tracy

i could list for you the places I’ve been: Reno. Vegas. Bakersfield San Bernardino Riverside. None of them is home and I always come back to L.A., which isn’t home either, it just knows me. I could tell you how it feels to hitch through desert till your eyes bleed from dust and you bruise your toes kicking dirt, how the rigs pull through like shiny metal monsters, windshields shielding the creeps inside and you hate each truck for being shiny and purple and bigger than you but when they slow down you climb in and then you’re part of it and moving.

I could tell you the names of everyone I’ve known or tricked or slept with, but they all leave anyway or I do and besides I quit keeping track really. There are lots of things I’ve known and done but when you’re standing on a sidewalk in the city you always leave and then come back to and it’s still not home, your history is like an itchy phantom limb: you can feel it, but it isn’t really there.

I could tell you all this shit and probably you’d like it, but I won’t. Suffice it to say I’m on the sidewalk by the St. Moritz Hotel, Sunset past the 101, eleven thirty or so in the morning on a Tuesday, and I’m waiting for Rob. Rob is my director. He has bad skin and gooped-up combed-over hair and wears his acid-wash like it’s still 1988. He drives a ’91 Civic and is always on time to pick me up. We hit House of Pies sometimes, other times IHOP; the old-lady waitresses scowl, I eat my eggs, and then we go to work.

I am Rob’s star, which I think is hilarious. He calls me that: his star, his leading lady. He positions other girls around me like I’m some sun and they’re orbiting, pretending he’s some bigwig who “assembles girls.” Really he brings them in when they’re strung out, pissed off and cold. Whichever ones show up on his stretch of sidewalk are the ones who get brought up to his studio on the outer fringes of Toluca Lake, and I’m the star because I’m always there. But he’d have you think that was the plan from the start.

I’ve gotten used to it: now it’s just another condition, like heat, cold, wet jeans. After a while you stop noticing the camera, the parade of dry-eyed junkie girls gets regular, you see yourself in all of them. It’s normal. The first time it was weird, though, like the first time of anything is weird, and you suck in and breathe through it and it’s over soon and added to the list of things you are. The naked-for-a-stranger part was fine, crossed that bridge long before, but the camera got under my skin, comb-over Rob with his acid-wash yelling out instructions, the fat girl who batted sleepy eyes at me and wouldn’t talk. The whole thing was too planned out, too much of a production, more like a television show or the Superbowl than what I was used to (old lonely guys in rooms). Too much icing. The effort of it all was pathetic, I preferred the tragic grandpas, the camera made me sick; but what was I going to do, complain? Rob had drugs.

Ah, drugs. I could tell you about those too, but you know already. For a while they spice things up or blot them out, make it better or at least extra; it’s you using them, and then it becomes the other way around. That’s all it is. Just another puppet string pulling at your elbows, making you move. At first I fought it, swore to quit, jaw set, but after a few go-rounds I realized it was like trying to quit being hungry. I never had the willpower to be anorexic. There’s only so much you can transcend. So I got skinny the easy way, ha-ha.

The rest of them never come up by the St. Moritz. They all stay down on Santa Monica by Benito’s, Critter and Rusty and Germ and fucking Scabius, probably Laura too. I’ve been around those kids a bunch of months, since I rolled into L.A. the last time; they’re the closest thing to family I’ve got, which still isn’t very close. Once I shift five blocks up and three blocks over I’m as good as out of town to them.

It didn’t have to be like that. When Rob first asked me to work, I tried to get Laura to come with me. I figured it was a deal for both of us: she had zero clue how to make money out here, being from Ludlow or wherever; I needed the junk and wasn’t about to go back to Critter for it. Plus we could do it together, which would make the whole thing more fun.

It’d been like that—together and more fun—for two weeks already, since she showed up at the hostel all fresh-faced in clean clothes with her Wal-Mart backpack, pony-tailed brown hair, a brand-spanking-new runaway. Freckles, even. Pretty quick it was just me and her: at the Dollar Chinese, Tang’s Donut, spare-changing up on Hollywood. Company, and I didn’t even have to fuck her. I’d never had that, not in San Bernie or Bakersfield, sure as hell not back in Nevada. I mean I always had someone, but only with a trade-off. You always have to fuck someone or take care of them or buy them shit, and if you don’t they walk away.

Laura didn’t want anything from me, though; that part was new, and it put us on the same side of things. Compadres, or whatever. So when comb-over Rob showed up like some greasy angel to find me four days clean, shaking and puking in the donut-store bathroom, I figured Laura and me were all set.

Rob’d been courting me almost a month now, at this Winchell’s and the one off Vine, eyeing me when I wasn’t with Critter, asking if he could help me with anything. He was pretty nasty, with these forehead pimples I was just about dying to pop, even though he was clearly way past thirty and should’ve outgrown his zits a long fuckin’ time ago. I never wanted shit to do with Rob: I had Critter, my knight in crusty armor, who gave me junk like it was roses and he was my boyfriend or some fuckin’ thing. Pretty easy, as far as trade-offs go. Kind of luxurious, even, till he broke my fuckin’ cheekbone.

Back when Critter was around, Rob would try to touch my sleeve and I’d stare him down; my eyes went straight through like they were a power drill and he was paper. Just another greased-up weedy sidewalk cat who wanted ass. I wouldn’t talk to him. But I’d gone kind of AWOL these three days since Critter punched me. I wasn’t about to be the girl who lets herself get hit for drugs; that shit gets around quick, and before you know it you’re getting gang-banged in some Taco Bell bathroom. That, and I had no other source. I was sick as hell, my fever dreams kept me from sleeping, and I couldn’t tell Laura about the junk or she’d get scared and run away. I was fucked.

So this day was Rob’s lucky one, I guess, and mine. I normally wouldn’t work for someone else, but if me and Laura were a team I figured we would both be safe.

I guess Laura didn’t see it that way, though. Instead she just stared at me like I was a TV set till Rob stopped talking, and then pulled this shit of saying she loved me in the middle of fucking Winchell’s Donut, over two crullers, in front of Rob, and taking off. It didn’t make any sense; why she would do that and then go. I mean, it made sense that she’d go; someone always does. But I don’t know why she had to say she loved me. If she loved me, whatever the fuck that meant, she’d be with me: in Rob’s Civic, headed up Ventura toward the Valley.

But no, so now I was by myself again, surprise, thighs sticking to the ripped red leather vinyl of the seat, no a/c in the car of course, just a crappy fan spitting stale air through the plastic vents into my eyes. Rob kept trying to talk to me, find out where I was from and who my parents were, small talk, that kind of shit. I told him I came from a family of Gypsies in France. He narrowed his eyes at me like he was weighing whether or not to believe it and then spat out the window. His spit was white and stringy like an egg. It blew back on the glass behind him and stuck there, quivering in the wind.

