Chasing Tomorrow

The first time Eli ran away, he only made it to the end of the street. He was ten, barefoot, dragging a backpack filled with snacks and a flashlight that didn’t work. He sat on the curb until the streetlights buzzed on, watching the world darken while his resolve dimmed with it. He returned home that night with scraped knees and tears he wouldn’t admit to.

At seventeen, Eli didn’t stop at the curb.

He had no grand plan, just a beat-up bike, a hoodie, and enough money saved from bussing tables to keep him fed for a few days. He pedaled toward the highway like it might lead straight into his future—or at least away from everything behind him.

Back home was a house that echoed with silence. His mom worked double shifts, and his dad had been gone since Eli was twelve—first from the house, then from the world entirely. They said it was an accident, but grief has a way of muddying the truth. Eli stopped asking questions. He stopped a lot of things.

He wasn’t running away this time, he told himself. He was chasing something—though he couldn’t quite name what.

On his second night away, he met Jonah.

It was a small-town bus stop, barely lit, with one vending machine that ate his dollar without mercy. Jonah was slouched on a bench, sketching something in a battered notebook. He looked like he belonged nowhere and everywhere—black boots, chipped nail polish, a denim jacket covered in band patches Eli didn’t recognize.

“You look lost,” Jonah said, not looking up from his sketch.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” he said, then glanced up. “It’s okay. Everyone is.”

They shared a bag of stale chips and a few hours of silence before Jonah spoke again.

“Where you headed?”

Eli shrugged. “Away.”

Jonah smiled like he’d heard that before. “Same.”

For the next few days, they traveled together—hitchhiking, sneaking onto trains, and sleeping under the stars. Jonah knew people in random towns—artists, drifters, baristas who slipped them free coffee and warm places to crash. He sketched everything: the buildings, the trees, Eli’s hands when he thought he wasn’t looking.

Eli felt seen in a way he hadn’t before. Not as someone’s son or student or disappointment—but as himself, even if he still wasn’t sure who that was.

“You ever feel like you’re not a real person yet?” Eli asked one night.

They were lying on the roof of an abandoned gas station, watching the stars blink through thin clouds.

“All the time,” Jonah said. “Like I’m waiting for the moment I start existing for real.”

“Same.”

Jonah turned to him, propping himself on one elbow. “Maybe we don’t wait for it. Maybe we build it.”

Eli let that sit in the space between them. He thought of all the versions of himself he’d tried to be—athlete, honors student, the good son, the invisible one. None had felt right. Maybe there wasn’t one right version. Maybe that was the point.

Weeks blurred. They kept moving. But Eli was starting to feel the weight of the road—the uncertainty, the hunger, the growing ache of not knowing what came next.

One morning, Jonah was gone. No note. No warning.

Just his sketchbook, left on top of Eli’s backpack. The last page was a drawing of Eli, smiling—not the tight, forced smile he used back home, but something softer. Real.

Beneath it, a message:

“Chase something that leads you back to yourself. You’re already closer than you think.”

Eli didn’t cry. He just sat there for a long time, holding the book like it might answer all his questions.

Eventually, he stood. He had no idea where he was. But for the first time, he knew where he needed to go—not back to the house, maybe not even to his old life, but forward. To somewhere he could rebuild, not escape.

He took a job in a bookstore in a college town a few hours away. The owner didn’t ask questions, just pointed him to the shelf of graphic novels and told him to start shelving. He slept in a spare room above the store. Read late into the night. Started journaling. Slowly, he stitched a life together from the broken parts.

He kept Jonah’s sketchbook by his bed. He didn’t know if he’d see him again. But he didn’t need to.

One day, he passed a group of students in the store, laughing and arguing over books. One of them had a denim jacket covered in patches. Not Jonah, but close enough to stir something in his chest.

Eli smiled. A real one.

He still didn’t have all the answers. But he wasn’t lost anymore.

He was chasing tomorrow—but this time, he knew who he was while doing it.

And that made all the difference.