Abby sat at the end of the cot, cradling a styrofoam cup of coffee in her hands. She stared down at her shoes that had grown into a patchwork of duct tape to cover holes. Abby wondered how it was that her shoes had so many holes, yet the shoe laces were still intact with no frays and neatly tied. It was as if the manufactures had put more care into making the laces than they had the shoes. Someone on the cot next to Abby coughed. She turned to look at the mound of a person curled onto their side, then she looked up and around her. Most of the cots were occupied with maybe only one or two still unclaimed. She new there would be a fight over the few remaining cots what with the temperatures promising to drop below zero for the night.

Abby wasn’t sure she would consider herself lucky to have gotten the cot she was now sitting on. There was time she had slept on silk sheets piled with down comforters. If she closed her eyes, she could picture the lace pattern of the canopy above her old bed. Then she remembered the way it had appeared to melt when she had accidentally, on purpose, set it on fire. That had been the beginning of her end. After that, Abby shaved one side of her head and pierced her nose. Her mother, who was already furious over the whole bed canopy fire, had nearly exploded over Abby’s new look. Abby responded by rolling her eyes and then finding ways to avoid her mother. This hadn’t been too hard. Abby’s mother spent most of her time fixated on herself with her work outs, massages and face lifts. Abby hated how her mother fixated on the perfection of her body and how that fixation would sometimes spill over onto Abby’s body. Abby had hated a lot of things about her mother, but Abby had also hated every thing about her own life as well. School was the worst. All of the girls were the same vapid carbon copies of each other. The teachers were just as bad. None of them ever listened. No one in Abby’s life had ever listened.

Except Jared. He listened to Abby. Jared had made Abby feel seen, like she was someone special. Cool. He had paid attention to the things she said, how she railed against how fucked up society was and how she wanted to make really important art. Jared was the first boy to kiss her, to touch her. He taught her about sex and how to roll a joint. Abby had liked both of those things probably too much. One night, while they were high, Jared said that they should just pack a bag and run off. Abby thought about it for a hot minute before agreeing. She ran home, threw a bunch of things into a bag and left with Jared thinking she would never look back. The next five years had been a blur of bus stations, alleys and drugs. At first Jared had told her that they would get jobs and find an apartment. They hitchhiked to Chicago where Abby found a job at a fast food place. Jared found them a place to stay in an abandoned building. Abby worked all day frying things in a deep fryer. She came home smelling like hot oil and Jared would be laying on the bed they had made from an old mattress, the needle resting on the floor where he’d let it drop. When he’d finally come to, he’d ask Abby for her paycheck and then get mad at her when she’d tell him no. He’d yell and throw things. A few times he hit her. Every time he took the money from her bag any way.

All of Abby’s money went to drugs. She used Jared’s leftovers when she could. Then Abby started stealing food from work. She managed to get away with it for over two weeks before the manager caught on. The manager told her she could keep her job for a blow job and he’d let her keep the food that went into the garbage at nights. Abby was surprised by how numb she felt when she agreed to the manager’s terms. She needed money and food. So what if she had to suck this creep’s dick. Of course it wasn’t just a blow job. That one act turned into multiple acts, each more degrading than the other. Then one day she came home from work to find the building they had been living completely boarded up with signs posted for demolition. Abby pried off a board near the back of the building and climbed in one of the many broken windows. Jared was gone, along with all of their belongings. He did not leave a note. Abby roamed the city parks and alleys looking for Jared that first night. By the second night, she realized that she was on her own. No Jared. No clothes. No drugs. No place to sleep. Abby dragged a box into the alley next to the fast food place where she worked and slept there until she was discovered a week later, again by the manager. This time, the manager tired of Abby showing up late and dirty, fired her. Now Abby had no job.

Sitting on her cot with a now cold cup of coffee, Abby realized that she should have never listened to Jared. She thought that maybe she should call her mother. Maybe she should just try to go home, back to her old room with silk sheets and comforter on the bed and lace curtains. She thought about her collection of plastic ponies lined up neatly on a shelf in her room. Abby hadn’t touched them in ages, but now she had the strongest desire to brush each one’s hair with a tiny comb. She wanted feel the soft carpet of her bedroom under her bare feet. Abby wanted to be home.

Maybe she would call her mother.

Maybe.