Introduction: Sketching Lisa

"For 'tis not in mere death that men die most." – E. Barrett Browning

I'm down on my luck. All of fifteen years old, running away for the third time in two years, and determined not to make the same mistakes again. I ain't gonna get caught. I've had enough of Family Services and Foster Care, and playing bingo with all the other orphans on Friday nights. My folks had died on a Tuesday when I was nine, leaving me with nothing but hate, and it's a bitch, yeah. Being alone. Nobody wants a half-grown girl with a bad attitude.

I wasn't ever abused or anything, although I heard the stories. Nobody beat me all that much, or locked me in a closet, or any of that stuff. I was just pissed on my own, you know? Not so much at people, but at God. He didn't seem to be around so much though, unless you believed the penguins, the nuns who smiled and hugged too much, and said God was inside me.

So when I was thirteen I decided to cut the fucker out. All that did was get me in a hospital, a couple hospitals, but the state didn't have a lot of extra cash for a kid with no parents. No prospects. No hope. So they pumped me full of dope, gave me some tough love, and turned me loose, putting me back into the ever lovin' arms of Jesus and the homeless lonely children of St. Luke's. And I wasn't stayin' there.

I'm tall for being fifteen and not ugly, I know that. I've seen ugly people and none of them are orphans. That must be one of God's little jokes, like "I'll make you beautiful, kid, and then I'll fuck ya good." I imagine he likes screwing pretty people just like everyone else does. Every kid at St. Luke's was pretty, and so old inside it hurt to be in the same room with them. You grow up fast in a world like that because time really is relative.

The kids born without parents got it easier because they didn't know any better. Kids like me, we did all our growing in a few minutes. During the time it takes some stranger to tell you that childhood is over, all of five minutes, maybe ten if it's a woman and she's crying. I went from nine to ninety in ten minutes and I knew the big secret that the deathbed holds ... Living is a lot harder than dying.

Hard times. I have my hair tied back in a short blonde ponytail hanging just below my shoulders. I have my old denim jacket which looks cool, but it doesn't keep the cold out. Some flair on it, a yellow smiley face pinned upside down on the left side, and an anarchy A in a circle pinned to the collar. Just a couple small buttons to warn the world I'm coming. I got my t-shirt, plain white, and a red and black flannel shirt, with all my money buttoned up in the breast pocket. All thirty-four dollars of it, mostly gotten from the collection box at the church.

Some well worn jeans, faded and frayed, but no holes anyway, and some work boots half a size too big that I'd swiped from a Payless shoe store not an hour before. I scuffle my feet in the gravel along the railroad tracks in South Seattle, knowing those boots look too good, too new. I need them dirty and old looking because everyone likes the shiny stuff.

The rail yards aren't that big, not like you might expect in a gateway city like Seattle, but they're big enough for me to get lost in. Maybe grab a train going south, to California where it's warm and doesn't rain so much all the time. Some guys are sitting in an open boxcar, rusted and covered with spray paint. Some choice street art touring America, bringing the message that "Rah ba-Zin Kilz" and I wish I had my own can of paint. "Gahd Kilz" that's my message.

"Bring it," one of the guys says to me, not loudly, and with a little nod of his head. The other one is smoking, both of them sitting in the dark doorway with legs dangling. It's getting late in the afternoon and the sky is warm and yellow red, but the wind is cold. Summer's coming, but it ain't here yet.

I ignore them, feeling the knife in my back pocket, a 7" folding Buck knife I'd traded kisses for with the old black guy who cleaned the halls at the orphanage. He was old school nigger with a pregnant belly and an anorexic mind, asking me what I wanted and dumb enough to give it to me. I'd slipped that blade real quiet into his groin and taken a bloody nose when he backhanded me before he staggered out, pressing his hand between his wobbly legs and dripping blood down his trousers.

He didn't talk and he didn't come back. Maybe he'd died someplace, out in the alley with the trash. Bleeding in the rain. I'd hoped so, laying in my bed and fucking the handle of that Buck in and out of my immature sex. My juices mixed with the dried blood, bringing it back to life and running pink and sticky over my fingers. God was in that nigger too, maybe, deep down in his balls festering and I'd let him out. Maybe.

No bra, little pink panties, and a pair of boys athletic socks, pulled halfway up to my knees. That's all I've got. Thirty-four dollars, my knife, a silver Zippo lighter running out of gas, and three smokes in a crumpled pack. Two buttons on my jacket, a stainless choker chain around my neck that I'd got from a dead dog on my last walk-about, and a key. I don't know what the key is for. I found it and kept it. Something for my pocket, something to put my fingers around with an odd shape, interesting and mysterious. I try it on every door I can find, but it never works.

Blonde hair, tall thin body, puffy boobs and a little hairy blonde hole that's only been used by me. That's all I am. That's everything I'm bringing to the fight. I skip through the rail yards on my way to the 7-11 uptown, on Pike Street. It's a long walk, but that's what running away is; the long walk to forever. I couldn't leave the city; not by myself, not really. Thinking about hopping a train was nothing but smoke. The runaway dream.

I had a beer, a forty ounce malt liquor in a brown bag, what a stereotype, but that's where I live. I was going to see Vin and it had become sort of a tradition anyway, me bringing something to share and him giving me that accidental attention that I needed without all the bullshit concern. I leaned against the counter and pushed the forty at him with a shrug. I'd only had a little.

"Thanks. How ya doin?" Vin lit a cigarette and handed it to me. He was still smoking French cigarettes, even though he was HIV positive and if he got anything it was gonna kill him in weeks, not years. They had cloves in them, just a little, so that the smoke made me a little dizzy.