Here is the order it goes in with Rob: eat, shoot a scene, then drugs. My first day he had me do one scene after another after another, different other girls, positions, scenarios. For some Internet thing, he said. He worked me till I was dried out and my skin stung, eyes pulled out of focus by the sharp of the fluorescents, mouth sour. I was too freaked out to protest, locked in his concrete warehouse with no ride to pick me up, and I didn’t know if he was the type to use a knife or what.

But at the end he kept his promise and then let me go, so when I came back two days later I knew what I was dealing with and I laid it out. One scene, then I got paid. If he wanted more, okay, but I got to shoot up after every one. That way I could just lay back. Plus he would get me a room at the St. Moritz, by the week, which he wasn’t allowed to come into ever. And some shit to take home with me, to last me till the next day, every time. He got all ruffled, puffed out his skinny chest like we were birds, but I knew he wasn’t any bigger than me. “This is a business transaction,” I told him. “You want my business?” And of course he did.

Now it’s been four weeks of this. Some nights I stay up there at his warehouse in Toluca Lake, when I’m too stoned to take the ride down to the St. Moritz. But mostly I go back to my room and eat Chinese food, I guess like grown-ups when they go home after work. Which is weird because I’m not a grown-up, and Hollywood isn’t home.

I never sleep in alleys anymore. I don’t have to: I’ve got sheets now and a bed and a lock on the door, all paid for. Critter always wanted that: our own room, a little home. He’d talk about it like it would change things, like it would keep us safe and make us real. I knew that wasn’t ever true, but I’d go along with it because it felt good just to watch someone believe something. Sometimes I think about going down to Benito’s to find him, bring him up here, lock the door behind us. But I can’t. He’d ask me who was paying for the room.

And anyway, I’m not running after any of those guys.

No way I’m chasing after Scabius’s nasty face or Critter’s fist. No one came looking for me when I left. Rusty’s the only person who ever came to find me, and that was way back in Venice when he didn’t have anybody else and he was broke. No one looks for you unless they need something. And I don’t need anything from them.

So it’s eleven thirty on a Tuesday and I’m outside the St. Moritz. Rob pulls up before I’m finished with my cigarette, which is a good excuse to make him wait. He sits in the Civic watching me, jittery, and I can tell he’s tapping his foot down by the brake pedal. Cops come around here all the time, as if it would actually make a difference, and even though I told Rob I’m eighteen, I know he knows I’m not.

I smoke it down to the filter before I stub it out. When I get in the car I can taste the fiberglass. I run my tongue over my teeth. Rob hands me half a soda; the wet sweaty cup feels like it might crumple and spill Fanta in my lap, but I drink it anyway. He seems nervous: I can feel it even looking out the window.

He’s got someone special for me today, he says. Oh goody. No, he says, he thinks I’ll really like her, but I have to promise not to give her a hard time. I don’t know why he cares; it all looks the same on his crappy webcam anyway, but he insists. No, he says, he means it: he wants me to promise. I look at him. His eyes are off the road and on me.

“Okay,” I go. “I promise.”

* * *

The traffic on the 101 is like a snarl in your hair: it seems like it’ll be tangled in itself forever but if you keep on pressing eventually it loosens up and lets you through. When we get close to the warehouse Rob starts talking again. “We’re late,” he says, “and she’ll probably be scared.” I look at him like, And so?

“She’s young, okay?” he goes. “That’s why I want you to be nice.”

“I thought you only worked with girls who were over eighteen,” I say, just to give him shit.

“Oh, shut up,” he goes.

We pull up onto the gravel and park. Before I can grab my backpack and get out, Rob reaches over and smoothes my hair around my face. He seems awkward, like he doesn’t really know how to touch a person. I flinch.

When he’s satisfied with my hairstyle he says “Okay,” and we get out. He goes in ahead of me, flips on the light and starts talking to someone. I can hear their voices, but I’m in no rush. I stay by the door and light a smoke, watching guys go in and out of the auto-body place across the street. They look like ants.

I’m only halfway done when Rob sticks his head out the door. “Tracy,” he whispers so loud he might as well talk regular, “come on. We’re waiting for you in here.”

I take one last drag. “You got my shit?” I ask him. I’m supposed to get it from him after but he asked me to act nice, so I figure he better do something extra for me too. It’s only fair.

He looks at me for a second, between thoughts, like his brain is stuttering. Then he says “Yeah, hang on” and goes inside.

After a second he comes back out with it, hands me the keys, and tells me to go do it in the car. “What the fuck?” I ask him. But he says “Just go,” and it’d take too much work to argue.

He waits by the passenger side. Numb and sleepy, I hand him the keys when I get out and follow him inside. I finger the shit I’ve got left over, a tinfoil pebble in my pocket. “Be nice,” he whispers through his teeth as we walk through the door.

Inside the light is dim, not buzzing white fluorescent like usual. It matches the feeling in my body but it makes me have to blink. Everything is blurry and dark for a minute while my pupils adjust.

Then I see her.

It’s weird how when you see someone in a place you don’t expect, your brain won’t believe it’s actually them. There’s this pause while my brain separates out from my body, and it’s like I’m in a movie and watching it, both at the same time. Then it snaps back like a rubber band.

“Eeyore,” I go. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She was chubby before, but now her clothes dangle off her like a hanger. She’s got all this makeup on: mascara raccooning her eyes, blending into the circles underneath, blush on her cheeks like a doll. Her lip ring is crusty and her hair’s grown out so the top half is brown and the bottom half’s purple. She smiles when she sees me in this sort of dazed way, eyes wide but too soft to be crazy. I don’t know if she’s high or what. She doesn’t answer me.

“Eeyore,” I say again, harder, making sure she heard me. Rob watches us back and forth like Ping-Pong. She just stands there. I run outside and throw up.

It’s forty-five minutes from Toluca Lake to Hollywood, and that’s one ride with no traffic. Hitching, it takes me almost three hours. By the time I get back to the St. Moritz I’m out of cigarettes, my eyes are sore and I’m starving.

I wish there was a shower in my room, or even a sink: my face is crawling and sticky, my hands thick with dried sweat. But the bathroom’s down the hall, so I just wrap myself up in the yellow-stained sheets and hope they’ll rub off the dirt.

I try really hard to fall asleep. I can tell it isn’t gonna happen. I do a little of the junk I’ve got left over, but it’s not enough to really calm me down. My blood’s still racing and my skin’s awake and prickly and I can’t stop thinking about Eeyore.

