As station bathrooms go, ithis one was pretty clean. The only writing on the walls was "Traci luvs Kyle" in big bold letters. There was an old cigarette butt in one of the sinks and the water didn't fully turn off, it just fell in a thin, constant stream into the drain.

I rinsed the lathery suds off my hands and pulled a rough, brown paper towel down from the dispenser. As usual, only half came out. I pulled the other half out, feeling slightly annoyed, and made a feeble attempt to dry my hands with the ripped bits of paper.

I walked out into the sunlit waiting area. A row of blue and orange chairs were lined up in a row along the far window. I was surprised to find Lauren hanging up the phone behind the ticket counter.

"Why didn't you just use the pay phone?" I asked.

"Because she called me," replied Lauren sarcastically.

"What? Well, who was it?"

"That was Lanie. She called to tell us that Gwen and her mom had car trouble. She said that, because the bus station is closing, we should wait for them at the Dunkin' Donuts right up the street."

It was 12: 30 in the afternoon when Lauren and I left the Lewiston bus station and headed for the Dunkin' Donuts. We walked up the street scanning the horizon for the familiar pink and orange sign. People kept giving us strange looks. I guess in our "different" clothes and big, gray wool overcoats, we didn't look like natives. Our bags probably didn't help much either.

Some guy in a pickup drove by. He honked and smiled at us. It wasn't a welcoming smile, but a flirtatious one. We started walking a little faster toward our destination.

We walked into the Dunkin' Donuts. From the corner both, we had a good view of the parking lot, so we would be sure to see Gwen and her mom when they got there. Lauren went up to the counter and bought us honey-dipped donuts and milk. We ate quickly and hungrily. We were famished from the early morning bus ride.

As we ate, we talked about the few other people around us. There was an old man, probably a truck driver, nursing a large cup of coffee and reading the morning paper. He looked like a "regular." And a few booths behind us were a couple of guys, a little older than we, arguing over which heavy metal band was the best.

Slowly it dawned on us. After two or three hours of waiting, we realized that, for the time being, we were totally on our own. There was no adult there to watch over us. If we left and went to another state or country without telling anyone, it would be as if we had simply fallen off the face of the earth!

Lauren and I felt like runaways, and the feeling was exhilarating. n