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Later—hours? minutes? days?—I wake, reach for my notebook and write on the light blue lines.

S
omething presses against my bladder. Blade? Gun? Nothing so dramatic. I need to pee. I consider my options. I can let go and flood the sheets. But that warmth will turn cold, Snap!

I crack one eye and look around. The safe house is hella small. Last night, it looked vast. Last night, or the night before last night? In daylight, it’s a tiny, one-room studio.

A cluster of sleeping forms cover the floor. Good. I won’t meet anyone. I roll over, swing my legs off the side and … Nothing. Air. I’m confused. Then I remember. I’m on a bunk bed. My need to pee trumps my fear of heights. I climb down.

Ground level, I remember Marci said, “The bathroom’s by the front door.”

A cardboard square with hand-lettering hangs on a string draped over the knob. OCCUPIED. Damn! I gotta pee. I hop, tightening my pee muscle. Ear to door, I hear shower water. Squeak. Off. I knock, and whisper, “Hi?”

The door swings open. White steam rushes out. This happens as if by magic. Coz I don’t see anyone. A figure emerges from the steam. A slim Eurasian boy, hair slicked back and towel wrapped around his tiny waist.

“Yes?” His voice is laced with contempt. He
radiates
hostility. Awww, hate at first sight. Whereupon “Ben” meets Mean Asian Gay Boi.

“I need to
go.
”

He steps to the side. A little bit. I try to squeeze by without touching his wet, muscular hatred. I lift the toilet seat and—re-lief! Firefighter, I aim. Pee gushes out.
Whomp, whomp, whomp!
But the sound’s wrong. Instead of hitting water, the pee bangs turds. Eww. Someone forgot to flush. And the water must be warm. It stinks. I reach for the knob.

“
Don’t,
” Eurasian boi says. I look back. He’s dropped the towel. I can’t help but stare. His naked body’s off-the-hook
gorgeous.
Water droplets tumble off his dark gold skin, tiny jewels.

I turn back to the john. Look. Someone’s stale junk’s still in there. Give me a break. I reach—

“No! It’s not time.”

“Time for what?”

“If we flush too much, we run up the water bill. The landlord will figure out seven people live here.”

“Oh.”

He steps into a pair of tight briefs, pulling them up, over his lean, muscular legs. The waistband hugs his tiny hips and looks like a cinched ribbon. He looks me in the eye, shoves his hand down the front and arranges his package. His goodies look like a big, balled-up fist. There’s not enough steam to hide my embarrassed face.

“Can I take a shower?”

“‘Course.”

“Are there any clean towels?”

“Sure.” His eyes flicker, down, at the towel on the floor. “You can use mine.”

His attitude, voice and girlie gestures remind me of the queeny boys at Serenity Ridge. Their attitude was, “If you don’t like it,
fuck you,
I’m a bitchy girl. If you don’t like it, hand me that knife. Coz I’m gonna stab yo’ face.” The counselors left them alone. But whatever. I’m not about to use someone’s towel, especially when I see … (light brown) scootch marks?

I return to bed, climb back up top. Back to dreamtime. I’m an honorary Aborigine. Creating reality as I walk it. I step into the
room. The door muffles sound, seals out light, numbs feeling. Numb. Yes, I feel numb. That’s fine. But I can’t shake the nervous feeling. The presence of
one
Mean Girl suggests there will be others. I burrow, deep, into sleep. I want to avoid waking. They’re waiting. Catfights, claws, cuntiness. I’m a hot (tense) mess, even in my sleep.

“W
ass’up?” and “Muthafucker
don’t!
” I lie there, silently listening to the verbal IMs. The safe house doesn’t just smell like junior high school, it sounds like one, too. I bury my head under a pillow. Silence, sleep, where-forartthou? The voices persist.

“You escaped?” A finger jabs my ankle. “Yo! Yo! Yo! I’m Peanuts. And I
know
yous awake.”

Peanuts. Aiight. Yous a hims or a hers? A hes or a shes? A s / hims or a s / hes? Yous name doesn’t give mes any clue as to whos the hells or whats
yous
is. My head rolls to the side. I crack my right eye. Peanuts. Like the social worker, like Marci, Peanuts arrives armed with questions I don’t want to answer. I want shut-eye. I glare, Skippy Peanut Butter, be gone! S / he doesn’t budge.

“Yo! Dolls! Yous just escape?”

Yeah, dolls, yous fishing. I’m not biting.

