The best excuse that sounded wild but was true happened when I was teaching school. I was teaching The Bluest Eye which features a father raping his daughter. A parent asked me to excuse her daughter from reading it because it was too distressing. I immediately gave her another book to read but she had to sit there in class, listening. She sunk more and more into depression. Her skin kept breaking out. She'd slouch out of the classroom, tesry-eyed. I was on the verge of getting permission to drop the book when POOF! She disappeared.
Two or three more weeks passed; we finished the book and the day after, this girl comes striding into my classroom, standing tall, triumphant, clear-skinned, and tan. Tan?! It was winter! She slapped a newspaper down on my desk and it was the newspaper from my University! She threw down some other mementos from my beautiful college town and said, "For you, Miss! I went on a road trip and your college always sounded so beautiful when you talk about it, so we went there."
It turns out she and her brother, both with their new driver's licenses, had just decided to get out of town and go somewhere nice because the whole family was reeling from the book and from their own history.
She knew what day we were starting the new book, etc. (we had a schedule) so she knew when to be back. Not that she ever cleared it with me or her other classes, as far as I knew.
I didn't care. The girl who strode into the classroom, tan and happy and laden with little souvenirs, was not the girl who was leaving my classroom slumped over and in tears. And that was worth everything to me. EVERYTHING!
I passed her, of course. As far as I was concerned, she acted like a true adult by taking herself out of a bad environment, setting a quest or goal for herself that she accomplished, and returning when the environment changed to pick up her responsibilities again.
Great kid. And I never taught The Bluest Eye without making sure it was okay with everyone first. It is a wonderful book. In its own way, it helped my student. To quote another author, sometimes when you're running away, you're running in exactly the right direction.