I don’t know why I give a shit. I mean, it’s weird: you’d think I’d want someone I know there with me. I did with Laura. But Eeyore’s young. She looks even younger with the weight off, like some skinny starving kid, the kind you see in pictures of other countries. Like me. She never looked like me before.

I lie on the mattress a long time, eyes closed, heart pounding, before I finally drift off. Even then it’s the kind of sleep that’s only on the surface, skimming the tops of your thoughts while your mind’s still working underneath. I know the feeling from when I used to sleep outside. Even if you dream, it just feels like you’re thinking.

Underneath the thin skin of dark we curl up in my bed like spoons, me and my baby sister Ruthanne. The room is blue and I can’t see, but I know it’s her: her hands are small like little kitten paws and her hair smells soft like baby sweat and laundry. It feels like corn silk on my lips. The dark is like a fort made of blankets, an envelope holding me inside. I’ve been in this exact same place before.

Light splits the door and then a shadow takes up everything. His big body gets between us, rough and hard like rocks: the baby smell goes and my nose fills with thick hot black air, so dirty I can’t breathe. My teeth hurt like something cracked them; I taste blood. And then I’m gone, fast, somewhere up near the ceiling, and the air opens up again.

I know Ruthanne’s air won’t open up, though. Not without me. She’s stuck there in the black rough sludge with him; she’s too little to get out. If I made myself sink I could stretch down and drag her up to the ceiling, and then she could breathe in too. But I don’t. I stay up above them where it’s cool and watch her drown.

The next morning the feeling of that dream stays in me way after I wake up and all I want is to watch TV or talk to someone, but I can’t. I don’t go meet Rob. I stay up in my room through ten thirty and eleven thirty and even on to one. It isn’t easy: last time I ate was breakfast yesterday, and I barely have enough junk left over to keep from getting sick. But I don’t want to see him. Actually, that’s wrong: I don’t care if I see him or not. I don’t want to see her.

Without me there he can’t keep her more than a couple days: there’s only so much one girl can do by herself, and I know he’s too protective of her to bring some stranger in. When they run out of options he’ll just send her away and make sure he knows where he can find her later. All I have to do is wait him out.

By two I’m sure Rob’s given up on waiting for me in the parking lot and I go down the ratty stairs. Outside the sun is way too bright, even through the smog; it forces my eyes open, pries my pupils wide. I don’t have any money.

Up on Hollywood it takes me half an hour to spange enough for a falafel. Hot sauce burns through my nose and I forget to chew. After I wipe my hands I realize I don’t have any place to go or anyone to go with. It’s the first time that’s happened in six months at least; it’s weird. For a minute I remember finding Eeyore in her school parking lot where I was selling weed; and then my first night sleeping out with her, how she trusted me to find a place for us to lie down safe, the stars reflected on her little-kid face, and then I push it away. I don’t even know why I remember that.

I figure as long as there’s nothing to do I might as well stay here a while with the change cup out. You never know. Eventually some guilty mom will feel so shitty for ignoring her own kids that she’ll flip me a buck, or some tourist will toss a quarter so he can say he did a good deed in the big city. You can see the “There but for the grace of God” in their eyes, those few that actually look at you. And then they drop a dollar in to make the feeling go away so they can keep on walking. I lean against the hard brick of the Fantasy Sleep Wear store, watch the feet crisscross in front of me and wait.

After an hour there’s four pennies in the change cup. I leave them on the sidewalk for someone to get lucky, and then start walking. I have to: without a fix or work or anyone to talk to, that dream from last night keeps rushing in to fill the space. Mostly it’s the feeling of it, the blue of the room and the pull downward toward the ugly bed, the knowing you can’t stop her drowning or else you’ll drown yourself. My mouth tastes sick. My head fills up with corn silk and diesel fumes. I don’t think of Ruthanne’s face, though. I just walk.

* * *

I wait another day before it’s safe to go back to work. It’s hard: I keep thinking about that fucking dream, using up my little tinfoil packet bit by bit, enough to keep the cramps away but never enough to sweep me clean. I get through it knowing she’ll be gone tomorrow and I can go back like normal to the eggs and junk and work and strangers, and forget again.

The next morning on my way down I feel relieved. At the bottom of the stairs Rob will be waiting: I’ll see him and go back to work and just be what I’m used to, quit sitting around thinking about Eeyore and goddamn Ruthanne. I know Rob’ll give me shit about the other day, me running out and hiding in my room, but it doesn’t really bother me. I think I just won’t answer.

He’s out there waiting, pissed; he stares me down when I walk out the door. “What happened to you?” he asks. I get out a cigarette.

He asks again, though, and doesn’t move to unlock the car, so I guess I have to say something. “I was sick,” I tell him.

“Yeah, I guess,” he goes.

“Yeah,” I say. He goes around to my door to open it.

We don’t eat. I guess it’s my punishment for playing hooky; I don’t really want to ask. On the way up to the Valley he keeps looking over at me like he’s checking something. I can see him from the corner of my eye. I watch the hills out the window all the way through Burbank, the signs tucked into different shades of green, palm trees and evergreens and weird tropical shit clumping together like we’re on some fucking island. I don’t know how they grow in so much smog.

Eventually the ground flattens out and turns to auto-body shops and brick and wire. The tires crunch on gravel and Rob parks the car. I’m sweating and I want to ask him for my shit up front, but he doesn’t owe me anything this time and I don’t want to push it. More than anything I just want things to be back to normal, traded off and evened out. After I work again it will be, at least sort of. I follow Rob in through the metal front door. Once we’re in he turns to me and goes “Think you can handle it this time?”

“Fuck off,” I say.

Then I see what he’s talking about. Eeyore’s still here. She’s off in the corner of the room, crouched over, picking at her nails. He’s got a little area set up for her, pillows and a dirty blanket, and her backpack’s stashed there too. It used to be all clean, brand-spanking new; now it’s patched up, stuffed full and the zipper’s broken.

She looks at me with those big wide spacey eyes; all the feeling of calm I had coming down the stairs at the St. Moritz this morning goes right away, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. I’m pretty sure if I try to work with her I’ll just throw up again, and there’s this weird hollow feeling in my chest that just gets bigger the more she stares at me and doesn’t talk. I keep seeing her face in the school parking lot, looking so different from the way it looks now; I want to get out of this room, back to where her eyes are the way I left them. But I can’t leave. If I do, that’s probably it for me with Rob, which means no more St. Moritz and no more junk from him.

It’ll all at least be easier if I get fucked up, I figure, so I turn away from Eeyore and holler off for Rob. If he’s gonna make me work with a twelve-year-old he can at least help me out a little. Besides, I haven’t asked him for anything in three days.

“Where’s my shit?” I ask when he comes strolling over. He squints like he’s trying to figure me out, but I just act like it’s normal. “Where is it?”

