Exposing the Liar

The 1 train is closed tonight... now's our chance!

The text message ringtone pierced the silence in my room as I lay in bed lamenting the fact that I was grounded. It was from my best friend, Hannah.

She and my other best friend (Emma) were my partners in crime. Each weekend, and some weeknights, we snuck out to make anarchist graffiti, sometimes breaking into abandoned places. We'd even created a blog to show off forgotten buildings and the best street art in NYC, and were finally up to a thousand followers! We'd already made a name for ourselves in the underground urban world.

But that night I was already in pjs and ready to sleep, thanks to a stupid snowstorm earlier in the week. My friends and I had snuck out and taken a train to Albany to tag a government building to protest the new right-wing governor. Everything would've been fine except the weather in Albany was much worse than in the city, and the train we'd intended to take back at 4:42am was cancelled. It was also a school day, so when my surrogate guardian (and older half-brother) woke and saw I wasn't home he was pissed. Fortunately, he hadn't found out the details of what I'd actually been doing. Unfortunately, he had yelled at me for a couple of hours and threatened to beat my ass, but settled on grounding me for the next two weekends. #Lucky?

Brett was usually fairly lenient, respecting the fact that, at sixteen, I was basically an adult. He'd taken me in after our mom was arrested, and I was fortunate because we never had much beef with each other. The only problem was his demand of 100% honesty which was almost impossible for me to follow, especially since the relationship I had with my mom was built on almost 100% dishonesty. And he was also about as far from an anarchist as one could be, so would really blow up if he knew about our blog.

Thinking about all of this made me a bit apprehensive about sneaking out that night. But Hannah, Emma and I had been trying to sneak into the abandoned subway station for months now, always chickening out because of the stupid 1 train. And now it was finally closed down! I couldn't let my best friends down... and besides, anarchists like me don't let rules keep them from their job!

Let's meet in TS by the 2 train I wrote back, rolling out of bed. I crept through the darkness, sliding my warm black hoodie over my head before layering up with a leather jacket. I searched for a black beanie but had no idea where I'd left it, so I settled with a bright green one with Kermit the Frog eyes.

"You idiot," Hannah said when the three of us united. "You're the only person I know who would wear Kermit to a break in."

"It's not like anyone will see us, but I'll take it off before we go in anyway."

Emma was already nervous, and I could feel her uncertainty pulsating through the nearly empty train as we rode uptown together. She was also the peace-maker of the trio, or the one who changed the subject during tense situations. "What're you thinking of painting tonight?" she asked me.

"Something political. I'm so tired of all this 'democracy' bullshit. How is voting between Hitler and Mussolini a choice? They're all fuckin' liars."

My friends both gave me a fist bump because anarchy rules! Then Hannah pulled out the prescription ADHD medication she'd stolen from her brother, distributing a tablet to each of us to swallow before a long night of illegal street art.

The train pulled into the 96th street station and we hopped onto the platform. "Madi! Your hat!" Emma shrieked and I hurriedly pulled up the black hood of my sweater to cover the green Kermit eyes. We waited for the coast to clear and hopped onto the track that the 1 train would have been running on, making our way five blocks south to the abandoned station.

The scariest part of sneaking into an abandoned station is not the possibility of death by train, or even the possibility of getting caught. No. The scariest part of sneaking into an abandoned station is the sight of fat, squeaky, evil rats. Surprisingly, Emma was the bravest of us all and led the way with her phone's flashlight on full blast.