Lost in the Transit Mall with a Heavy Textbook

Lost in the Transit Mall with a Heavy Textbook

I had to return a specific textbook to the university library, but my old high school friend Dave said we had to take a shortcut through the basement of the downtown transit mall to get there before it closed. It felt like this urgent mission because if I didn't turn it in, my degree was going to be canceled. The transit tunnels just kept branching out and getting darker, full of closed storefronts and weird concrete ramps that led to dead ends. Every time I checked my watch, it was five minutes later and the book felt twice as heavy in my backpack. Dave kept insisting he knew the way, pointing at faded directional signs that didn't make any sense. We finally reached a heavy fire door with an exit light, but when I shoved it open, it just dumped us right back out onto the street where we had started twenty minutes earlier, and the sun was setting.