relief from a different type of fear, anyway. 

Less than two years. That's all I have to make it, then no one can make me go anywhere. I'll be free.

I walk faster and faster until I'm running, until I see the door. My door.

I'm Nera now. I'm not going back. I will never go back. 

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