Runaways

Chapter 9

Allie

It was nearly 6:45 and still dark out when the lights of Downtown Orlando came into view. A whole new level of excitement washed over me, and I couldn’t help but exclaim, “LOOK!” which I regretted after realizing I’d woke Mary up.

Ever since I could remember, I’d hated the look of Downtown Orlando. The tall gray buildings and dirty windows gave me a headache. But now, seeing it like this; bright lights, no cars, seemingly clean windows, framed by a dark blue sky… Maybe it was just the thought that this was the place where I could get away from my parents, but today, Downtown Orlando made me smile. Mary and I high fived, and we all celebrated our arrival. It was Lizzie who'd spotted the police. 

After a small police chase that ended when Lizzie took hold of the wheel and made a sharp turn, we stopped talking for a while. It was Oliver that broke the silence.

“So umm… where are we going from here?” he asked.

“I found a map on Google,” Mary answered. “Just keep going straight and take two lefts and one right. There’ll be an alleyway between the SunTrust building and the State Farm building.”

“An alleyway?” Oliver asked, in a tone that said, “People like us are gang raped and murdered in alleys all the time.”

“Oliver, do you really think there are going to be gangs there at 7 in the morning?” I asked. Oliver fell silent.

“Even on the off-chance that there are, I brought this,” Lizzie said, calmly pulling a gun out of her bag as if she handled them every day.

Mary jumped away from Lizzie as if the gun was about to bite her. I pushed myself up against the door. “DUDE, THAT’S A GUN!” I shouted.

“No shit, Sherlock. I stole it from my dad,” Lizzie explained.

“Guys calm down. I brought Catherine,” Oliver said.

“What the hell- are you high?” Dario asked.

“Catherine is my .45 revolver. My uncle gave her to me for Christmas a while back,” Oliver told us. “Is this the place you were talking about, Mary?”

“Yeah, but park a few blocks away. The Carters are going to call the police and the broken window is going to make it obvious that this is their car,” Mary said.

Oliver attempted to parallel park and ended up parking completely crooked, halfway on the sidewalk, however when he tried to pull out to fix it, I stopped him, telling him that the police would handle it, and it would make a good show for passer-byes.

We all got out of the car and started walking, picking up the pace as the sun began to rise. In 10 minutes we were all sitting up against the wall of the SunTrust building, in the alleyway Mary had told us about.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do. Downtown Orlando looks like crap and frankly, I don’t want to have to live here,” I said.

"Yeah, there aren’t even any grocery stores around here. Just banks. And it’s going to start to get dangerous at night,” Mary agreed.

“Well, shit. We should have thought about this before we came here. We can’t just go and get back in the car. Its daylight out there and everybody’s out. We’re going to be on the news, soon, if we aren’t already, and people are going to recognize us. What now, gu-,” Dario tried to finish, but he was interrupted by a soft beeping noise coming from Mary’s back pocket. The noise grew louder and louder as the four of us just stared at her, until Oliver jumped up and started running in circles.

“SHIT. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT, FUCK. EVERY BODY TAKE OUT YOUR PHONES,” Oliver demanded.  And, startled, we did. Once we had them out we all looked at him. “OH MY GOD, I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE OBVIOUS BY NOW. WE’RE BEING TRACKED, GUYS. WE’RE TOTAL IDIOTS; I CANNOT BELIEVE I DIDN’T THINK OF THIS BEFORE. EVERYBODY TAKE THE BATTERY OUT OF YOUR CELL PHONE AND DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO BREAK IT.” We all quickly ripped the batteries from our cell phones and began jumping on top of them. Lizzie even threw her cell phone over the barbwire fence at the back of the alley, and we all followed her.

“Guys we need to get out of here, fast. The police will be coming soon,” Lizzie said.

“Oliver, they can also track me by my parent’s credit card, too, right?” I asked.

“Yes! Get rid of it!!” he replied.

“Wait! I’m not going to throw away this money! Quickly guys, I need to find the closest atm,” I directed.

We all ran out of the alley and, shocked by the amount of people rushing around, quickly looked at the cement to hide our faces. After two minutes we found an atm at the side of the road.

The atm would only let me withdraw up to 100 dollars at a time, so I made 15 $100 withdraws. I already knew my parents PIN number because when they’d leave one of their credit cards at home I would use it to get food. Eventually, I figured out how to use it.

After using up all the time that Lizzie, Mary, Dario, and Oliver would allow me, which was about 10 minutes, we all rushed away, and, not even looking at each other, came up with our plan, which we’d figured out as we saw the sign for the train station up ahead.

In two minutes we were at Platform 8, ducking behind trashcans and signs to avoid human contact. “Okay guys, do you see that train coming? I don’t think it’s carrying people; that’s why nobody’s headed toward it. The conductor is probably just stopping for a snack or water or who knows what but I’m not worried about that. When he stops, we need to get on as fast as we can. Nobody will notice, because nobody’s paying attention to it while they’re trying to figure out where their train is and when it’s coming and what stop they’ll have to get off at. We can figure out the rest of the plan once we’re inside,” I said.

Covered by hundreds of people rushing all over the place, we managed to get onto the train. I was right. This train was carrying cars instead of people. There were about five cars in this compartment. We all sat down immediately. All of us were finally getting sleepy.

“Before we all fall asleep we need to come up with another plan,” Dario said.

“Easy,” Mary began. “We all fall asleep, and when we get up, we jump off the train and wherever we end up is where we’ll be staying.”

“Do you know how dangerous that is?” Oliver said.

“Oliver, we’ve been abused our whole life. I’ve been beaten so bad I’ve come close to dying a couple of times. I think we can handle it,” Lizzie said. Oliver mumbled something that none of us could hear.

In less than a minute we were all dead asleep. We didn’t wake up for a good 9 hours. When we woke up, Mary’s wristwatch said 4:30 p.m.

“I need to wake up before I even attempt to jump off this train,” Lizzie said. So before we did anything, we played a game of Go Fish using the cards Mary brought.

In 20 minutes, we were all standing up and getting ready for the jump. “Alright guys, you CANNOT chicken out. If you do, we might lose you. Don’t even think about it. Just jump,” I directed everybody. “Oliver, you first.” Oliver groaned as I opened the door and the blaring sunlight filled the whole compartment.

“If I die, I’m going to kill all of you,” Oliver warned us. After 2 minutes of preparation, Oliver finally jumped. Not 5 seconds later, Dario was gone, and then Lizzie, then Mary, and finally, it was my turn to jump. However, just as I bent my knees, I heard the door in the front of the compartment that was connecting this car to the rest of the train cars swing open. A tall man stood in the doorway. His wide dark eyes stared into mine, and he held up a gun. I stood there, frozen. I thought I was going to die. Just as I heard the gunshot, something in me forced my knees to straighten very quickly and I jumped, landing on soft grass. My friends weren't even in sight. It took a minute before I saw them.

We were all spread out in front of the train tracks, and we had to walk a bit to get back together. Oliver gave me a look that said, And you think I'm the chicken.

“Alright guys, lets figure out where the hell we are,” Dario suggested.

After a bit of walking, we came to a nice town. It was nothing like Downtown Orlando. The shops were painted nice colors that didn’t clash, and it looked like the store owners took nice care of them. The grass was a very nice shade of green, unlike the dead brown grass in Orlando. After a while, we stopped in a small bookshop. “Excuse me, but um… what state is this?” I asked. An old lady behind the counter looked over her book and smiled at us.

“Welcome to South Carolina.”