Running doesn't get easier.
Picking up and leaving every time he gets close is just as heart breaking as it was two years ago, when it all began.
I was thirteen then. Just a little girl with all the hope in the world.
What is he to me?
He is everything.
So why do I run?
I've found that bridges are the easiest. Not the warmest, not the most comfortable, but the easiest. You can tuck up into them, learn all their crevices, in less than twenty minutes, less than fifteen even if you're really in trouble. You have to get out of sight, is the thing. Cops know all the hideouts except bridges. Oh, they search them, of course. They search the main bits, the habitable places. Not the back though. Not the darkness. Not the moldy holes where the pigeons hide and the rats make rat babies and the trash from the highway rolls down when its windy and rots there when its not.
Did you know plastic never dissolves? It's not biodegradable. One day when the earth is old and dying and the sun is swallowing all that remains and our skeletons are cooking in its heat there will still be plastic, plastic, plastic, tumbling around in the dust.
It's warm today. Really warm. Not a good day to move, but the heat makes my hole smell and that smell sticks to my clothes and that makes me distinctive and that means people see and if people can see me he can find me.
He's a little piece of my past that makes my whole life worth living.
So why do I run?
Target bathrooms are the least judgmental places in the universe. I tried Wal-Mart, once, since their clothes are cheaper, but I got too many questions and too many looks and too many eyes peering into the handicap stall so I left and never went back. Now my sweatshirts are five dollars more but it's five dollars buying silence, buying solitude, buying nonexistence.
Half the time I'm not even cold. But I don't buy any other kind of top ever, unless it's ninety degrees and I'm actually truly baking inside my fleece prison.
My family tried to call once. The day after I left, I think. Maybe the second day. I heard the frantic scrabble of their combined voices over the receiver of a telephone in a gas station where I was buying food. I panicked and got out.
I heard sirens behind me for hours.
I learned then--never run from discovery.
Walk.
Slowly.
But surely, and never look back.
He saw me when I was nothing and then when I had it all.
So why do I run?
I've been walking for three hours today. It's hot, but nothing I haven't experienced before. I used to think a lot while I walked; wonder if I'd made the right decision, wonder what I was looking for, wondering where I was going. And then I'd remember, and then I'd cry, and then I'd hide, and then I'd get discovered by some friendly guy or homeless lady, and then they'd try to make me feel better, and then I'd almost let them in, so then I'd have to go. So now I don't cry. I don't feel anything, really. Feelings are just rubber bullets glancing off my soul, hollowly aching and then fading away.
I've been in Wisconsin for three days now. Thank God it's summer. It's hot, but it's better than freezing to death. Hot can be fixed with water. Cold can only be fixed with heat, which can be found inside, which is where people are, which is where I must never be.
He kept me warm. He wrapped me up in that big grey sweatshirt and we talked about it for hours.
A sweatshirt. We talked about a sweatshirt.
He let me keep it that night. I walked out to my dad's car after the party, all bundled up in the smell of him, and rode smiling all the way home.
I lost the sweatshirt. Someone stole it, some other girl. He said, OK. And it was OK. The girl wore it all the time, not realizing it wasn't mine, not realizing it meant so much to me.
It was the night he realized I was someone.
Or the night he told me about it, anyway.
So why did I run away?
You want to know why? You want to know what happened?
The dance changed everything.
One fateful night.
He loved me.
I know it.
I swear it.
And I loved him, too.
More than I could ever say.
I would have stayed forever with him.
It really is hot out here.
We got to the dance at the same time; neither of us could drive so we rode with our parents like the cool kids we were.
We walked in and heard the silent cheers. Homecoming king and queen--the rags-to-riches belle of the ball on the arm of everyone's favorite. I wore my brand-new dress; the sparkling blue one that forbade my hips to lie and matched the earrings he'd given me on our first date. He looks dazzling as always, skinny and smoky in his fitted black suit and the shirt he'd painstakingly coordinated to my dress. He couldn't tie a bow tie so it hung awkwardly at an angle, and I promised to fix it before our dance.
He was my everything. I looked at him and I could feel it; I could feel a million things so strongly all at once I thought I would explode.
And then he said it.
You know what he said?
It's really hot. I think I'll sit down for a bit. Here, under this bridge. It will be cool in the shade. It's dark and hazy, like my brain. I can't see the road too well. That's odd. Just have to sit for a few minutes.
My eyes. They don't seem to want to stay open. Come on. You can do it.
Sirens.
Sirens?
How long have I been here?
It's so dark. That's odd. It's summer. It's summer?
Why do I run?
Eyes
just
stay
open
