⋆ starter for @griefmartyred (Claire) ⋆
A scowl furrowed the girl’s brow, brown eyes glaring ahead as she peddled as ferociously as she could manage, away from the cabin and towards the town and what felt like freedom.
Maisie couldn’t stay with them anymore. Her not-parents. The suffocating obsession they had with her staying close to home had grown unbearable. It wouldn’t be her home any longer. They didn’t understand, couldn’t understand how awful it felt to be trapped. The explanations of protection and safety had grown old after her preteen years and the girl wanted to experience more.
Reaching a hand into her pocket, her eyes bulged when she found no tiny scrap of paper there with the address of her planned escape. She had left in a hurry, having fought terribly with Claire and Owen over the rules they had put in place to ‘protect’ her, as well as their disagreement over her choices to allow herself to help others, to make a difference. Although she considered cycling back for it, she kept on going, knowing the address off by heart by now. Besides, Claire and Owen weren’t her legal parents, they wouldn’t be able to force her back with them, not without her putting up a fight. Why should it matter to them what she chose to do with her own DNA? It was her own decision to help Dr. Brooks. He was kind, he didn’t smother her or try to control her, he simply offered her a way to help, to eventually travel with him back to his lab in the city and become somebody. Somebody who made a difference.
Squeezing the breaks as she reached the apartment Dr. Brooks was staying at, she glanced around her, a little shifty. Although she’d left in a hurry, with only her backpack filled with some of her most important belongings, and had waited until Owen was out on a dinosaur rescue mission and Claire was busy elsewhere in the house, she felt anxious with the thought they could try to stop her. A part of her wondered whether she might subconsciously want them to come after her, to prove they cared, but she shook the thoughts from her head and leant her bike against the side of the apartment, fully committing herself to the new life she had chosen.