Furry Humans | ✓

1.

↠C h a p t e r O n e↞
LEAVING

❝Adventure must start with running away from home.❞

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ABIGAIL

I could only stand in front of my parents with a bewildered expression, the shock of their words rendering me speechless as I attempt to process what they said. Meeting their gazes, I hope my eyes could speak what my lips couldn't, they only sympathetically look at me from their positions on the sofa.

"Can you repeat that?" I finally speak, swallowing thickly.

Dad's eyes soften as he moves to sit on the edge of the sofa. "We're moving."

"We can't move," I immediately protest, brows scrunching together in a frown of confusion.

Sighing deeply and taking a step back, I search their eyes for more answers than what they provide me, when I come up with nothing, I shut my eyes and bring my hand to my face.

I press my fingers into my eyes until I see stars, speaking with a dry tongue, "This is our home."

"I know, pumpkin, but this for the best and we have no other choice. The company wanted to switch locations, and being in the position that I'm in, we have to go along with it."

Mom nodded her head in agreement, patting Dad's arm as she graces me with sad smile, a smidge of something else lying beneath. I paid no mind to it.

"On the bright side, you can make new friends," she adds in an attempt to ease the confusion that runs through me.

It didn't work. If anything, it only causes a sense of anxiety to zip through the arteries to my heart, my skin breaking out into a cold sweat, small tremors running down my spine. Things weren't adding up with their words, just yesterday things were going fine and all of a sudden we were leaving; we've called this place home for so many years with countless fond memories we've created and we're just up and leaving. . . like that.

Out of the blue.

"I don't want friends," I insist. "I'm perfectly fine with how things are, for all we know, he might come back home."

The last of my words soon linger in the air, their bodies going rigid with unforeseen effects of my sentence. Gone was the soft exterior that Dad presented and replaced was a cold demeanor, the air around him soon oozing with his standoff-ish expression. Mom seemed to notice the shift as well, her eyes flickering back and forth from him and me.

She clears her throat, looking anywhere but at me as she unloops her arm from Dad's and press her fingertips together. "Honey. . ." she trails off, straightening her spine to sit taller, licking her lips. "This is a great opportunity for your Dad and we can't focus on other things—"

The short fuse of anger inside me burns a raging fire so quickly that it catches me by surprise, yet I let it consume the words that spew from my mouth. "I refuse to leave! This is all ridiculous, you both are acting like cowards that can't—"

"That's enough Abigail!" Dad suddenly bellows, eyes flashing with his own fire of anger, in the process of cutting off the rest of my sentence.

My eyes widen with surprise at his outburst.

"We didn't raise a child to be disrespectful nor speak to us any kind of way! We're leaving whether you like it or not, even if I have to drag you out by your feet."