My blood approves

“Beauty is pain.” For some reason, Jane felt obligated to take me under her wing and try to improve my status, no matter how hard I tried to resist. I was all too comfortable in jeans and Converse, but that was definitely not good enough for her. At any mention of comfort, she would spout a sermon about the essentials of beauty. “Alice, you’re never going to get a boyfriend if you don’t step it up.”

“I am stepped up, and its not my life’s mission to find a date,” I muttered.

Fortunately, she didn’t bother to ask me what my life’s mission was because I was pretty sure I didn’t have one.

“Some days, I don’t even know why I bother.” Jane sounded completely exasperated, as if I was the one trying on her. Here I had gotten all dolled up the way she wanted and stood out all night in the cold for her, but I was wearing on her.

“We should get a cab soon,” I suggested. We had walked far enough away from the clubs where it was starting to feel deserted, and two teenage girls walking around in downtown Minneapolis wasn’t the safest thing in the world.

“Not yet.” The problem was that we didn’t have very much money, so the farther we walked, the shorter the cab ride would be. I lived by Loring Park, which really wasn’t that far from where we were, but it still wasn’t within walking distance.

“Soon?” I asked plaintively, looking up at her. A green and white taxi sailed past us, but Jane didn’t even look towards it. My feet were killing me, and the night felt too long. I just wanted to go home, put on sweats, and curl up in my bed.

“We need the exercise anyway,” Jane hedged my question. Maybe I needed the exercise but Jane could’ve passed for a supermodel easily.

“But my feet hurt.” It was my turn to sound like a petulant child, but I couldn’t help it. It was late and I was tired. I don’t know why I ever agreed to her shenanigans. They were always much more fun for her then they were for me.

Being the less sexy sidekick wasn’t a very glamorous life.

“Beauty is-”

“-pain, yeah, yeah, I get it,” I grumbled, cutting her off.

Jane lit another cigarette, and we walked in silence. I knew she was sulking about the club and trying to plot some exciting adventure to drag me into, but I wouldn’t fall for it this time. By the morning, it would probably hurt to even stand, and while I hadn’t officially checked yet, I was certain the blisters on my feet were at least the size of quarters.

Even though I was mostly just concentrating on the pain in my feet, I felt them before I saw them. There was suddenly this weird sensation of being followed, and the sound of the traffic from Hennepin Avenue had faded enough where I could start to hear the footfalls echo behind us. Jane seemed oblivious, but I didn’t want to say anything. Either I would let onto them that I knew they were there, or I would just once again confirm Jane’s suspicion that I was certifiably insane. Instead, I just quickened my pace, which pleased Jane as she easily met it. Her constant complaint in life was that I was too slow and she had to spend the majority of it waiting for me.

Then the footsteps behind us started to hurry up, becoming heavier and louder, and there was the sound of heavy breathing and hushed male voices.

Jane looked over at me, and the panic in her eyes meant that she heard them too. Out of the two of us, she was the braver one and managed to steel a look back over her shoulder at them. I was about to ask her what she saw when she started sprinting forward, and that was answer enough for me.

Futilely, I tried to catch up to her, but she wasn’t about to slow down for me, remaining a few steps ahead. It reminded me of that joke about how fast I had to run to get away from a grizzly bear — faster than my friend. Still following her, we ended up in a mostly deserted parking garage, and I wondered why this seemed like the logical choice to her. There were so many other places we could’ve gone where there would be crowds, but her first choice had been a dimly lit underground parking garage.

Jane dashed around the side of a van, and I allowed myself a look back behind me for the first time. In the darkness, I could see very little, but I knew there were four large guys, and when they saw me looking at them, one of them started to cat call. I ran forward, only I realized Jane wasn’t in front of me. I didn’t have a very good fight or flight reflex, so I just froze when I didn’t see her.

“Over here!” Jane hissed, but the acoustics in the garage were awful and my panic had completely set in. I couldn’t tell where her voice was coming from, so I just stood frozen underneath a flickering yellow light and hoped that my death would be quick and painless.

“Hey little girl,” one of the guys purred in a voice that sounded anything but friendly. Stupidly, I turned to face them. Since I had stopped running, so had they, and they were casually strolling over to me.