Running away from school was too easy. Maybe it was because I was seventeen instead of eight like Trinity had been, but I felt like it should have been harder. I made flight reservations online and then I faked a headache to get out of class. I picked up my bag and slipped over the fence by the pool. That was how Trinity always snuck out and, for some reason, no one ever clued in that she just hopped over the fence by standing on the crates of salt. Once outside, I called for a ride and went to the airport.

It was hard for me to decide where to run away to. In the end, I decided to stay in Canada, but the farther away from Toronto, the better. There was a stable outside Calgary that I was quite fond of, so I decided to go there.

The trip was uneventful, as was checking into the hotel.

Day one: I hoped to make myself as much of a nuisance as possible, so I stayed in the hotel room and racked up the bill.

Day two: I took a taxi to the stable and went riding all afternoon. Except that I hadn’t been riding in ages and my thighs and backside ached like murder by the time I dismounted and went back to the city. At the hotel, there was no sign of Christian.

Day three: After the bruises from the day before, I didn’t want to go riding again. Instead, I lounged in the tub for most of the morning and then went shopping in the afternoon. I wished Christian would somehow meet me in the mall. Shopping without his opinion was a waste of time. In the evening, I had supper by myself in the hotel restaurant. I drove myself crazy staring at the door. Impatient, I thought that no matter where Christian was in the world when he found out I was missing, he should have been able to make it to Calgary by then.

Day four: Sick of Calgary and depressed that Christian hadn’t shown up, I decided to take a train to Vancouver and made plans to be on the next one. The journey would take a day and a night, so he would have to meet me in Vancouver if he showed up at my hotel after I left. Whatever. I went to the dining room and ordered four lobster tails without any sides to feed my sorrows.

Day five: I didn’t leave the room. I sulked and watched day-time TV until nightfall and then I watched late-night TV, which wasn’t any better.

Day six: I packed up and paid my bill. My credit card still worked, which seemed like a bad sign, showing that I hadn’t got his attention at all.

I went to the train station.

I got there an hour before boarding, so I sat down to wait. The place was littered with people but gave the impression of being empty since there were so many unoccupied chairs. Which was why it seemed unusual that the seat next to me was immediately occupied by one of the mustiest people I had ever smelled.

It was a man, swarthy and unwashed, wearing cheap cologne. He hadn’t shaved in days and his loud hibiscus printed shirt was only buttoned halfway up his chest. For pity sake, we were in Canada! Who did he think he was? And why did he keep looking at me?

I tried to ignore him by burying my face in my magazine, but he was getting so close to me that I could feel his breath on my neck.

“Do you mind?” I said in my snottiest, rich-girl, voice.

He didn’t move. “You like the fashion magazine, yes? Yet, you dress so boring. You need more style,” he said in a thick French accent. “Do you know what I mean by style?”

I moved over into the next seat.

He slipped into the chair I had just emptied and kept talking. “You should let me teach you. I can turn you into a star.”

At this point, I turned and looked directly into the sleazy loser’s eyes. Color didn’t matter. Shapes were all that mattered and I saw them at once. The nose was wrong, but everything else checked out. I took a chance. “Stop teasing me, Christian. It really hurts my feelings when I don’t look good in the clothes you like the most. I look fine in this. Not everyone has the shape to dress like a supermodel.”

He had been smiling, but he stopped when I said my lines. He leaned back in his chair and his shirt fell even more open as he placed his hands behind his head. “How did you know it was me?”

“Because it is you,” I said, like calling his bluff was nothing. I stuck my nose back in my magazine and pretended to read.

He scratched his head and lifted himself out of his chair. “Whatever. The fun part of our meeting is over. Get up.”

“My train isn’t boarding yet.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said with zero humor in his voice. “You aren’t getting on that train. We’re done with pleasantries. Get up.”

I did.

He grabbed my arm and ushered me out the front doors. “I look like crap and I need to change. I have a room down a few streets.” He pushed me into one of the waiting cabs and told the driver where to go.

