SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

IGNITION

Somewhere between the train and Washington Point, I stop thinking. I don't remember putting one foot in front of the other, don't remember twisting the doorknob and stepping foot in the apartment. I remember Lin telling me to go lay down on the couch, that Vanessa will make me some tea with honey and lemon. He wants me to rest.

I fall asleep before Vanessa makes the tea. No dreams. When I wake, the living room is gray and the blinds are shut. The digital clock on the bookshelf says 11:34 AM. Lin and Vanessa must've taken Sebastian to daycare and gone to work. The Mirandas must have some internal radar that tells them whether or not I can stand another day of Wilmington. They let me blow school enough. Tobillo scampers over to the couch and sniffs my knee. I shove it away and head to the kitchen for some breakfast.

The day's agenda hits me as I scrape the last bit of peanut butter from the jar with a spoon. Breakfast, then shower, then nap, then lunch. Lunch, then homework, then feed Tobillo at 2:00. Feed Tobillo, settle in for nap #2. Lin will be home by the time I wake up, he'll probably pick up Sebastian on the way back, and...

And...

I'm alone.

I chuck the empty jar into the corner of the counter and rush to the guest room. I'm alone. There's no one to tell me not to snoop around in Lin's office, no one to enforce the grounding I received after punching The Doctor. I open the closet and rifle through the rack of clothes. This is my chance to kickstart Operation Pakistan, get these gears turning. I throw my old hoodie over my t-shirt, the hoodie I wore the day I came to live here. Objective: tickets. That's what I need. I need tickets, and before I can purchase tickets, I need money. I already have $150 worth of Christmas money I saved, $50 from my birthday, and the $50 I stole from Gracie. Once I scrounge together the down payment, I'd have to transfer the cash to a credit card so I can the buy the ticket online. A plane ticket to Pakistan costs $1,704. I remember the price from when I snooped around JFK's website on Lin's computer.

I hitch up my Macys jeans and pace the length of the guest room. How can I scrape together $1,654?

Macys.

Macys.

That's it. Macy's doesn't have a return policy. I dash to the closet and sift through the hangers, pull out all the clothes Vanessa bought me back in January. A floral blouse, a frilly skirt-- when would I wear this garbage, anyway? I throw the clothes on the bed in a pile. I never removed the price tags. I lace up my boots, bundle the clothes in my arms and bring them out to the living room. I dump them on the coffee table, grab my metro card from the kitchen drawer, and grab my jacket from the coat closet.

The clothes will get me at least $200. That leaves $1454 for me to scrape together and three more hours to do it.

The trip to Macys is a five block walk. The automatic doors whoosh open and close the moment I step over the threshold. The store looks the same as it did in January: isles and isles of plastic clothes, and hundreds and hundreds of plastic girls with plastic hands dealing cash handed to them free by their Precious Parents. I haul the bags through the shirts section, the pants, the bras, and the makeup, avoiding the salespeople jumping in my way with perfumes to test. I see it in the distance over the racks: the checkout area, the cashiers ringing up items mechanically, sliding them along the register.

The line wraps around a few racks of clothes. When I get to the front, I dump the bags on the counter and tell the employee that the sister I bought them for died before I could give them to her.

"Sorry to hear that." She tucks the bag beneath the counter and scribbles something on one of the tags. "Do you have a parent with you, or..."

"The grief is too much for them," I tell her. "They don't leave the house."