Author's note: If you like my story, abhor it, or anything in between, please review! I haven't gotten a single review yet, so I'm not at all sure whether to keep writing or not. Whatever your opinion is, let it be known! Oh, and by the way, happy New Year. –Anya

Fifteen minutes later, the two of us were shivering at an outdoor sky train station, lost in our individual thoughts. After our initial thrill at discovering the knife, in had been slid in Tiana's bag for safekeeping, and we had left in a rush, suddenly skittish and fearful of discovery. I had instinctively changed into a more practical outfit, and instructed Tiana to do likewise. She was wearing a pair of my dark purple skinny jeans – pajamas hardly seemed the thing to run away in – and covered her raspberry locks with a navy toque, but kept on her own battered sneakers and sad face hoody. Snug in my own black zip up and combat boots, I understood her attachment to them. We each toted the bags we would learn to live out of on one shoulder. I looked up from watching rain drops chase down an advertisement on the wall (Dr. Capricorn's new metabolism-boosting licorice chews, 30% off when you present your updated Local Resident token!) to see the train whiz into the station. Still unspeaking, we marched together to the seats we always took – left side, third from the front. Knowing Tiana would not be first to break the thickening silence, I spoke.

"My bangs are in ringlets, aren't they?" She smiled, looking a little relieved.

"Not ringlets, but they've gone a bit fuzzy. Want my hat?"

"It's alright." I pulled my hood up and assured her that her hair was, as always, in perfect condition. She smiled again and fixed her brown eyes on a point in the rain-streaked distance.

I had not yet asked Tiana why she wanted so desperately to leave behind a stable, privileged, 4.0, shopping-trips-on-Saturdays life for the uncertainty ahead of us. She had never been radical about anything, preferring to drift along with the most agreeable course available, upsetting no one, and had, to my knowledge, no significant problems. Her only common complaint was that people stared at her beauty everywhere she went. Here was not the place to ask, and, if I was being completely honest with myself, I had been too wrapped up in my own depression previously to consider her own reasons for needing to escape. It was with this embarrassing thought in mind that I turned my head to see the boy watching my best friend from behind the cover of his book.

His hair, a mess of black and white stripes, and his black dress pants with white pinstripes and careful iron creases in the front marked him as a member of the skuk subculture. It wasn't one I knew much about, but I was fairly sure it had started with a punk band of my parents' generation, The Skunks, who had sported pin striped suits and black and white trihawks. The look had spread to their fan base, mutated, and become a wider subculture. Despite its best efforts, counterculture movements seemed to be one of the only aspects of teenage life the Youth Control Force had been unable to fully repress. The only skuk band I could think of was Neon Revelation, and, being unable to recall any of their songs, I returned to studying the boy.

The book he was reading had a dark blue dust jacket over it, and a name on the front and spine which I couldn't quite read at the distance. His battered black leather jacket was open enough for me to see a thin chain around his neck, disappearing below his shirt collar. I raised my eyes to his angular face, where his own eyes, dark and rimmed with eyeliner, shifted from Tiana to look back at me. I felt myself flush and turned around. Tiana glanced at me, a slight smirk playing across her face. If there was a friendship equivalent to twin telepathy, we so totally had it.

"You look like you just saw Jared Payne!" she whispered, naming the front man of Para-Saint. We both giggled, drawing a scornful look from the aging hipster sitting opposite us.

"Oh totally," I replied sarcastically, "Because he rides the sky train in suburbia." I lowered my voice, continuing, "Nearly as good. There's a super attractive skuk guy checking you out." I shifted my eyes to look behind us, met hers again, and grinned. On some pretense, she turned around. When she turned back, she, too, had turned slightly red.

"He totally caught me looking!" she breathed.

"Hey, that means he was looking back."

Her pink lips spread into an automatic smile, but it quickly died and fell from her face. "That means someone knows where we are. We'll be caught and dragged back before we even get downtown." We had made the hasty decision, while walking to the sky train station earlier, to get off downtown, withdraw as much money as we could (Tiana had stolen her mother's bank chip, and each of us had one of our own), and find somewhere cheap to stay while we made more concrete plans. It wasn't much of a schedule, but I agreed that we couldn't let a boy, even a gorgeous, alternative boy, jeopardize it. I sighed. Tiana was chewing on her bottom lip in thought.

"Let's get off at the next stop," she said finally. "We can pretend we're going to that massive mall, and get back on the train to head downtown later."

I nodded, and flashed what I hoped was a reassuring smile, and not a reflection of my actual feelings. I had set off on Tiana's demand, and to get away, be it from my life or my suicide. It suddenly struck me that, most likely, we didn't stand a chance and would end up mugged and beaten before crawling back home, tails between our runaway legs. I needed desperately to speak to Tiana in private, and voice the thousands of fears and questions bubbling up inside me, but she was still sitting placidly next to me on the extremely public train. I resolved to pull her aside somewhere – anywhere.