“That’s not our deal,” he goes. “I always give it to you after.”

“And I always work with girls who aren’t underage,” I tell him. “It’s against the law, you know.” I smile.

He’s massively pissed off. He knows I’ve got him, though. He tries to think of an argument but he can’t; if I called the cops he’d be in way more trouble than me. Finally he goes “Oh, fucking fine. Just wait here half an hour. I’ll be back.”

“You’re out?” I ask. He must’ve given it all to Eeyore.

“Yes, I’m fucking out. Just stay here.”

“Okay,” I go.

Once he slams the door behind him I turn around to Eeyore. My heart is beating really fast; it’s weird. “So are you gonna talk to me?”

She just looks at me with her saucer eyes again. I can tell she’s fucked up. She never used to get high and she’s not handling it well; Rob probably shot her up so she’d stay. My chest feels sort of soft and sick; I just want her to say something. Finally I pick up her backpack, say “Come on” and lead her out the door.

I’m not sure where I think we’re going. I don’t know my way that well; I’ve never been around here on foot. It’s just warehouses and lots, pretty much, nowhere to duck in and hide. I get us away from Rob’s as fast as I can, since I know he’ll be coming around in his car and if he runs into us he’ll kick my ass. I don’t even know what I’m doing. It’s not like I’m running away; I have to go back to him for my shit eventually. I just knew Eeyore wasn’t going to talk to me in there, and I couldn’t stand to look at her and wonder how she got that way. I have to ask her questions.

Finally we turn about twelve corners and we’re in a neighborhood of houses. Most of them are beige. There’s a little alley between two yards; it’s probably someone’s property but it’s all paved and broken glass; I’m sure no one ever comes here but cats. I pull Eeyore in and sit her down. “So what the fuck happened to you?” I ask her.

She looks up at me like she’s afraid she’s in trouble. “What do you mean?” she finally stutters.

“I mean, how the fuck did you wind up here?” I almost ask her why she didn’t go home when I left, but I remember the answer to that. But you’d at least think she’d have another place to go, another person to fall back on, that someone would look out for her. When cops pull up their cars near me I know they’re just trying to meet their ticket quota for the day, but she’s the kind of kid that’s young and cute and clean enough that cops assume you’ve got a family, pick you up and bring you back to Child Services. The kind of kid that grown-ups care about.

“Well, after you left I couldn’t go home,” she says, and gives me this look like I know what she means, and I do, and she waits, like maybe I’ll jump in and hold her hand or something, and I don’t, so she goes on.

“I met those guys—you know, the ones we saw across the street that time—” I know she means Critter and Squid “—and then this guy Rusty started hanging out with us, and it was pretty cool for a while, and Critter, which was one of those guys across the street, was my really good friend—” and her face gets all red. “Then this asshole guy Scabius came around—” she goes.

I stop her. “What?” I ask. I can’t believe it.

I can’t believe a lot of things. I can’t believe she’s up here in the first place, and I can’t believe nobody stopped for her, and I can’t believe she sounds the way she does, all gravelly and scratched-up and tired and cold. I can’t believe she was out on my sidewalks with everyone I knew and I didn’t even know it, and I can’t believe she’s blushing about Critter, and especially I can’t believe she fucking hung around with Scabius. That fuck.

“Yeah, he was super mean,” she says. “He had bright orange dreadlocks and a bull ring through his nose and all these freckles everywhere—”

“Yeah, I know,” I say, just so she’ll stop describing him.

All of a sudden her eyes get a lot less spacey. “What do you mean, you know?”

I don’t feel like explaining so I just say “I’ve met that guy before.”

“Oh,” she goes, like she’s expecting me to go on. I don’t.

“Yeah, so him and me sort of hooked up,” she finally says, her eyes on the gravel, “and then we kind of had this fight, and he told me to go home . . . I don’t know.” She trails off.

I just look at her. My skin is itchy and my back’s starting to sweat. “Yeah?” I say.

“Yeah, but I couldn’t go home. But he said to leave, so—”

“Why’d you do what he told you to?”

She looks at me with this dumb dog face, like she’s never even considered she had any other option. “Umm— I don’t know,” she finally goes. “It was kind of like I had to.”

“Why?” I ask her.

“I don’t know,” she says, and I can tell she wants me to lay off. But I don’t want to. I’m not sure why. There’s just this feeling pushing me: I’m mad; maybe not at her, but she’s the only one around.

“Well, there must’ve been a reason.” I sound like someone’s parents.

“I don’t know, okay?” I still don’t look away. “I guess I thought if I didn’t do what he said he would hurt me or something.”

“Did he hurt you?” I ask her. Now my cheeks are hot.

“I don’t know. Sort of,” she says. “Plus Critter was gone—”

“Where was he?”

“I don’t fucking know, okay? Why are you asking me all these questions?”

I can’t answer. Seeing Eeyore in the first place makes me feel all soft and nervous, like an almost guilty kind of sick, and then there’s this mad on top of it, this angry which isn’t really at her, I don’t think, but it’s coming out that way. The whole thing is fucked, the way she wound up with them and then out here, so close to me, when I only knew her for a couple weeks a couple months ago. It’s like she’s following me or something, and I don’t want her to. I want her to go somewhere else, somewhere better, away from me. But she keeps tracking me, tracing a trail back to the places that I left before. It’s pissing me off. I closed a box of broken cheekbones and brick walls when I left those guys and she’s opening it back up, dragging me close to them when all I want to do is get away. Especially from Scabius. I don’t know what she was doing near him and I don’t know what he did to her and imagining it makes me feel like I’m drowning. When she says his name I can see his ugly face inside my head and feel his nasty breath. “Whatever,” I go. I don’t want to fucking talk about it anymore.

I walk her back to the studio and leave before Rob gets back. I say I’m going to run an errand. I don’t know where I’m going or why; I don’t have a ride and I don’t try to get one. I just walk: past more beige houses and concrete buildings, barbed wire and broken glass, till the lawns stop being yellow and the houses turn orange and green. They go on forever, shiny minivans in driveways, front yards full of plastic toys. The first thing you see in all the windows is the big TV. Some houses have kids in them; in one I see two girls jumping on a couch. My eyes sting.

When it starts to get dark I’m still up by Burbank but I keep walking anyway; I still don’t try to get a ride. I can’t stop moving. I cross over to Cahuenga and follow it down beside the 101, headed toward Hollywood, the only other place I know. My feet start to hurt and it blends in with the rest of the bad feelings in my body: I haven’t shot up in almost a day. The mad feeling from before keeps rolling over itself in my head, picking up speed and size like a snowball. I’m not going to sleep tonight. The streetlight glow replaces the sun and cars start to slow down when they pass me. I keep my eyes straight ahead.