Sitting next to him, I got a better look at his face. He had to be wearing pounds of makeup to make his skin look so dark. Well, even if it was a tan, that still didn’t explain why he was wearing a rubber extension on the end of his nose. As I looked closer, I saw he was wearing phony eyebrows, too. What was he up to?

“Christian?” I asked softly.

His glare could have killed me, but he seemed to check himself before the daggers got to me. “Did you forget my name already?” he asked flippantly in his French accent. “It’s Louis.”

“I’ll remember,” I said, excitement igniting inside me.

We stopped in front of a dingy hotel. I had only seen such shabby establishments from car windows and I’d certainly never been inside one of them. Christian took me past the check-in desk and up the stairs to a room on the second floor. He pushed me in and locked the door behind us. I watched as he stooped to put an electronic device under the door. Then he tugged his shirt over his head, flashing me a view of his bare back before he disappeared into the bathroom. The door closed and I heard the water running.

The room was the sorriest excuse for lodging I’d ever seen in my life. I wanted to sit on the bed, but the covers looked stained, and the whole place smelled funny. Instead, there was a plain wooden chair that I settled into while I waited for him to get cleaned up. It was then that I made the miserable realization that we had left my luggage at the train station.

When Christian came out of the bathroom, I didn't recognize him at first, because a red-haired teenage boy opened the door. I stared at him, trying to piece together what had just happened. He had been trying to disguise himself when he was dressed as Louis, but as far as I was concerned, it wasn't a very good disguise. When he came out of the bathroom, he looked like a completely different person. The beautiful angles of his face had been replaced with curves like he hadn't already lost his baby fat. His eyes that were normally a sweet murky color were now a pale blue, transforming the look of his entire face.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“My room here is under the name Charles Lewis,” he said simply as he dropped his bag on the floor. “From here, the story is that I helped you run away from school because we’re in love.”

“Can we talk about why I actually ran away from school?”

“There isn’t time,” he said as he circled the room picking up oddities he had left scattered. “The story goes that after we spent a few days on the lam, we ran out of money and I convinced you to return to school. I’ll fly back to Toronto with you. The plane leaves in an hour and a half.”

“Can we go back to the train station?”

“Why?”

“I left my bag there.”

He snorted. “Then you left your bag there. Honestly, I’m willing to put up with all kinds of crap from you, but taking the time to go back to the station—that’s a no-go. Look, Beth, seriously—I understand. You want attention. I wish I could give it to you, but I don’t have more time to give you than I already do. The truth is you are the only normal thing I have in my life, so please, don’t wreck it.” He looked at me with appealing eyes that somehow still looked like his even though so much had changed.

I shook my head. Once I had processed what he said, I knew his made-up story about us being in love wasn’t important. He was using that story as a tool to lure me back to school. He hadn’t disguised himself to be my boyfriend. He was disguising himself to hide himself. It wasn’t a real offer, and I hadn’t gone to all the trouble of running away so that he could ship me back without a shot being fired.

“You think I want attention? Yes, but that's not all I want.” I said without batting an eyelash.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

I crossed my legs and mentally glued my bottom to the chair. I wasn’t going without a fight.

He zipped up his bag. “Time to go.” He picked up the phone and asked the front desk to have a car waiting for him downstairs. He was about to pick up the device from under the door when he saw I wasn’t moving. “Beth, get up.”

“I don’t see why I should come with you. I haven’t got what I want.”

“What do you want?” he asked as he retrieved the thing on the floor. “Back at your school, didn’t you say something about a home?”

His offhanded way of describing my most crucial desire made my blood boil. I didn’t answer him.

He came over to the chair and grabbed my arm. “Get up,” he ordered again.

“I want attention, but I also want a place that connects us, not just a random resort where we made some memories,” I said, looking up into his face, humiliating tears forming in my eyes. “I know you're keeping secrets and I won't ask you about them. You’re worried I’ll wreck the balance of your carefully crafted life. I promise I won't wreck it. I want to make our relationship better. You can never be my dad and I don't want you to try, but I want you to be my… there isn't a word for what I want.”

“All right,” he said, tightening his hold on my arm. “I’ll give you what you want, but you’ve got to give me what I want right now.”

