A runaway's story: Facing the consequences

Before I start my story of what happened I want you all to know how I was feeling through this whole experience. The whole time I was hiding I felt scared. I was constantly trying to find friends' houses to go without telling them I had run away from home. I couldn't go out in public in case someone saw me. I had to use my friends' phones. I couldn't trust anyone. I had no money. I felt like at any second anything could happen. I had fun now and then but most of the time I was just paranoid. The feelings I would get never stopped.

The worst part was not knowing what your next move will be, or if you have to leave your friends and the warm place you're at, if you have to run, if you have to sleep alone outside in the dark. Luckily I wasn't gone long enough to experience these but the thoughts were always in my head.

The story starts after a party I wasn't supposed to have Saturday night. The party became out of control. Sunday I was scared to go home and face the truth to my parents. I decided to run from it. I broke my SIM card and left my cell phone by the friend's house I was staying at. I was debating if the cops could have been able to trace it, but I didn't want to take any chances.

I left my friend's house out in Topaz Ranch Estates, around 12 a.m. Someone I knew had picked me up and dropped me off at Douglas High School around 1 a.m. I waited there for a while to figure out what I was going to do.

A couple of choices popped into my head but I went with walking to Carson. I took the back roads because I didn't want to get seen walking on Highway 395. I got to my friends house in Carson that I was planning on walking to around 10 or 11 a.m. on Monday morning.

Later Monday I went to Sand Harbor with some friends and their family. They didn't realize I had run away. I told them that my parents were out of town and I needed a place to stay till they got back. We stayed up in Tahoe till it got pitch black outside. We went back to a friend's house in Reno and stayed the night there. The next day we came back down to Carson.

I was extremely scared to be seen during the day because I knew my parents wouldn't rest during the day till I was found. So me and one of my friends stayed at her house all day and hung out there. We walked to another friend's house when the sun started to go down. We hung out there for a while until we had to go.

We had to go back inside my friend's house by midnight. The next day we went to Sand Harbor again. This is where I was found. One of my track coaches had spotted me and called my parents. My dad then called a forest fervice ranger he had gotten the number from a couple days before when he was looking for me.

I will admit I was scared to go on shore from where I was, I knew I was going to be arrested. I thought about running, but I had nowhere to run to. I hit a dead end so I went to shore and faced the consequences.

I was put in handcuffs and taken somewhere to wait for my dad to come pick me up. When I saw my dad both our eyes started to tear up. He took me home and the same thing happened when I saw my mom and stepdad.

During this whole experience I learned that telling the truth in the first place is a lot better than not. I know you hear that saying a lot when you're younger. You don't really understand what it means and how serious it is until something huge happens.

Remember, that when you don't tell the truth you put yourself in even bigger trouble and you keep digging a deeper hole than you would have been in to begin with.