Runaway (12 page)

Do constellations shine above?

My heart can't quite believe it.

If the aurora borealis

Lights up the northern skies,

It's lost on me,

On city streets,

Neon is my night-light.

Oozing up through sidewalk cracks

Come people of the night.

In black and red, the walking dead,

With ghostly skin and eyes.

Are they after peace or poison?

Will their souls ignite?

Freaks abound,

Tightly wound,

Neon is my night-light.

Blues and pinks and yellows glow,

Cutting through the sky.

Flicker, flutter, flash, and flare,

They eat the night alive.

No one's here to tuck me in,

To ease my fears away.

I dread the dark,

Cold and stark,

But neon is my night-light.

         

August 19
^th
, 4:00 p.m.

You're not going to believe this!

I am finally, finally, finally AT THE BEACH!

Twelve hours ago I was trying to keep from being scared by writing a
poem
(was I desperate, or what?), and now I'm happy as a clam in sand, baking on the beach. It is
awesome
here! You should see the ocean. It goes on and on forever and ever. No wonder people used to think the world was flat. Or that there was a giant waterfall over the edge of it. It's just hard to imagine all that water, curving on and on around the world clear to what? Australia? Japan?
China?

And the sand! The sand is hot and soft…not gritty at all. It sifts between your toes, and it tickles! And if you dig down a little with your feet, it cools off quick. Wow! I wonder how far
down
sand goes. When does it become rock? (Or crust or magma or whatever the layers of the earth are.) Doesn't matter. What matters is that right now my feet are covered all the way to my ankles and it feels fantastic. Fantabulous!

What a difference twelve hours can make!

         

Saturday, August 21
^st

Do you want to hear about my adventure trying to score a swimsuit?

No?

Well, tough. I'm telling you anyway:

Yesterday morning after I'd snagged a cranberry scone from a coffee joint, I sat on a wall looking out at the magnificent Pacific and faced the fact that getting in the water and swimming with dolphins (which I haven't actually
seen
yet) was not something I could do in green corduroy jeans.

I needed a bathing suit.

So I took a little hike to scope out the possibilities and discovered that this is one ritzy neighborhood. Man! I found this area that I guess you'd call a boardwalk—it's got people selling jewelry and souvenirs and Hawaiian clothes from carts and stalls—but there are also restaurants and office buildings and boutiques along both sides of it, and everything is so, so expensive!

I cruised between the buildings, scoping things out, trying to look like I belonged. What a joke, huh? Me with my greasy hair and cap, overloaded backpack, and filthy shoes, looking like I belonged? At least I wasn't wearing my jacket like the bums I saw. Or pushing a whole shopping cart of junk. I'm never going to be one of those bag ladies with a whole shopping cart of junk, you hear me? Never-never-never!

But back to what I was telling you: The people who shop this boardwalk have serious bucks, which is why stores can charge seventy-five dollars for a cruddy bathing suit. Do you know how many days I could eat off of seventy-five bucks?

The price didn't really matter, I guess. I wasn't planning to pay for it anyhow. It was just the idea of people actually spending that much on a bathing suit that shocked me. I made myself get over it, though, and started scoping out the stalls. I didn't stay too long at any of them. I just tried to zero in on the suits that would fit me, then moved on before someone shooed me away.

I felt really self-conscious. Like everyone was looking at me, thinking, Is she a punk? A hood? Is she…
homeless
?

One thing punks and hoods and homeless never do is smile. So I always force myself to do just that whenever someone's scoping me out, wondering if I'm trying to lift something. It really throws them off.

So that's what I did on the boardwalk. I even asked some of the hawk-eyed vendors, “How are you today?” like it was perfectly normal for a person in my condition to be pawing through their pricy merchandise.

It didn't make me
feel
any better, though. You should see the people here. I'm not talking about the homeless people (which there are quite a lot of, actually). I'm talking about everybody else. They're not beach bums or surfers or even “California girls.” Everybody looks like they're right out of a fashion magazine. Hair. Makeup. Nails. Clothes. I felt like a mangy mutt trotting through a party of poodles.

