Work Text:
Dear Dad, Taylor wrote.
By now, you will have realized something is wrong. I know you wouldn’t enter my room otherwise. Unfortunately, I have decided to run away from home to seek my fortune elsewhere. This is not your fault in any way and I have a place to go.
While I care deeply for our home and would prefer to remain here, that is not wise. While I remain at home, there is no way for me to avoid school without harming you, whether by incurring fines or worse.
Simply going to school is not an acceptable course of action for me, as it is for so many of my peers, because of the implications of the continued bullying. Bullying tends to escalate, and since their last attack put me in the hospital, there’s only so far for them to escalate before I end up dead. Or perhaps they will figure out some fate worse than death, but I don’t want to discover what that might be.
In the interest of avoiding you burying me, I have devised a plan. I will be going into hiding where none can find me. I will be studying in my free time and doing some public service in a way no one will notice. I plan to send you letters once a month until I can return.
Please do not do anything drastic. Contact the police if you must – they will have no luck in finding me, I think, and it might cover your bases.
Stay Safe!
Love,
Your daughter
P.S. Whatever Emma says, do not trust her. She lies. And if anyone shows up, claiming to be a friend of mine from school, they are lying. I don’t have friends.
Taylor lay the letter on her bed and walked out of the house as if going to school. There were warm clothes, though, beside her textbooks, and what little money Taylor had that she knew they could spare. She walked part way to school and then turned and ventured towards the Docks.
Danny Hebert found the letter a day later. Taylor was long gone. He did nothing for a long time, just staring at it and rereading it, until the sun had set and he could no longer see well enough to read.
Then, unsteadily, he stood, and walked to the phone. He called the police and told them with a shaking voice that he thought his daughter might have run away.