He slipped out in the afternoon, while the sun was still high and the air still thick and warm. It was around half an hour, possibly more, before his parents noticed he was gone. It started when Nancy walked into the kitchen where she thought he was playing; "I thought Aaron was in here?" she relayed to Benjamin, who agreed: "so did I". He quickly moved up stairs, hoping to be the one who would resolve this conflict, only to be the one to initiate the panic as he shouted down to his wife that their son wasn't upstairs.
Aaron, upon leaving, had quickly come to terms with the fact that his original run away plans - to run far down the country, simply sleeping out on streets and next to roads like it was no problem, and somehow finding his way into a new life simply by talking to people in shops and walking around parks until someone chose to talk back to him - were very unrealistic and would need to be revised to go with the reality Aaron now found himself faced with.
His new plan, which he put into action simultaneously as he thought of it, was to run a few streets down from his house and camp out in the small forest area which he already knew well from playing with friends and walking his dog with his parents there. It wasn't really a forest at all, actually just a collection of farmer's fields with some greenery in between them. Aaron quickly found himself bored while sitting in the shelter of high grass and spiraling branches.
Aaron sat around wondering about the panic his parents must be in, although part of him actually hoped they weren't panicked at all, that they didn't even care that he had left and were happy to let him go, because that would be the perfect justification of why he ran away - at the present there was very little reasoning behind Aaron's runaway.
Instead his parents were very panicked. Benjamin went running into the streets, running down back alleys and all around the local neighbourhood, his fear turning to desperation with each unsuccessful street; while Nancy started ringing local friends, or parents of friends of Aaron, in hope that Aaron had simply forgotten to tell his parents that he was going to see a friend, and phoning family members too, most of which didn't even live nearby, to see if they had any guidance. The fact that she didn't phone the police is a clue that her mind hadn't yet reached out to the darkest possibilities.
Aaron found himself walking around the fields near his house with no other aim than to waste time. He walked near dog walkers so he could get a look at their dogs, and maybe even walk past so that he could stroke them, but never spoke to them; he walked through the tree and forest areas, discovering new pathways - he ran into a few small isolated areas where the floor was covered in flattened beer cans and greasy wrappers; he picked up stones and sticks and threw them around and pulled grass out of the ground as if he was simply bored and waiting for a friend to arrive. He hadn't brought a watch - hadn't brought much but a few survival items that he shoved into the biggest coat he had that he had wore to keep warm at night - but even without a clue to the time he still managed to understand that time was going very slowly for himself.
By the time the sun was setting, and the sky and to some extent the world beneath it had turned into a blueish shade of grey, both Nancy and Benjamin had given up hope that either of their respective methods of finding their son, both of which seemed to wish to undermine the seriousness of the problem, were going to work, and by this point were answering questions for police while alert looking middle aged family members, a crying grandmother and some concerned neighbours stood around the room feeling that they weren't doing enough.
Two police were in the Hackett family living room asking questions like "can you think of any reason why he might have ran away?" while another two policemen were already patrolling their car around and surveying the local area. They stopped off at one point to ask a group of kids playing football if they'd seen Aaron or any kid of his description but, despite the kids seemingly doing nothing wrong while playing their game of football, they all ran away as the police car pulled up. It seemed to the police, the family, the neighbours - everyone - that Aaron hadn't simply went for a stroll or went to hang out with some friends and the explanations started to become more worrying; words like "kidnapping" were never mentioned although surely only the least cynical and jaded of the lot, like Aaron's Grandma, weren't thinking them.
At first Aaron was happy when night time came around as it meant he would finally be able to sleep and the time he had been a runaway would go over faster, not to mention his parents wouldn't be able to go to bed without noticing he was gone. Although sitting in one of the wrapper-filled forest areas he became terrified by just how dark it was. He noticed for the first time that he had never actually been out this late alone, had only been allowed awake at these times at family get togethers. The darkness was complete and all consuming, it literally prevented him from knowing exactly what was a few centimeters in front of him; it was nothing like the night time in movies where you could still see everything and his eyes did not slowly adjust so that he could see the outlines of things like they did when his mother turned off his bedroom light at night.
He began to get scared that he would never find his way out of the darkness and felt the horrible urge to wriggle free from his own body like he did when trapped in small confined spaces. It took Aaron 20 minutes of using his hands the same way a blind man who's lost his walking stick would to find his way out into one of the fields, which, incidentally, was lit up only by the full moon in the sky. Aaron had never noticed the amount of light which radiates from a full moon, and the brief moment he took to stare up at its beauty was the first comforting moment Aaron had had all night.
By this time there were cops searching for Aaron so far away that, if Aaron was a little older, he would have probably found it hilarious. He walked home, freezing despite the coat. People, both family and not, were searching through the streets for him now. His parents would have been with them but the last policeman to talk to them had told them it would be best if they stayed inside and got some rest as it would mean the police could contact them easily if anything came up. They had both sat on the living room sofa, both sweating, in the total darkness, as if to look worried was somehow integral to being worried.
Aaron approached his house, still unaware of any commotion he had caused. He worried he would have to stay in the garden until morning but the door had been left unlocked - he wondered why. The house was in total darkness and total silence, which made him feel uneasy. He took off the coat. He made his way upstairs, shaking with the fear of getting told off if he was caught and from the general adrenaline rush of running away from home and camping in the woods. He heard heavy breathing from his parent's bedroom and decided to quietly creep into his own bedroom. He changed into his pyjamas, as quietly as possible, and jumped into bed. He continued to shake with fear and excitement but slowly he began to stabilize as the act of simply lying in bed in darkness merged this night with every other night he'd ever experienced, and it was as if nothing had happened.
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