The Trouble With Teens.

So much for our hopes that being sent away to school would change Alisha’s behaviour. About two weeks after David’s birthday I received a telephone call from Lowood Eyre saying Alisha had broken out of the school some time the night before and was missing. The headmistress seemed to think that Alisha was trying to make her way back home to us, but I assured  her neither myself or Prue had seen her. Prue was absolutely frantic when I told her.

“I knew we shouldn’t have sent her to that place. What were we thinking, Daniel?” she asked over and over again.

“We’ll find her, Prue. She’s probably just lying low for a while. I’ll telephone Cameron and Leela, maybe Eva knows where she is, you know how close those two are.

Cameron and Leela both quizzed Eva, but she claimed to know nothing about Alisha’s whereabout. It was actually Esther who gave us all a good idea who Alisha was with, if not where. It turned out Sam West, the boy Alisha had been seeing had also gone missing a few days earlier. David then showed us the letter Alisha had written when she sent him a birthday card and I became even more convinced Alisha was with Sam. Part of me felt relieved she wasn’t out there, goodness knows where alone, but I was still worried that my little girl could come to harm, after all where would they go? Chances were neither of them had a lot of money on them.

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I hate being at that school so much. That’s why I decided to make a break for it and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I could trust Eva, she’s never let me down, so I made plans for my escape with her help (thank goodness the school don’t screen letters to family.) She’s been keeping Sam up to date with everything so when he heard I was going to get out of here he immediately jumped at the chance to come with me.

It was decided we’d meet at Helga’s Cove after midnight and then from there make plans to get out of here once and for all. Lowood Eyre is on the other side of the valley so it was going to take some doing to get from there to the cove. Nevertheless I managed it and waited in one of the caves until I saw my darling Sam standing on the beach. I ran to him immediately, throwing my arms around him telling him how much I’d missed him. It’s weird but the minute I was back with Sam, it was like all the crap of the past few months had never happened.

Sam told me how he’d left home a few days earlier, told his family he was going to see his uncle in Riverview. What he was really doing was finding us somewhere to hide out for a few days until we had made plans for our next move. Sam, with the help of Eva had found a disused windmill high up in the hills. It was too far away for us to be easily spotted, but near enough for Eva to keep in touch and bring supplies over. By the time we reached the mill the sun was begining to rise, our new life on the run would mean we’d have to stay hidden during the day and only move around outside at night. Sam showed me the stuff he and Eva had already stored inside, and because there was still quite a bit of old stuff, like furniture left from when it was a working mill it meant we’d be quite comfortable here for a while. Evan if Eva couldn’t get supplies to us we wouldn’t starve because there were fruit trees dotted around too.

Sam lit a fire in the rusty fireplace which made the dusty room seem kinda cosy. I was a bit worried someone would see smoke from the chimney, but Sam assured me that because of the location of the mill we’d be safe and unseen. We sat on the shabby sofa side by side for a while just talking and of course kissing. I’ve missed Sam so much, it feels like he’s often the only one who understands me. We must have been tired out from our night time adventures because we soon fell asleep on the sofa in each others arms.

We woke up mid-afternoon and freshened ourselves up. Good old Eva she’d even managed to store some of my clothes here. Sam said she’d managed to sneak things out a bit at a time when she went to visit mum and dad. She’s not only the bestest cousin ever, she’s my bestest friend ever and I’ll never EVER forget how she’s helped us.

We sat at the rickety old table with pencils and paper and worked on our long term plan. There was no way we could stay in the valley permenantly. The school had probably already alerted my parents that I was now missing, so we’d have to be extra careful not to be detected. Sam reckoned his family wouldn’t miss him until the weekend at least because his uncle’s farm didn’t have a telephone line, so they wouldn’t expect to hear from him. Going to Riverview was out of the question because of Sam’s uncle. We needed to go somewhere no one would recognise us.

“What about Twinbrook?” I asked, remembering an article I had read some months before.

“Maybe we could go there eventually.” replied Sam, “It’s such a small town though and I think until the heat dies down we need to go somewhere people won’t instantly be suspicious of us, and you know what small towns can be like with new people.”

“We could go to Sim City I guess.” I said hesitantly “Just to begin with, there are so many people there no one would look as us twice.”

Sam smiled “That sounds like the perfect plan, ‘Leesh.” he said leaning over and kissing me. “Maybe we could even make a bit of money whilst we are there, working in cafes and stuff. Then when we’ve got enough saved we can move to Twinbrook, one we’re out of our teens we can do as we want anyway.”

That evening as we sat around the firepit we’d found outside the mill we chattered excitedly about our plan. We would make money working cash-in-hand and save as much as possible by staying in cheap hostels or using the tent we had to camp in the city parks. Once we had enough we’d move to Twinbrook and get ourselves a small plot of land where we could grow our own food and build our own home. It would be perfect and no one would be able to keep us apart.

Eva came over that night to see us. I was thrilled to see her and hugged her tightly thanking her over and over again for helping us. Excitedly we told her of our plan.

“Oh it sounds amazing. I should warn you though everyone is on the lookout for you both. Uncle Daniel ‘phoned Dad and told him the school have reported you missing, Alisha. They’ve worked out you aren’t visiting your Uncle either, Sam. So you’ll need to be extra careful getting out of the valley now.

I wasn’t too worried, I’d suspected that this would happen and we’d already decided the best way to get to the city would be over fields rather than following the road.

I can’t believe it, another couple of days then Sam and I will be heading off to start out perfect new lives together.