Free Since You've Been Gone by Mary Jennifer Payne Page A

parking lot with a thud, sending a sharp pain through my right ankle like a bolt of lightning. This momentarily throws me off-balance, but there’s no time to stop.
    Lungs burning, I run down the street, retracing my earlier route. Jermaine’s warning is a distant memory. Little did he know some schoolyard threat isn’t going to scare me. I’m used to dealing with fear.
    I doubt the man will chase me once I am off our housing estate, but I’m not taking any chances and continue running to the bottom of the hill and across the main street toward the train station. I enter the front doors, sprint past a long line of people waiting to buy tickets, bound down the nearest set of stairs, and dash onto the platform just as a train is approaching. A small crowd of soon-to-be passengers stand waiting. Some are hastily taking the last drags off cigarettes while others keep their faces firmly buried in a book or newspaper. I try to blend in even though I must look like I’ve just run a marathon with werewolves chasing me.
    â€œThe train approaching Platform Two is a Connex-Southeastern service calling at St. John’s, Blackheath …”
    The rest of the announcement fades from my consciousness the second I notice two yellow flashes. The officers are standing at the top of the stairs.
    They followed me! I’m trapped with nowhere to go but onto the train. And not only do I not have a ticket; I have absolutely no idea where this train is going. The destinations announced a few moments ago might as well have been in China.
    The doors to the train slide open and a surge of city workers in their suits pour out like water from a burst dam. I glance toward the staircase again and that’s when the man points at me. Within seconds, they’re both running down the stairs. Sweat breaks out on my forehead.
    I have no choice. I’m getting on that train.
    Pushing my way forward, I hurry on. Every seat is taken and standing room means jamming your body against the other passengers around you. Gross.
    Mind the doors, the doors are closing …
    I look out the window. They’re steps away from the door, having been slowed down by the crowd of commuters trying to make their way up the stairs, out of the station and home. The man is shouting something as he claws his way to the door.
    Then there’s a sudden lurch and the fat man stuffing his face full of chips beside me loses his balance for a moment and falls forward, putting one of his greasy paws on my shoulder to steady himself.
    â€œSorry,” he wheezes. Though his onion breath makes me want to puke, I don’t care. We pull away from the station, leaving the man and woman on the platform, staring in frustration as the train leaves New Cross Gate, taking me with it.

CHAPTER 15

    T he train’s first stop is Blackheath and I decide to get off. I don’t want to go too far, but I need to be sure that the two officers will not be able to find me easily. That means getting as far away from the station as I can as quickly as possible.
    Though it’s only a five-minute train ride away, Blackheath might as well be on another planet; it is so different from New Cross. No more taxi stands with chipped signs. The Caribbean food takeout shops and rundown hairdressers have disappeared as well. Instead, as I turn down the street and walk away from the station, I pass boutiques full of designer clothes, fancy food stores, and a Starbucks. Hunger strikes me like a boxer’s fist as I peer inside and see people eating. I feel around in my jacket pocket and pull out a five-pound note and a handful of change.
    It’s weird being in a Starbucks in England. Pretty much everything is the same as in Canada. Rumi and I used to go to the Starbucks near George Brown College, pretend we were students there, and drink caramel macchiatos. Thinking about the future and daydreaming about what we’d be doing as college or university students made