“I had hella lotsa g.f.s. See, I was in this state hospital, right? They put me in there ’cuz I’m butch. Yous know what that is?” Then, Peanuts makes a weird hand signal that’s either gang related or ASL. Maybe s / he shouts ’cause s / he’s deaf? Peanuts seethes, ghetto as … TV. “My homies
so
scared a me.”

I knew it. I should have jumped out the van and ran. I could have lived on toilet paper. Stayed in the bus station bathroom
stall. Bathed with liquid hand soap. Currently, I’ve been abducted and am being held by gang of deaf gay bangers.

“Everybody!” Marci says. “This is Ben.”

Fuck, I’ve been called out. Officially. Can’t hide, can’t sleep. I roll my head and face the room. Sunlight lines jabs the cracks in the tarp-covered windows. The floor is empty, sleeping bags rolled up, mattresses stacked against the wall. I face the firing squad. Six—seven?—faces look up, all at moi. I wave. “Hola, amigos.”

Marci stands next to a Tall Black Girl. T.B.G.
almost
looks like that biatchy TV supermodel. T.B.G. wears a Catholic schoolgirl (pleated) miniskirt, knee-high boots and white dress shirt. Shirt open to the belly button, her twenty-six pack abs pop, black against the starched white material. Her long hair, pulled back into a ponytail, is held back by pink, baby girl bar-rettes. She tilts her head down, blinks and flashes a brilliant movie-star smile. “Hello, I’m Ahh-nee-tah.
Fixx.
”

I’d title her trans-channel-movie-of-the-week special,
High School Honors Student by Day, Castro Street Hooker by Night, I’ma Teenage Trans.

“We met.” Mean Girl-Eurasian boy smirks. “
Kidd.
”

Yeah, Queen, I’ll say we “met.” And you forgot to flush. Next!

There’s a radiant sun beside Kidd’s Death Star. Two pink, perfectly shaped lips have been placed, perfect, on the handsome face. Muscles. Blue eyes. Cue cliché, “Love at first sight.” Pink lips move, and the man beauty speaks, “Hammer.”

Hammer’s an All-American Skinhead. Or, the President of the Aryan Youth Nation. His head glows, a spray of gold fuzz. Hammer takes Anita’s hooker look a step further: He’s shirtless. A thirty-six pack ripples under his tight, smooth skin. All these six packs. Maybe I’ll catch one. The way people do the flu.

I stare. Nobody seems to mind. Maybe the safe house is also a nudist colony. Hammer poses, flexing. His melon-sized biceps pop, tiny waist cocks to the side, abs rippling the gold happy trail. My eyeballs are stuck on his tiny blue running shorts. He
could be the model on an enormous Times Square billboard. Hammer, oh ye of the spandex boxer briefs, here’s my heart. Smash it.

Hammer rolls his head, neck muscles doing the sexy man dance. His mouth falls open and gives me a wide angle view: perfect, straight white teeth and deep throat. Done, he looks at me and … winks.

Hidden behind Hammer’s stunning stray (straight-gay: no one
that
good-looking could be gay), there’s a girl.

“Hi, I’m Alice,” she whispers. “I mean, Nadya.”

Alice / Nadya has pink hair and creamy white skin. Light catches the Star of David hung on a gold chain. Little Miss Identity Crisis looks like a Popsicle.

“J.D.?” Marci asks. I wonder if J.D. is (a) male (queer, potential boyfriend), (b) female (dyke, B.F.F. material), (c) Trans, or (d) gender indeterminate (Peanuts).

“Hiding under the bottom bunk,” Anita says.

“No, smoking,” Kidd says.

Marci walks toward me. She holds up a plate. On it, a muffin.

I shake my head. Just the
idea
of food makes me ill. A second girl steps out the kitchen doorway. She could be Alice / Nadya’s sister: She’s also pale with bleached blond hair. But unlike Alice / Nadya, there’s nothing shy about her. She walks to the bunk and holds up a coffee cup. Another temple offering. Am I the fifteenth Dalai Lama?

“I figured you for one cream and no sugar except—that’s my name. So I gave you one blue.”

Sugar’s Riottt Girrlll punk ’do is at odds with her free love, Rasta hippy chick vibe. Large breasts dance, bra-free, under a sheer blouse. Smiling, she looks up at me, expectant. They all do. They expect me to speak.

“Later?”

