AN: I started a new story. Here's a prologue for all of you to read/enjoy/tide you over. Hopefully. This chapter is shorter than the other ones that are to come will be, since this is just a prologue.

That Junkie chapter should be getting out within the next few weeks...

BIG thanks to those who've stuck by me/haven't bombed my house. I appreciate it. :)

Disclaimer: Jonathan Larson's.

I'm sneaking out of my home. I'm seventeen and I'm sneaking out of my own home for the first time. I'm seventeen and I'm scared out of my goddamn mind.

I take the stairs cautiously, knowing which ones squeak and which ones don't. After living here for my entire seventeen years, I'm surprised I haven't used this knowledge before.

I guess I never really needed to before now.

Walking quickly now that I've passed the tricky part, I spare a moment to glance at my watch. 3:45 AM. I really wish I could've left earlier, but surprisingly my mom was still up reading. Probably some fucking article on how terrible this world has become.

I slap the note that I'd written earlier onto the table, shift the weight of my backpack on my shoulders and readjust my grip on the duffel bag stuffed to bursting before I'm off, catching the door behind me and letting it ease shut.

I'm free.

I break out into a goofy grin, not being able to help myself with that simple phrase. It sounds so fucking perfect, and now I know why jailbirds scream it after performing an amazing escape passed the security guards, dogs, barbed wire and whatever the fuck else they have in prison these days. The feeling makes you want to dance down the road laughing and singing. Walter Starbuck didn't do that, though. I guess I won't either.

Instead I pull the piece of paper out of my pocket, old and crumpled up time and time again so that the ink on it is barely legible anymore. It doesn't matter, because even if it weren't I have the address long since memorized.

A hundred bucks and a Greyhound bus ticket. That's all I've got to make it through the summer, though I doubt it will be a problem. Nothing can stop me now, since that note is on the table and I'm out the door.

That note. I choke back a laugh after remembering what it said, not even believing that I wrote it and it's there and I'm here and I'm going to have the fucking best summer.

Dad and mom,

The note starts, as I recall,

I'm going to spend the summer away from the house. You don't have to worry, I'll just be spending it with a friend. I'll be back in time to go to Brown.

Have a good summer without me!

Your son,

Mark Cohen

Mark fucking Cohen. I didn't even realize I had added my last name, since I was just signing my name like I usually do for school papers. After staring at it I realized it was probably better with my last name. It was amusing, at the very least.

I near the bus stop, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. It's not that I've never traveled alone… No, I've flown by myself before. But that was when my parents were paying for the trip, and I've only been on a bus once before. And I was seven and it was crowded and full of scary people, but my mom was with me then and when I was young that meant I was safe.

I'm starting to feel young again…

It's not that I look down on poor people, or the types of people who travel using Greyhound buses… But growing up in Scarsdale there's sort of an inherent fear instilled in you from the time you're old enough to understand the difference between you and Billy, and why you have a brand new bike and he doesn't even have one. And then you hear that magical "p" word and everything seems to make sense.

A lot of kids my age grow up never realizing how jaded the community we've lived in for our entire lives has made us. That the guy who wanders around downtown with a coffee isn't homeless because he chose to be, and therefore is somehow less than us, but that his name is Steven and he's schizophrenic and can't hold down a job. That his family kicked him out when he was 18 and he's been alone ever since. And the guy who lives in the alley behind the coffee shop with his 2 dogs. He's a Vietnam veteran with posttraumatic stress syndrome and holds true to the idea that if you eat garlic everyday you'll be healthier than fuck. So he keeps a bag of garlic tied around his neck into which he periodically reaches to get his daily dosage of garlic.

I can't wait to get out.

I find the bus stop, noticing how it looks completely different in the dark than it did in the day. It looks more hopeless, dark and dreary. But I guess that's to be expected. People who skip towns in the middle of the night only do so because they're running away from something.

4:03. Where's the bus? I really want to get the whole waiting-for-the-bus-to-come part over. It sucks, standing here, second guessing myself. One part of my mind yells at me to turn around and go back to my house, but the other says fuck it and keep going. I think I like the second idea better.

Headlights bounce down the road towards me, and I feel a cool chill wash over my skin. I'm really doing this. There's no turning back now.

The bus comes to a screeching halt, the door flying open so quickly that at first I think the force of the bus stopping is what caused the door to open. I realize it isn't when I see the elderly woman behind the steering wheel, one hand on the steering wheel and the other tucking a stray hair behind her ear. She's smiling at me as I shift nervously outside, bending over to grab my duffel bag.

I wait for a couple of people to get off the bus, and I spare a thought as to who they are and why they're stopping here. I almost tell them to get back on the bus and to keep going, because they don't realize yet that they slipped and fell straight into hell the moment they stepped off that bus.

Oh well. Not my problem.

I clamber onto the bus, smiling slightly at the old woman bus driver. She smiles back and asks for my ticket, which I hand to her. She takes it and looks at it before giving me a generous smile and handing it back.

I turn to find a seat, stopping as I assess my other bus-mates and watch them do the same to me out of the corners of their eyes.

"You can sit here," a high-pitched voice says, and I look to my right and see a little girl sitting behind the bus driver, her feet not even touching the ground as she kicks them up and down.

"Thanks," I reply, somewhat thankful that my decision has been suddenly taken from me.

I toss my duffel bag on the ground under my feet, even though the floor looks dirty and the neat freak in me starts to squirm and shift uncomfortably. I slide my backpack off and drop into the seat next to the little girl, letting my backpack set in my lap.

"My name's Lepita," she states matter-of-factly, "What's yours?"

"Mark," I respond, smiling nervously.