"I'm okay." I looked around without much shame. I was just a kid in a porn shop, like that was normal. I take in the dildos and vibes and pocket pussies and all the magazines and videos. It looks so stupid, all of it, but what do I know?

"Running away again?" he asks, sipping the beer and drawing hard on his smoke.

"Yeah. What am I gonna do?" I shrug. "I can't go back to family, no fucking way."

"Yeah," Vin shrugged too. He'd run away from someplace in East Germany before the wall came down, when he was like twelve or something. Just him, hiding in some truck, and he'd never looked back. He had a soft spot for kids and walls.

"You looking?" He puffed his cigarette like a fag, holding it almost delicately between his thumb and forefinger.

"Not yet. Why? You got something?"

"I know a guy." Vin gave me a little look, expecting me to shake my head probably.

"I ain't going back," I bit my lip. "What do I gotta do?"

"Just lay there." Vin had blue eyes, like grey blue, almost white under the fluorescent lights. "You gotta pop your cherry sometime."

"Says who?" I ask him seriously and then giggle, sounding like a little girl suddenly so that the two or three guys shopping me have an excuse to stare.

"I got some too, if you need it," Vin says quietly. "Don't feel a thing."

"How much?" I'd met Vin the first time I'd run away, when I was thirteen and he'd picked me up on the highway. It had been my first time with the needle and we'd become best friends.

"Nickel?" He smiled as I licked my lips. "Not enough? A dime and you get some cash anyway."

"Sure. Yeah," I swallowed hard. "What's it called?"

"I dunno. Four Finger Discount or something," Vin shrugged. "Lesbians. They said little girls, I thought of you."

"Oh, like you knew I was comin' around?" I giggled again, sort of on purpose and I tossed my hair at one of the pervs, an old guy in a suit.

"Girls like you are always comin' around, baby!" Vin grinned. "Here ... go get yourself well, on me." He pulled out a little leather kit, black and dull and heavy. He dropped some tokens on the counter, slapping them down with his fingers so they wouldn't roll. "Go in the back, I fixed a couple of the locks."

"Four Finger Discount, huh?" I grinned at that. "I knew you were fuckin' with me." I swiped the pouch and the tokens quick. I'd done a few movies, mostly playing the girl next door seduced by an older woman. It wasn't really acting, but the sex was good when they just let the cameras run.

Vin chuckled. "Figured you could use a reality check."

"Shit," I rolled my eyes. My reality check was in my hands.

The arcade was dark and the shadows moved. Everyone back there was a ghost, a shell of something else. My boots clomped on the dull concrete floor and I ignored the eyes shining in the dark. I found a booth, locking the door and sitting down, my heart racing. I hadn't fixed in three days and I was shaking a little as I opened Vin's kit.

He was all traditional and liked to cook the old fashioned way, so he had a little tin of shoe polish and a spoon. Three minutes after I sat down I was drawing dreams out of a bent spoon and slipping them into my left arm, wincing just for a second. Vin didn't have any cotton, no water, and that shit was hot.

Some guy was watching me through a hole in the wall and I smiled at him, pushing the plunger halfway and then jacking it back, drawing some blood and watching it mix in the flashing bright light of the porno playing on the screen. I did that a couple more times, playing with myself, jacking my dope like a fiend until I sighed and pulled the needle free, holding it in my lap and staring at the guy's hard cock sticking through the hole. I dreamed ... dreamed...

My next stop on the trail of tears was Denny's, just cause I needed some food. I wasn't hungry and my mind was still a little numb, but I'd learned my lessons young. When you run, eat every fuckin' chance you get. A girl named Clarice worked there and she was always good for a handout. Tall and thin, looking a little like Uma Thurman's ghost, with dull brown eyes. She needed contacts; green maybe, bright like a cat's. She slipped out the back where I was waiting and handed me a Styrofoam container with a club sandwich and some fries in it.

"Shit, you look wasted, girl." She watched me for a moment as I nodded, taking a big bite, and she shook her head. "Can you come around later?"

"You want?" I asked with my mouth full.

"If it's cool," she smiled, just a little one.

"What happened to what's her name, the one with the tits?"

"Amy?" Clarice pulled a smoke out of her apron and lit it, sighing heavily. "She's back in it."

"County?" I made a face.

"Shoplifting. She got forty days." Clarice was twenty-five and she looked thirty-five standing there, but she had a good heart and that was why.

"Yeah. I'll come around," I nodded. I'd almost finished my food, barely tasting it. I sorta figured she might want to put me up, so I was glad I didn't have to ask.

"Here. I gotta get back inside. I get off at six okay?" She handed me her cigarette and smiled again, then closed the door behind her.

I was walking down the boulevard, looking at the sidewalk when a car pulled up close, driving slowly. "Hey, baby. How much?" some guy was asking and I shook my head. He was the third one in an hour, but I was mostly killing time anyway. It was just after two and I had four more hours and not enough money.

"Can I talk to you?" Another car and this time a woman's voice. She was older, middle forties maybe, and dressed casual nice in her Volvo sedan. Somebody's wife, mom too, judging from the toys in the back seat. GI Joe and Barbie, so she had one of each. Out pretty late for a mommy, musta been saving up. She was pregnant with the need that Daddy didn't know about.

"Hi." I leaned in the passenger window a little, giving her a look at my small breasts as my t-shirt fell low. She could see my pointed nipples, just barely maybe. I always liked watching the eyes, cops always looked at your face first, see if they know you, but the regular people, the horny soccer moms from Bellevue, they only came out when they were famished. Fucking vampires. They didn't care if they knew you or not.