“What, exactly, will you give me?” I muttered, grasping the armrests of the chair with white-knuckles.

He frowned darkly. “I’ll give you a key to one of my places and you can go there this summer, whether I’m there or not.”

“Done,” I said, uncurling my fingers from the chair and allowing myself to be led out of the room without the necessity of being man-handled.

After we left the room, we had to walk down a long hallway to the stairs that led to the hotel lobby. When we first started down, the stretch was empty, but as we continued, two men in suits appeared in the exit. Suddenly, Christian put his arm around my shoulder and, holding me like a teenage boyfriend, he cuddled up behind me. Then without warning, he began nuzzling my ear with his nose. I involuntarily pulled back, because I was completely unprepared for him to touch me like that. 

“Smile,” he whispered in a seductive tone as he buried his face in my hair. “Look natural until we get to the end of the hall.”

I bit my cheek.

It had to have something to do with the men we were passing. He was hiding his face in my neck. They went by without noticing us at all. When we got to the end of the hallway, I peeked over Christian’s shoulder to see which room they were going to. Sure enough, they knocked at the room we had just vacated.

Heat flooded my face. If I had made Christian wait any longer there, we would have been caught by those thugs.

In the lobby, as Christian finished paying his bill, we heard a crash from upstairs. It sounded like the door of our room had been broken down. Christian acted like the sound didn’t have anything to do with us and got us out of the hotel and into a taxi in record time.

My heart was beating like a drum machine as he stuffed me into the car and told the driver to go to the airport in a cultured British accent.

I wanted to ask him all kinds of questions about what he had done to land himself in such trouble. Was it me? Was it a consequence of helping me with my heart? I couldn’t ask. I had promised I wouldn't ask and wouldn't try to find out.

On the plane back to Toronto, we didn’t talk, but Christian held my hand. There were freckles painted on his ordinarily brown forearms. It looked natural. His fingers lazily tangled with mine and it felt like the stuff my dreams were made of. I had to calm down. He was only doing it to keep up the charade. Charade or no, it felt real.

***

Back at the school, he dropped me off in front of the gates and ripped a page from a book in his pocket. He scrawled on it and, keeping the accent, he said, “This is my address—one of them anyway. You can use this as a home and if you ever decide to run away again, please run here.” He produced a keyring and unhooked a key for me. “This opens the door. Don’t get lost.” He looked around. “I think that’s everything. Is anyone watching us?”

I peeked around. “I don’t see anyone, but probably.”

“Yeah, teenagers could be hiding anywhere. Better make it real, just in case.”

With that, he bent, wrapped one arm around my waist, and pulled me to him. With no more warning than that, he kissed me on the mouth and my senses blotted out everything else. There may have been teachers yelling, or high school students hooting. I didn’t care. I put my arms out and twisted my fingers in his fake red hair.

If it wasn’t real for him, it was thoroughly real for me and my reality changed forever. Whatever had been 'wrong' for him about our secret kiss in the hospital, was now shaping into a real future for me. Sure, he hadn't wanted to kiss a fourteen-year-old, but I did not make him kiss me in front of my school. Finally, I saw a tiny part of him that wanted me.

***

The aftermath of the incident was boring. I didn’t get expelled, but I got suspended from class for two weeks. The principal called Christian and he had a meeting with the administration. Then he gave me a lecture on how I was too precious to run away from school with a boy no matter how attractive he might be. It was amazing how straight he kept his face while he lectured me about my romance with ‘Charles’.

When I was alone with Trinity, she asked me what happened. “I still can’t figure out how the heck you managed it. You were supposed to run away to get Christian’s attention and instead you turn up back here with some amazing new boyfriend?”

“It’s simple really. Christian never came to get me,” I lied. “He could have looked up my Visa bill online and tracked me down, but he didn’t have the time. After spending almost a week in a hotel room in Calgary, you meet a few people. His name is Charles Lewis.”

“So, what’s going to happen next?”

I smiled. “He’s invited me to his home in Scotland for the summer and Christian says I can go, just so long as I don’t run away from school in the meantime. Cool, eh?”

That wasn’t exactly what Christian said, but whatever. Two could play his game.