Kids are so fucking hard to read. I've never been very good with them, and it seems like every time I even get close to one it starts screaming. They don't like me, so I don't like them. It's as simple as that.

But this girl hasn't started screaming yet, which automatically makes her okay.

"Hm," she hums, her bright brown eyes shining in the passing streetlights.

I take the silence as a chance to watch the scenery change, the bus turning onto Main Street with its cute shops and quaint, homey décor. With big, overflowing pots of flowers and inlaid brick sidewalks.

"What?" I ask suddenly, not having noticed that the girl…Lepita was talking. I turn to apologize, but find that she isn't even talking to me.

Whoops.

"Abuela, where do we stop next?" she's asking, hanging her pudgy arms over the headrest/wall that's in between the front seat and the driver's seat.

"New York City, muchachita," the bus driver replies, and I guess I'm caught staring because Lepita looks back at me and smiles.

"My gramma drives the bus," she says, grinning widely.

"Oh, really?" I ask, though, even though I didn't think about it before, it would seem a little weird for a girl her age to be traveling all alone. More than weird. Impossible. "That's cool."

Lepita bobs her head up and down, nodding vigorously as she snaps her head up and down and making my neck hurt.

We pass the coffee shop that I used to work at, the one that Steven would get his coffee from. Just a little local coffee shop that teenagers go to because there's nowhere else to go in Scarsdale.

I quit at the beginning of the summer, though. I'm sure they won't have any problems replacing me. It's the "cool" place to work, but the only reason I got hired is because the manager is one of my best friends. Jean, she's been working there since freshman year of high school.

We continue down Main Street, passing Titus Photography where, instead of being nationally acclaimed photojournalists, disappointed photographers take pictures of snobby seniors in poofy dresses, awkward families smiling and trying so hard to look normal that it's almost painful and sticky babies in Halloween costumes.

"Where are you going, Mark?" Lepita asks, my name sounding funny on her tongue as she uses it for the first time.

"The city," I say, tapping my fingers on my backpack, "To visit a friend for the summer."

"Your giiirlfriend?" she teases, drawing out the "i" and grinning mischievously.

"No," I snort, "Roger. He's my friend from high school. I haven't seen him in a year."

"'buela, how long is it to New York City?" the little girl asks, turning her short attention span back to her grandmother.

"Not long," the old woman replies, "Only fifty minutes."

Not long? Right now fifty minutes seems like fucking forever.

"Okay," Lepita says simply, slouching back into the bench.

The bus passes by the one bar we have downtown, the one with the shitty food and the overpriced drinks. I look into the tinted windows, into the dim lighting of the bar and watch as drunk girls talk about things that don't really matter, their boyfriends listening inattentively and nodding every once in a while. I watch as tired waiters and waitresses jot down orders, a smile on their face that doesn't reach their eyes.

"What do you wanna do, Mark?" Lepita asks after a second, noticing the blank expression on my face.

"I don't know," I shrug, smirking when she glares at me.

"What's in your backpack?" she asks, sitting up and looking at my backpack with interest.

"My camera and a few other things," I reply, unzipping my backpack and grabbing my camera to show her.

"Oh, we can make a movie!" she squeals with delight when she notices that it's not a picture-taking camera, clapping her chubby hands together.

"Alright," I say, chuckling as I start to wind my camera up, amused by her enthusiasm. "How old are you, anyway?" I ask, just to keep her talking as I focus the camera on her.

"I'm four!" she exclaims, grinning into the camera and waving. "That's my gramma," she says, pointing at the driver and giggling when the old woman waves over her shoulder at the camera, saying a quick hello.

I film the little girl for a few minutes, smiling at the way she seems to light up the bus with her high pitched giggling and stubby limbs flailing around in what her idea of a dance is. At one point she stands on her head on the seat, kicking her feet over the back of the bus seat until her grandma yells at her to sit up straight.

"Sorry 'buela," she mutters, pouting slightly as I turn my camera off.

I sit quietly and look out the window again, noticing a small all-night diner. The lights are on and inside those teenagers too hyped up on caffeine to sleep throwing fries at each other and cops with nothing better to do drinking a cup of coffee. Drunk men are hitting on waitresses too beaten down and sick of life to tell them to fuck off, and so they don't say anything when the guy in the plaid shirt smacks them playfully on the ass.

"Hey Mark," Lepita says suddenly, her eyes dark and tired, "Have you ever seen somebody die?" she asks, picking at the edge of her dress that's too small for her.

"N…no, why?" I ask, thinking how that's hardly a question I would expect to hear coming out of a four year old.

"I have," she states, lifting her gaze to meet mine, "He came on the bus at the bus stop, an' he was shaking an' he couldn't stop an' he just fell over," she explains, and then pointing her finger to the aisle, "he fell over and didn't get back up. Abuela called the police."

"That's enough, muchachita," the bus driver says quietly, but sternly.

The rest of the ride goes by in silence as Lepita falls asleep, curled up in the corner of the bus seat.

"New York City," the bus driver says, throwing on the breaks so quickly that I jerk forward in my seat.

I gather up my stuff and stand up, waiting for a few other people to get off the bus before I turn to leave as well.

"Bye Mark," Lepita says tiredly, looking up at me, "Thanks for sitting with me."

"No problem," I reply, smiling down at the small girl, "See ya."

And just like that I leave, and the girl I only knew for fifty minutes is gone and for some reason I miss her. There was something weird…different about her. Something that I'll have to think about more before I can place my finger on it.

I take a deep breath as I step into the cool morning air, the sky still dark which makes the shadows look that much more ominous.

I'm in New York City and it's 5:00 in the morning and I have no clue what street this is or which way I have to go to get to the corner of 11th and B.

Things can't get much worse.