Escapade

Chapter One: Escape

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How to Take Over Mafias for Dummies  

So, you want to take over a mafia.        

---THUD

I shut my book suddenly as I was reading it. It was an old, yellowing book, so thick that a lot of people have mistaken it for a dictionary. When I closed it, dust wisped out of the book and made me cough. I grabbed a napkin from the duffel bag under my feet and coughed into it.

"Hey, what's your problem? You're causing asthma over here!" rasped an old man from behind me, coughing.

"Would you please hide that book somewhere? Or maybe even throw it out the window?!" sneered a middle-aged woman beside me, waving her hand at the book. "There are some people in this bus that would like to have some peace."

 I apologized to the people in the bus and took my time placing my book into the duffel bag, to everyone's annoyance and my satisfaction. I never liked being ordered around. The book I was reading was very interesting, but I'd rather have read it somewhere private. Sitting in the middle of a bus full of people didn't count as private in my eyes, especially when these people were very irritable.

The woman glanced at me at the corner of her eyes, sniffing. Then, with a dainty sigh she turned her back on me and started talking to some guy adjacent to me. The woman wore too much make-up, and her clothes were too revealing, especially considering she looked like she was in her fifties.

 Since everyone else was spending their time on the bus dozing off or whispering to each other, the bus was quiet and boring. With nothing to do and my book gone, I pressed my head to the glass of the bus's window, staring out at the background in boredom. I pulled my head back and stared at my reflection.

I had green eyes with brown flecks and loose dark brown hair that flowed down to my ribs. My lips were full and the color of peaches, and my nose was petite. My hair was worn loose almost all the time, and I had Dior sunglasses sitting on my lap.

I was kind of pale. My tan had already faded long ago. For the past few months, I've been spending all of my time indoors rather than out in the sun, figuring out the layout of my house and the schedules of its residents so that I could make my escape, so I rarely spent my time anywhere else.

I didn't really care about the way I looked, although many people told me I was beautiful enough to become a model if I wanted to; I thought I looked average. The only thought I had of my looks was that I thought I was way too pale. I took no notice of my designer clothes. I was so used to them that I didn't really care about what I wore anymore, expensive or not. My whole wardrobe had been chosen for me to start with. I blinked at my reflection once, and rested my head by the window, drifting into sleep.

 Thirty minutes later, the bus jolted to a stop, forcing me awake as I tried to stop myself from falling onto the ground. The bus had parked itself dangerously close to a sidewalk full of shops and pedestrians.

"Stop 905," murmured the driver.  Immediately, the people in the bus started pushing their way to the door, so eager to get out that they started elbowing each other and calling each other names. The older passengers had to wait for the crowd to lessen, too weak to join in the fighting, although they looked like they wished they would. A man wearing a flower printed t-shirt and  shorts was running into the crowd, screaming that he was going to go insane if he stayed in the bus any longer. An old woman was following him, shouting at him to stop embarrassing himself.

I smiled as I surveyed the chaos around me. This was more like it, I thought. I liked it when it was loud. I grabbed my sunglasses and bag and plunged into the crowd as we moved as one in a mass to the door. We managed to slowly inch closer to the door and out to the sidewalk, where most of the people ran as far away from the bus as they could.