By the time I hit Franklin Ave, it must be four a.m. My stomach is growling but I’m sicker than I am hungry so I don’t stop. When I hit the turnoff toward the St. Moritz I think about sheets and sleep for a second but keep going instead, down the seven blocks to Sunset, and then turn left, past the iPod billboards and the post-production suites, the construction site and Winchell’s Donut, back toward Goodwill and the Dollar Chinese and Benito’s, where I first brought Eeyore from her school, the other way from where I left her sleeping when I went to Venice. The sky looks the same as it did when I left her: the blackest it ever gets out here, when everything’s closed but the all-night stores, and the sun hasn’t started to push up from under the horizon. I waited till the darkest part of night, when there was nothing that could move and wake her up; I brought her to Whole Foods, where I knew that she’d find breakfast, and I touched her hair at sunset till her breathing changed and she was dreaming, like I used to touch Ruthanne so she could sleep no matter what would happen in the dark. I had to go. My fever dreams were starting and I couldn’t find a fix to make them stop: she kept talking about her stepbrother, what he did to her, and it made me think of things I couldn’t think about. There was no way I could make it stop except to get away. I knew she’d be okay. Someone would find her and take her someplace safe, or else she’d stay and be protected; it would always be better for her than it ever was for me. She was different; she deserved it. She’d be fine without me. As long as she didn’t wake up till I was gone.

I head over to Benito’s like some fairy-tale lost girl, like if I follow the bread crumbs I’ll get back home. Which there’s no such thing as home, but I keep walking anyway. Bianca the trannie is at the counter on an orange stool, wearing leopard print, smearing lipstick on her tostada. Bianca hooked me up with junk a couple times; I haven’t seen her since before I went to Venice. I keep my head down and my hoodie up and rush around the corner before she can spot me, yell “Hey, mami” at me like I’m some pretty girl. I duck into the alley.

It’s dark, so it’s a minute before I see them. But then a piece of metal catches the streetlight, and when I see it flash I squint to make it out, and when I do I recognize Germ’s collar. I get closer. He’s curled up in a ball; I count four bodies around him, all of them, Rusty and Squid and Critter and Scabius.

What I should do is turn around. What I should do is turn around and walk away and leave, go west or north, to the hotel or the beach, anywhere except here with this closed box of ugly things. But I don’t. The snowball that’s been rolling over itself in my head spins downhill and the mad bursts through my veins like speed, all the way out to my fingertips, and I run toward them hard and fast, not caring if I wake them up, and when I get close enough I lift my boot back and swing it into Scabius. He’s sleeping on his side; I’m shooting for his balls but I get his gut instead. My steel toes curl him backward; it feels good. His eyes fly open and he tries to yell but the air’s knocked out of him. Then he looks up and sees where it came from.

At first his eyes narrow and his nostrils flare, all pissed off and righteous, ready to hurt me back. But then something else crosses his face: something guilty and embarrassed, something that knows I know his secret. I smile down at him. I really feel like smiling. I cock my foot again and he flinches backward. I spit on him.

By now of course everyone else is up. Germ is panting, worst watchdog in the world, wagging his tail even though I just kicked the shit out of Scabius, and for all he knows I’m about to again. Squid’s rubbing his eyes, confused. Rusty’s leaned up against him, looking scared. “Hey, Tracy,” he says, kind of slow, like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to say it or not.

Then Critter sits up and drills his eyes into me. “Tracy,” he goes. “What the fuck are you doing?” Scabius is still on his side, clutching his gut; Critter slides in front of him, blocking me. I guess he doesn’t think I’d kick him too.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I say, and sneer at him. “I’m waking him up,” and scuttle sideways like I’m gonna kick again.

“Wait wait wait wait wait,” Critter goes, and holds his hand up; he thinks I’m freaking out. He doesn’t know I’m thinking clearer than them all. “Tracy, what’s going on?” He says it in a dad voice, trying to sound all calm, but I can tell by his eyes he thinks I’m shit. He looks back at Scabius like he’s handling me.

I pause; he thinks he’s winning. Then I shrug at him. “You know what? Fuck you, Critter. Don’t condescend to me.” There’s a half-empty Colt 45 bottle next to Squid’s pack. I reach down, grab its neck, and break it on the brick. Leftover beer spills on my hand; it’s cold. I shake it off.

I take a step toward them. Scabius has his breath back now and he gets up. Critter stands up too, staying close between us. It’s funny: he’s protecting Scabius from me. I watch them for a second, and I can see the whole thing: how they look out for each other, keep each other safe, so it can all keep on going along. Scabius can rape girls in alleys and Critter gets to hit them in the face, and nobody ever has to pay for any of it because when it all comes down they’ve got each other’s back. Like someone’s fucking parents. It’s sick.

I look at Scabius. “You shit,” I say, and then I spit on him again. “You’re disgusting, you know that? I should rip apart your fucking face.” I’ve got the bottle in my hand, cold and sharp, and I hold it up. He cowers. I can tell he wants to tear back into me but he knows he can’t. He’s too afraid I’ll tell.

“God, you’re such a pussy,” I say. “Hiding behind big strong Critter, huh? Won’t even come out from behind him.” I laugh at him and look him up and down. I know that’s what he hates the most: being treated like a girl. “You’re just his bitch.”

Then Critter gets up in my face. “Fuck you, Tracy,” he says. His face is red. “He’s my fucking friend. Which is something you obviously don’t understand.”

I snort at him.

“What?” Critter goes. “It’s true. You’ve never had a friend in your life. All you do is use everyone and run off when you’re done.”

My grip on the bottle gets tighter and my eyes fill up at the corners. It stings; I blink and tears spill on my cheeks, itchy and hot. Critter sees and rips in harder. “We all see through your bullshit,” he says. “You just take whatever you can get. You don’t know what it means to care about someone. That’s why you always leave.” His face is smug, like he knows everything, like he’s standing on high ground and he’ll never get dirty or wet. “Scabius is my friend. That’s better than you’ll ever be.”

“Yeah?” I say. I stop for a second and look at all of them. Squid and Rusty are still sitting down, watching. I can see the threads that tie the four of them together, like a spiderweb, sticky and thin and so much more fragile than any of them know. All the little assumptions that keep them from splitting up or crashing down, balanced on each other, teetering, and I know I’m about to pull the rug out, unravel all the threads. I give it one more second, watching how it all fits together: Squid’s above-the-fray silence, Rusty’s quiet scared, Critter’s big-daddy self-righteousness, and Scabius’s fucking dirty lies. Then I pull it apart.

“He’s your friend, huh?” I don’t wait for an answer. “Well, guess what? Your friend threw your girlfriend up against a wall and raped her while you were off trying to score.”

