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.

“Do you always run from a good time?” another one asked. For some reason, the rest of them thought that was hilarious, and the garage was filled with the sound of their laughter.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I opened my mouth to say something, maybe even scream, but I just gaped at them.