Peanuts jumps off the ladder and “runs”—two steps—to-ward a dresser. “I have the bottom drawer ’cuz
I
have the top bunk.” Oh,
now
I grasp Peanuts’s interest in my sleeping patterns.
The sooner I get up, the sooner s / he can reclaim the top bunk.

“The window,” Marci says, “displaying” the tarp with arm gliding, baby dyke, game show hostess savoire faire. “There’s a fire escape outside—in case you need to leave.”

“Run hella
fast,
” Peanuts adds, “‘cuz the cops bust in. Wolf! Wolf! With Dawgs! The bitey breed.”

“Great,” I think. “Or, the Blue-Eyed Bathroom Rapist finds us and picks the lock.” I should get up and leave. I hate dogs, especially the bitey breeds. Absentmindedly, my hand drops down and feels the bite marks. OMG, I bet it looks like I’m touching myself. I jerk my hand out.

“The only time I go outside is the roof,” Alice / Nadya says, speaking in a barely audible, little girl voice. She steps back, a visible disappearing act.

“That’s about half of us.” Sugar sips my coffee and makes a face. Eww. Later, I’ll tell her: I hate the Blue, too. “The other half stay here until we turn eighteen. Like me.”

The group gaze is stuck on moi. I guess they expect me to say something. I should confess: I’m not the Great and Powerful Oz. I can’t think much less speak. T.M.I. Cops? Windows? Bitey breeds? Eighteen? Then it occurs to me. If Nadya is an Alice stuck in the alternate universe
anti
-Wonderland, then I’m a friend of Dorothy. Close my eyes, click my heels thrice and say, “I feel kind of dumb asking this but, um, people get to go home? Sometimes? Never?”

“If—
if
—your parents don’t have cause or, more typically, the funds for another involuntary committal,” Sugar says, eighteen going on forty, the safe house’s Mini-Magistrate. “But, yes, definitely, you can go back.”

“Or, you’ve been gone such a long time they forget about you,” Kidd says. “But why would you want to?”

“How long is a long time?” I ask. I need a time line. Some idea of how long I should plan to bunk down in da crib with the other crazy kiddies.

“Two years.”

“Me, it’s been three years, plus change,” Sugar says. “I’ve been underground for four, but three’s about how long I’ve lived in the closet.”

“Security!” Peanuts says. “We gotta tell him.”

Security—that will have to wait. I turn away, to the wall, and close my eyes. Thorazine, take me away! I drift, back to my favorite destination of choice:

Bliss, Death, Sleep.

“A
hh!”

The shriek wakes me. My body’s tense. Rigid. Cold. Sweat covers my skin. Animal instincts: Trapped and facing a predator, you (a) run or (b) play dead.

Please choose “B” and proceed to survival.

“
Shit!
That hurts like a motherfuck!”

“What about his ID?”

“Ahhhh!!!!!”

“Hold still, or”—a boy scolds—“I’ll cut your wrist.”

“Ahhh!” Another shriek. “
Heartless
motherfucker!”

“We should skip this and get a dead baby name from City Hall.”

“Or, the Internet?” asks a girl.

Who
are
these people? Gay Teen Terrorists?

“I like the DMV,” deep-voiced boy says. “Cops look once and it’s like, ‘Okay, you can go.’”

“Ahhhh!” A third shriek. “This feels like circumcision.”

“Like she’d know anything about that!”

“Don’t start with that fucking—
AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
” A yelp. “—'girl’ crap.”

“Why are you talkin’ shit? You got foreskin for
days.
”

They’re talking about dick.
Arguing
about it. So long as it’s someone else’s dick that’s being cut, I don’t care, roll over and go back to—

“W
hat?!”

I sit up. My sleeping frenzy ends. Done. Over. Eyes wide awake. I sit. Up.

Run—

I—

“Where am I?”

Am totally freaked out.

“Hello?”

Not at home, that’s for sure. Serenity Ridge, bus station, youth shelter. I talk myself down. Look.

Clothes at the end of the bed. Cargo pants, shirt and safari hat. Outfit Number Three, the one I wore in the truck that drove me to the bus station in downtown Vegas and—

Write it down, make notes, map it out. My story. So when I leave, I’ll know what I left. Unlike before when I shut my eyes and jumped.

I feel for the blue notebook. I find it where I left it: tucked in the folded-up pants. I didn’t take off those pants. Someone else must have. I sniff the pants. They smell fresh. I wonder if they read my journal. I reach under the bed and pull it out. The pen’s tucked inside, right where I left it.