I just let it sit there. No one says anything. Squid and Rusty both hold their breath and look up at Scabius, I guess to see if it’s true. Scabius looks like he did just after I kicked him, slouched down and caved in without any breath. Then he catches himself, stands up and squares his shoulders. “That’s bullshit, man,” he goes.

I fix my eyes on him. “It’s bullshit?” I say. I stare him down. Tears are streaking down my cheeks but I don’t care. “It never happened?” I want to kick the shit out of him, but I stay steady. “A block away from here, in the alley by El Centro, by the Dumpster in the afternoon, it never happened?”

I stay on him to make him answer. Everyone’s eyes are on him now; Critter too. Finally he says “No,” so soft you can hardly hear it, his eyes flickering around, pointed at the ground.

“You want to look at me and tell me that?” I ask, but I’m not asking. He doesn’t say anything. “Or them, maybe,” I say, nodding to the other guys. “Maybe you should tell them. Or maybe you should tell them how you did it to Eeyore too.”

His eyes snap up at me and he starts stammering. “No way, man,” he goes, backing up. “I never did that.” Everyone’s staring at him. He looks at Critter. “I fucking promise, man,” he goes. “I never did that. I never touched—”

By the look on Critter’s face I can tell he knows that’s not true. “You sure?” I interrupt Scabius. Nobody even asks how I know Eeyore; they just accept it. I don’t have to explain myself. I feel like a cop. It feels good.

“Okay, well, fine, we hooked up, but that was because of her, man, she started it, you saw that”—he says to Critter, and Critter closes his eyes for a second to say yes— “but I never did what she’s saying, we just hooked up, that was it, I swear.”

“Why’d she leave, then, Scabius?” I ask him.

“What?” he goes, stalling. I roll my eyes. “I don’t know, man, she left because—I don’t fucking know! Ask her!”

“Yeah, well, I would, except she’s busy turning tricks up near Toluca Lake, you fuck, because of whatever you did to her to make her leave.”

Squid’s already packing up his backpack, putting on Germ’s leash; he’s out. “That’s fucked up, man,” he says, but not loud enough to start a fight, and then he turns to Rusty. “Wanna go?” he asks him. Rusty looks like he’s torn in half.

He turns up to me like he’s asking permission. His hand is clutched around Squid’s backpack strap, making sure he can’t leave without him. I can tell he believes me, and I know he wants to stay and tell me that, or yell at Scabius, or talk to me, or something. But I can also tell that would mean admitting that he knew me before, back in Venice. It’s obvious he’s never told them that. And I guess I understand: telling them would mean explaining what he was doing over there, and I know he can’t. And it’s obvious he wants to be with Squid. So I just say “Go ahead.” He sort of flinches, embarrassed that I could tell what he was asking without him even saying it, embarrassed that he’s leaving. I won’t tell him it’s okay, because it’s not. But I say “Go.” And he looks at me for one more second, and then he gets up, and him and Squid leave with the dog.

Scabius watches them go, glad I’m paying attention to someone else, I’m sure. But it’s dark so they’re out of sight fast, and then there’s nowhere to look but back at me.

He gets all hard, turning his face to a shell, but I can see it’s sick and rotten underneath. I don’t want to fucking talk to him anymore. I turn to Critter.

“You know what happened. Okay? I told you. So don’t tell me how he’s your fucking friend, and how he cares about you so much, and all that shit. He raped your fucking girlfriend. Not to mention your twelve-year-old friend or whatever who obviously worshipped you. And I don’t see you doing anything about it. So don’t tell me about using people and leaving them alone.”

“She’s lying, man,” Scabius says. His eyes are jumping all over the place again. “You know she’s fucking manipulative, man. Don’t get sucked in.”

I can’t even say anything to that. I’m not going to argue with him. I don’t have to prove shit to Critter; if he wants to believe Scabius, there’s nothing I can do. And all of a sudden the whole thing lifts off of me; the push drains from my veins and I feel light, like I’m filled with air instead. “Fuck you both,” I say, and then I turn and walk away and leave them there, Scabius lying and Critter trying to decide whether to believe him, even though the truth is completely fucking obvious.

“Tracy,” Critter calls after me when I’m halfway to the street. I don’t turn around. I just keep walking toward the fluorescent light of the all-night donut shop, broken bottle still gripped tight in my hand.

I turn the corner sharp out of the alley. Blood rushes through my veins like wind; I didn’t notice how hard my heart was beating. When I come up to Benito’s, Bianca’s still there, all pockmarks and purple lipstick, high-up tits and leopard print. This time she sees me before I can duck away. “Hey, mami,” she goes, exactly like I knew she would, and I can’t pretend not to hear her.

“Hey,” I go, hoping that’ll be the end of it.

“Where’s your friend?” she asks me, and I think she must mean Critter. The whores all think he’s cute.

“You can have him,” I go. “He’s a fucking asshole. Have fun.”

“Damn, who’s he and what’d he do to you?” She laughs and bites into her burrito. “No, I mean that little one, mami.

With the purple hair. Last time I saw you she was following you everywhere, and now you all alone. Where’d you put her?”

“I didn’t put her fucking anywhere,” I say. It comes out hard. “What the fuck do you care, anyway?”

“She was just always hanging on to you and those stinky-ass boys, that’s all. And then I came back in town, she wasn’t around no more. That’s all I’m saying, damn.”

“Yeah, well, maybe she had someplace she wanted to go,” I say, and even as it comes out of my mouth I feel sick, not because I’m sober but because I know I’m lying. Eeyore didn’t have anyplace she wanted to go. That’s the whole fucking problem. The only place she wanted to be was with me, which I know because she told me, and I took off. I took off for Venice and I didn’t take her with me. I told myself I didn’t want to bring her into it, but really I just didn’t want to be reminded of the shit she made me think about. She kept talking about staring at the ceiling and hands that break you open and he started showing up inside my dreams again, my fucking dad, and Ruthanne still stuck back in that bed, all soft skin and closed eyes, and it bubbled up until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to go. I had to get away from the shit inside my head, my bedroom and the night sweats, and I didn’t take her with me, I just left her there. And now I’m leaving her again.

I look down at the bottle, still in my hand; it’s slippery with my sweat, wet against the hard cold, sharp at the edges.

I tuck it into the pocket of my hoodie, mouth end out, careful not to cut myself. “I gotta go,” I say, not looking at Bianca. “See you later,” even though I know I won’t.

“Guess I won’t look out for anyone no more,” she goes. I walk away. “Yeah, fuck you too,” she yells after me as I head east.

