Miss Perfect and The Bad Boy

sixteen - present and future

"Ma'am, a minor can't check out another minor from the hospital, we need to be in contact with the legal guardians," the nurse repeated in a tight voice.

"For the twelfth time, you're not going to come in contact with my parents. Am I just supposed to stay here forever?" Alex snapped from his bed.

It was three days after we found Alex on the side of the tracks and he was ready to go home, but since the hospital couldn't get a hold of Alex's parents, we were having a hard time leaving. More specifically, they wouldn't let him leave without parental consent, which he wasn't going to get any time soon. If Alex's dad didn't pick up his calls for days, he wasn't going to answer a random number, not when he was on the run.

The nurse's radio made a noise and she rushed out of the room without another glance at us. I looked over at Alex. He was still bandaged up, but the bruises were getting a little lighter on his face and his lip and eyes weren't as swollen.

The police had started an investigation to find out who did this, but no leads so far, and they didn't have a motive yet. We, of course, knew what had happened. The dealers attacked Alex to "send a message". But we couldn't tell that to the police or it would get Alex in trouble. So Alex had told them he was just walking around the tracks like a normal teenage delinquent with nothing better to do when he was mugged.

I sighed and took a seat next to him on the bed.

"This place is shit," Alex said angrily. "If they couldn't get in contact with my parents the last 100 times, how are they gonna now? They're gonna take me to some stupid foster home now."

I squeeze his hand. "Don't worry, we'll work it out. I'll sneak you out or something."

He smiled and joked, "And then we can finally run away?"

I laughed. "Yes, after you get better though. You can't run with broken ribs."

His eyes sparkled. "Where would we go?"

I thought about it for a second. "France."

"We don't know French," he reasoned.

"Fine, where do you think we should run off to?"

He paused. "Well, you're going to Princeton soon, so we would go to Jersey and you can do college there. And then when you finish with college-," he laughed and stopped himself. "I'm getting carried away with this."

"No, keep going, I like this," I reassured. Hearing him talk about it made me get a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

He paused. "Okay, um, when you finish college we could move to a smaller town. Maybe somewhere in the suburbs, or we could move states completely. We could go to Maine since it's so quiet and peaceful, or we could go to New York if you wanna be near the city. But if you want to come back to the West Coast, I suggest Oregon or Washington. I hate California. And we could adopt a dog."

I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. "I want to go to New York City. You have to take me there."

"I will. I promise."

I grinned and said softly, "That sounds amazing. But I get to pick out the dog."

"Ugh, no, you're gonna pick out a chihuahua or something. We need a big dog."

"Actually, I was gonna say we should get a pitbull."

"Pitbull. Impressive." He stopped for a second and stared at me.

"What?" I blushed.

"Can we actually do that?"

"I would like to."