i remember you, c

Everything was still so colourful and bright, it hurt her eyes to look at almost. New York had been larger, with taller buildings. Sometimes when she was little she used to wonder how the people got all the lights up there but now all the wonder and magic had been drained from her. When you're an adult, you see things in a different light. She didn't believe in sewer gators no more than she believed some big man in the sky was going to solve all her problems if she put her hands together. Darci believed you had to help yourself. Nobody was going to do it for you. She wouldn't let 'em anyway. Since all her job attempts failed recently, she had to go back to what she did best. The young woman covered her face with a scarf, her hair tied in a high pony. The baggy orange hoodie concealed most of her body. She was set. Time to pick a target.

It was a huge run all the way back to the apartment, so she had to choose carefully. Plan an escape and all that good stuff. Had one picked out, actually. Even a hiding spot to wait out the cops if they decided to get tangled in. A change of clothes to conceal her appearance. She thought it out nicely.

Walking among the crowd of people who were busy returning gifts that they did not want, she spotted a man amongst them. He was just standing off to the side in front of a store. She didn't care what he was doing, only that he was pausing, his wallet out and in plain sight. Actually it was tucked ungracefully into his pant pocket. You snooze you loose. Darci walked along the crowd until she was within range, then expertly snatched it, using the mass amount of people to blend back in. She was quietly flipping through the bills when not one minute passed and somebody yelled "THIEF!"

Usually you keep going, which she did, when somebody just randomly shouts nonsense like that. It could be anyone in the crowd and when people are frantically checking their belongings, you escape. But when somebody grabs your arm, you stop whatever the shit you're doing for a moment. Then run. Struggling from some random person - careful enough to hide her face - she took off. Over the murmur of the crowd, she couldn't tell if anyone was following.

"Shit shit shit shit... AW SHIT!"

Cursing, the young woman stopped as she hit a dead end. Damn it all! Why couldn't it be a chain link fence?! But nooo, it had to be an actual out of her range brick wall. She blew it. Blew the plan in her hurry to escape. Damn it. She was rusty. She heard footsteps approaching and as quickly as she could, she pressed herself against a garbage can, thankful for once in her life for her small size.