I get over to the 101 as quick as I can and stick my thumb out fast. I don’t want to risk walking: on foot, you can always turn around. But once you slam the door and slouch down in the passenger side you can’t get out. In a car you’re a part of what’s already moving, fixed in one direction, on your way to wherever the road dumps you. I get picked up by some guy in an Acura. He tries to talk to me. I look out the window and finger the glass in my pocket.

When he lets me off I don’t even close the door behind me, I just run. Trying to keep up with the highway. I go at least ten blocks before I’m out of breath; by the time I slow down I’m too close to turn back. It’s early still, probably six; the sun’s barely up but the trucks are out, backed up to the warehouses, beeping. I’m sure Rob’s still asleep.

I’m all ready to break in through the window but I try the door first and it’s open. How stupid can you get? The hinges creak when I push it; steel scrapes against the concrete floor, but I go slow so they won’t hear. Rob’s got his mattress laid out between the door and Eeyore’s corner, like he’s guarding her or something. He’s on his side, in his clothes still, drooling on the pillow. I’m just glad he’s not in bed with her.

I tiptoe over to the corner. Eeyore’s curled around her backpack, clutching it to her chest like a teddy bear. I watch her breathe for a minute, black-rimmed eyelids casting shadows on her sunken cheeks. That first morning I left, she looked like a baby: chubby face, bow mouth with the pin through it. Now she’s a husk. I touch her hair. This time it wakes her up instead of putting her to sleep. Her eyes flutter open and she startles to see me; “Shh,” I say, right before she talks. “Put your backpack on and be quiet,” I whisper. “You’re getting out of here.”

“Where?” she says, still bleary.

I hadn’t thought of that. “Somewhere better” is all I can come up with.

She rubs her eyes and wakes up more; then she looks over at Rob. “I don’t know,” she says.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? I’m getting you out of here. Come on.”

“But what about you,” she whispers back. “Rob told me you need the drugs. You’ll just come back without me later and keep everything for yourself.”

I can’t tell her it’s not true. It probably is. But I just know I have to get her out. “It doesn’t matter what I do,” I say. “Come on. You shouldn’t be here.”

She looks at me for another second that stretches on and on and on. Half of her is with me out the door; the other half’s stuck in a habit, poured into a groove, curled up here with Rob. I can practically see the line traced down the middle of her. I know if I say anything it could push her either way. I just stare back at her. I don’t look away.

Finally she whispers “Okay” and starts to lift herself up. My whole chest fills with relief.

I’m still crouched down, squatting, and she leans on my shoulder to stand. I lose my balance; the bottle drops out of my pocket and clinks on the concrete floor. I flinch. Rob’s up right away.

He doesn’t talk; just turns toward the noise and sees us. He can tell I didn’t come back here to work. He looks at Eeyore’s zipped-up backpack and the blankets thrown off, and heads right in our direction. Eeyore crouches down, knees tucked into her chest. I start to get up, moving slow so Rob won’t pounce. I squat on my heels, one hand back toward Eeyore and the other held out in front of me like Critter when he was trying to calm me down. I smile. “It’s cool, man,” I say.

He doesn’t care. “You’re not taking her,” he says.

I’ve had this hot feeling beneath the middle of my chest since Hollywood, right above the sick. Now it hammers like a heartbeat, hard enough to move my skin. I stop worrying about whether or not I’m going to turn around; I’m moving now, on a highway headed somewhere I can’t stop. I swallow hard. “Fuck you I’m not,” I say.

I’ve always kept up my end of the trade-off with Rob, known the rules and stayed inside them. With guys like him, as long as you do that you’re pretty much safe, and as soon as you stop it they snap. Eeyore’s foot moves away from my hand; I hear cloth scrape on concrete. I glance over my shoulder, see her huddled in the corner, as far away as she can get without running. I slide sideways in front of her, scoop the bottle up and slide it back into my pocket too fast for Rob to see.

He’s right above me now, breath sour: I can smell it even from down on the floor. Sweat rides his forehead like a wave; his face reddens. Eeyore presses back against the wall. She’s never seen him mad. I stand up, blocking him.

He pauses for a second, weighing whether to push me or tell me to move. I almost shove him to the side and run, but I stop: I don’t know what he keeps in his pocket, and by the time I could grab Eeyore he might hurt both of us. I have to do something, though, or else he’ll just push past me to Eeyore and that’ll be it.

Before he can move I reach my hand down, slip my finger in his belt loop, pull him toward me. I hold him there, his zipper pressed against my stomach; I blink my eyes up at him slow, turn them into magnets, curl my lip into a smirk. I’ve done it so many times I can slip it on like clothes. It always works: they never see the sick beneath that face, or the nauseous, or the hate. All I have to do is slide my tongue across my teeth and they think it’s the truth.

In my head I say to Eeyore, Run. I say it so loud it hurts inside my ears but she doesn’t hear me, just stays stuck to the concrete wall, curled in around herself, too scared to move. I pull Rob closer, finger locked in his jeans, buying time; his eyes dart back and forth from me to Eeyore, speeding up, and then they fix on me. I can tell he half knows what I’m doing and it makes him mad, but he still likes it. I lick my lips. He gets that lost-animal look I know from Critter and so many other guys, when they can’t tell whether to fuck you or hit you. Really they want both at once, but they think they have to choose. And the hit her wraps the fuck her like a rope, pulls tight enough to make their brains go red like tied-up flesh; they keep trying to untie that rope inside their heads when really all they want is it to pull until it cuts the circulation off. That’s what that look is. You usually wind up getting the punch in the face.

He yanks away and hits me. For a second everything is black and sharp and wide and I almost fall backward, but my hand stays in my pocket on the glass.

I stagger forward, squinting through the spots in my eyes; when I get close enough I raise my arm and bring the bottle down across his cheek. It opens like a faucet. It’s amazing how much faces bleed. He clutches his hand to the cut and blood pours through his fingers, soaking the floor. Now I say it out loud. “Run,” I yell at Eeyore. “Get the fuck out of here.”

She’s still standing there, holding on to her backpack like it’s her only friend. “Are you coming?” she says. “I’m only going if you come with me.”

I don’t answer. I just grab her by the hand and drag her out.

Outside we run until we’re winded, past beige houses and the minivans. The whole time I keep her hand in mine, tight around her little fingers, afraid of where I’ll end up if I let go. When we cross the 101 and come up to Cahuenga she looks south toward Hollywood, all the places that we know. She slows down for a second, not knowing anyplace else to go, but I pull her arm and steer us past the turn and we keep moving east.

