Short, scrawny, street-dirtied brown shoulder-length hair intertwined with stray ribbons, half braided, half tangled. Hands are short, narrow, tattooed with pencil lead across the knuckles of the left peeking out from beneath the edges of an unraveling gray half-glove, nails bitten distressfully.
Clad in a two-sizes-too-big battered leather jacket encrusted with layers of dust, age. Tatters and threads hang from where patches have been torn away.
Sniffles on the corner of the dark street beneath the paleness of the street lamp, her companions taking on the vampiric hue, night-dweller pallor.
The smell of water, the fog of a nearby river or ocean, throat-clogging cloud of weed mingles in frigid sour air. Aroma of blackened fries, slow glubbering of cooking grease from an emptied deep fryer dumped into a half-open blue drum near an alley back door.
They huddle in twos and threes, gazing outward, passing a minuscule joint, waiting in silence. A boy coughs faintly, painfully.
A girl, teen aged, dark hair with a small side pigtail tied with electric pink ribbon, breaks away from her huddle near the base of the streetlamp, and crosses over. Runs her fingers through her .. my .. hair, smirks as she tugs with playful roughness, her lip piercing rising snidely to one side. I smell stale pineapple lip gloss within a cloud of heisted cologne.
Plants a friendly kiss in my cheek, then hooks a black-painted fingernail past my bangs, rips a ribbon free from my hair. ow!
There is a subterranean anger, tension within the pack. I glare back and flail with one half-gloved hand. Her taunting laughter echoes against the thick night-abandoned industrial block walls as she raises her prize enticingly over her head, out of my reach, then hooker-steps back to two other girls. She spins the silvery ribbon over her head, then bestows her prize on the smaller of the two, the queen of the hive, beaming smile to her, a glare back over her shoulder at me.
I look down, retrieve the grimy leatherette wallet dangling from a chain attached somehow to my waist. Open it to emptiness. I wet my finger with spit, rub it over the face of the cracked plastic over the ID card. Emil. Mil. Emily? I can't tell much except a heart caps the printed i in faded red ink. I don't know who I am.
The bitter breeze whistles through a long tear in my black leggings, flicks the hem of my skirt. I look down at the thin kneecap poking through a hole in the leggings, tug a torn and worn pale blue I Survived the Hurricane tanktop down hard across a waif-thin midriff. Am I anorexic? I'm too hungry to tell.
I regret the belly ring as it catches on the itchy fabric and tugs painfully. I pull the front flaps of the jacket around and hug myself tightly, cursing the broken zipper.
I inhale the last of the grease scent, falsifying nourishment, gathering what strength I can. I bend to retrieve my belongings, a pink-purple pack with a poor excuse for a blanket dangling from one strap. Heave it over my shoulder and break from the pack. Head around the corner, kicking scuffed heels against lonely concrete. Head for the rise and climb up a ramp of wooden slats embedded in the levee side, pretending to be steps.
At the crest, I look back over my shoulder, down to the dim street below, to the huddled teens who have begun to follow me in slow distracted slightly stoned clumps.
I start down the other side of the dyke toward the river's edge.
A dozen wooden docks comb the stretch of leaden water frosted with mercury whitecaps. They reach out in narrow diagonals, I'm guessing south to southeast. I think I'm facing south as I rest a few yards up from the boardwalk's edge, perched daintily on a weathered stone half buried in mossy muck. From above, the docks look much smaller than they must be, or they're landings for fairy boats.
I plant my hands firmly on the mucky hillside and push myself back up to stand, walk carefully downward, feet sideways, gaining footing on small stands of dying grasses. There's a hole in the side of my left sneaker and I feel the gummy muddy dirt push its way inside, through my thin socks and between my toes. Suddenly I miss my dad, my mom, a real bathtub. I choke down a lump of sad stuck in my throat.
I walk the length of a few of the docks, half skipping, favoring my dirty left foot, jumping lightly from plank to plank, from one dock diagonal to the next.
The waves kick up, heavy silver mist that coats the planks, slick and canted. I watch the residual wave water slide from the warped pine boards and back to the darkness beneath the dock next to me.
A hand on my shoulder startles me as I begin my next leap; I spin midair to confront its owner. Balance lost, I windmill my arms and topple backwards.
In the split second between the time I start to fall and the moment the back of my head collides with the edge of the decking I was leaping for, I look up into the face of the scrawny t-shirt clad boy, mouth frozen in a permanent 'Nooo.' His hands reach futile and grasping, to pull me back from far beyond his reach. Thin blond strands fall over his horror-stricken eyes.
As the dock edge splits the back of my head open and the water closes over my face, I watch him fade, shimmer through the lead and mercury waves, and vanish from view.
I struggle back to wakefulness, ignore the mutterings of the dislodged cat, reach for the pad of paper and pen, and scrawl a name in the morning dark.
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