The roads start to slant up and curve, and we end up in those hills I always watch from the smog-cloaked highway, thick with palm trees and juniper, bougainvillea and figs. It’s green here and we wind up through the hairpin streets, passing signs for roads I’ve never heard of, dodging too-big cars snapped fast around corners, stumbling to the curb just in time. Where the hills get really steep the houses stop: the ground’s too sharp to build anything solid on, too rough to pour foundations, settle in. It’s just wild, the way that it’s supposed to be, snake vines strangling the cottonwoods, orange sand and gravel, broken glass. We turn off the street and scramble over wire fence and up the hill, tearing through the yucca like some kind of desert jungle, watching for poison ivy and burglar alarms, and the dust washes up on our jeans and turns us brown, and the hill’s so steep it’s almost like a mountain, and we climb, Eeyore and me, scraping our palms on the rocks and staying together.

When we get to the top we finally stop, panting, and the city spills out, water below us. The sun’s hot enough to burn off the smog and you can see between the branches all the way to the ocean, mountains ringed around the city like a moat, cars pulsing through highways like blood. Eeyore’s palm sweats into the lines in mine, and I can feel how soft the skin of her hand still is. I look at her; she doesn’t notice. Still catching her breath, she’s watching the canyon, her eyes little-kid wide at the hugeness of it.

“I used to come up here,” she says. “Before Brian . . . moved in. My dad would bring me up here after school and teach me the names of all the flowers. We used to live right down”—she squints and points with her free hand— “there.” I follow her finger down the other side of the hill to the house we broke into six months ago, white with a rust-colored roof, so close you can almost make out the doorway. “Or I mean, I used to. They still live there. I’m the only one that’s gone.”

The brand-new street-kid shell she’s grown is still fragile as a robin’s egg, too thin to hold the wet that’s welling up behind it. When she breathes out it starts streaking down her face and then she doubles over, fast, like someone knocked the wind from her. Suddenly she’s sobbing: tears hitting the orange dirt, turning it brown.

I crouch down next to her, breathe into her dirty purple hair. It’s weird to see a person cry—I can’t remember when the last time was—and even weirder to hold them while they do it. Her bones knock up against mine. She’s tiny beneath her sweatshirt. I don’t think I was ever that small.

After a minute the sobs slow down; she stops jerking in my arms so I don’t have to hold on so tight. All of a sudden my hands feel sharp and clumsy on her little body. She looks up at me, eyes shot through with red, chest caved in with the kind of tired that’s so huge you can’t let yourself feel it or else you’ll collapse. She’s so tiny. And I see it: it’s not just Rob she needs to get away from. She can’t do this.

“You’re going home,” I tell her.

Her eyes flash fast and hot with fear, but there’s something else behind them: a thing sort of like hope, or relief, or some other feeling I don’t really know the name of. Blood floods my face. “Listen.”

I make my eyes focused and straight, steady them on her. If I pause it’ll open up a hole she could fall into, so I talk fast. “You have to tell. Here’s what you do: you bring your dad up here and tell him what Brian did and that he has to make him leave. You just say it, just like that. Fuck Linda. Okay? Fuck Brian too. You don’t have to be out here anymore. You can go back home. You have to. It’s not safe out here for you.”

She looks up at me like some kind of baby animal waiting to get fed. She’s been hungry for too long, though; she’s not sure there’s food. She doesn’t talk.

“It’s hard out here, right?” I pick it back up, pull her along. I have to or she’ll fall. “Really fucking hard.” Her face answers yes. I nod. “Yeah. It’s too hard for you. You’re not like me; you don’t belong out here.”

It’s funny: the tougher she fights, the younger she sounds. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You don’t know what’s back there.”

“Yes. I do.” It comes out soft and still. “And there’s a million Brians out here. Down there, there’s only one.”

She breaks my gaze and glues her eyeballs to the dust. Shakes her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t.” Her chest hitches and her voice turns wet. “I can’t go back. They’re not gonna believe me.” There’s no question mark, but she’s asking.

“How do you know that? Have you tried?” It comes out hard. As soon as it’s out of my mouth I almost laugh—not like I tried. Not like I told. Not like I took my sister with me. I push it away. Eeyore’s different.

“I already know! Squid and I broke in. Linda caught us and he told her. She said he was lying.”

All of a sudden my breath goes shallow, panic flashes through. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe I’m lying and they won’t believe her. Maybe I should have left her where at least she had a roof. The thought burrows like a drill into my chest but I think It’s too late now. I’ve brought her halfway; I can’t leave her out here. And I can’t let her go back there. If it’s a lie I have to tell it. “But what about your dad? You never told him, right?” I say it with a question mark, but I’m not asking.

She opens her mouth to argue. I steel myself to fight back. It glints in my eyes, and when she sees it she folds in a flash. I’m so much harder than her, so much further down, and she is so, so tired. She breathes out and starts to cry again and shakes her head No. Now she’s in my hands. I run with it.

“Okay, listen,” I say, breathing in, making myself believe I’m pointing her the right way. Like hope, or faith or something, where you don’t really know it’s true but you reach for it anyway: you have to, just keep reaching out till your hands close around it. It’s so long since I’ve believed anything I can hardly remember how. “You have to try. I mean it. If you don’t, you’re gonna die out here.” That part I know.

“Come on.” I make my voice as solid as I can and stand up, holding out my hand. She’s clutching that backpack for dear life, face streaked, cheeks hot, eyes shining. Wind and traffic rustle through the bougainvillea. My lungs swell to hold the whole city, ten tons of purple smog, freeways reaching out like veins, like branches, like my hand stretching toward hers, waiting to see if she’ll reach back and take it.

She does.

I pull her up, brush the dust from her jeans, wipe her face with the bottom of my tank top. I pry the backpack from her grip and put it on her shoulders. Then I hold them hard and look into her face.

“Can you do it?” The sun stretches out between us, hot, sticking our shirts to our skins and our skins to each other.

She nods. “Yeah,” she says.

I wrap her hand in mine as we make our way down the other side of the hill, through the flowers she knows all the names of. “Tell me the names,” I tell her. “It’ll make you braver,” and she does. Agave, jimsonweed, jacaranda. Hibiscus, matilija poppy, phlox. Remembering the things she knows. Laurel sumac. Sage. She names them all as we skid down the steep dirt, keep each other from falling, past the heaped-up dangling jade plants, through the cactus and the thorns.

When we get to the asphalt she leads the way.

Fifty yards from the green-painted doorway I stop and turn to her, sweat and blood streaking my cheeks, and then pull her in, press my lips to her forehead, smooth like mine might’ve been some time I can only almost remember. I want to keep her here, with me, but more than that I want to keep her safe, and I know that those are two separate places, as close and far apart from one another as this sidewalk and that house. I spin her around, turn her back to me and push her forward, and she walks, pulling the key out of her pocket, and when she puts it in the lock and cracks the door my sick gets swallowed up by something bigger, and this place I’ve never been before feels more like home than anything I’ve ever known.