Not that poodles are bad dogs. Poodles are actually great dogs. They're smart and they're friendly and they've got the most amazing eyelashes ever. Did you know a poodle's eyelashes
have
to be clipped or they get in their eyes? It's like regular hair that just keeps growing and growing.

What's stupid about poodles is not the poodle, it's the people who get ahold of the poodle. All the grooming and fussing and nail painting and
adornments
…they turn a dog into a doll. It's ridiculous.

And I kept telling myself that these highly groomed people I was seeing were, in fact, just people. But I didn't feel it inside me. I felt like no matter what I did, I could never fit in. They'd been born with pedigree papers. I was a runaway mutt from the pound.

And, stupid as this is, when you're a mangy mutt rubbing shoulders with prissy poodles,
you're
the one who feels ridiculous.

Man, I feel bummed out now. How'd I get on all that, anyway? I was
trying
to tell you a funny story that doesn't have anything to do with dogs.

It actually has to do with
cats.

And I'm going to try to get in a better mood by powering through and telling you about it. Here goes:

On this ritzy boardwalk they've got all sorts of decorations like flags and metal art and fountains and stuff. They've also got
entertainment.
I saw my first-ever real mariachi band. You know, guys wearing big sombreros and sparkly gaucho outfits, strumming guitars and singing Mexican songs? It was like something out of a movie.

I also saw a man slapping bongos, another man playing some weird drum-shaker things, a woman playing guitar…lots of musicians. They had jars out for tips, but they weren't beggars or anything. They seemed to be working together, too, because every once in a while they'd all pick up their stuff and rotate to a new place. It was weird, but they seemed to know where to go and what to do.

Not all of them were musicians. I saw an artist who draws cartoony faces, a juggler, a puppeteer, and a couple of magicians. (One of them was more like a clown with a top hat. He did this stupid trick where he pushed a blue scarf into a tube, did
abracadabra
over it, then pulled out a red scarf. That's all he seemed to know how to do. That, and honk a bike horn.)

So the entertainment wasn't great or anything
except
for this one gypsy-looking dude who had psychic kitties.

Psychic kitties!

Isn't that wild?

They're fortune-telling cats, and this is how it works:

You roll up two dollars and hold them out to one of the cats. The cat takes your money, puts it down behind the booth wall, then hands you a rolled-up piece of paper that has your fortune on it. The cats weren't puppets, either. I watched them pad all around the booth.

That gypsy dude made a
lot
of money. Way more than the musicians. Hey, maybe I should start a booth of my own! My sign could read:

AMAZING!

STUPENDOUS!

EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!

Come See the One and Only…

GYPSY GIRL

and her

SPECTACULAR

PSYCHIC DOGGIES!

Nah. Forget it. It's lame compared to psychic kitties. People expect a dog to be able to retrieve things. Seeing a cat do it is what's weird.

         

Anyway, that was the funny thing I wanted to tell you. Now back to the bathing suit:

After scoping out the whole boardwalk (and watching psychic kitties in action), I decided to forget trying to score a suit from a cart vendor. They watch like a hawk.

I thought a better plan would be to snag one from a rack that was parked outside one of the boardwalk's surf shops. You know how stores sometimes roll a rack or two outside their front door so you can see the kind of stuff they're selling
inside
their front door? One of those kinds of racks.

I'd passed by this one store about four times and no one was ever out front. So I looked through the bathing suits on the rack and found one that I thought would fit. I spent a long time doing it, too, and no one came out to shoo me away.

I should just have snagged it right then, but I put it at the end of the rack and left, just in case someone was watching me through the tinted store windows.

Over the next couple of hours I passed by that rack at least four more times. The suit was just waiting for me to snag it, and the more I saw it, the more I wanted it. It was blue and sparkly and seemed to be the perfect suit to wear while swimming with dolphins.

This probably won't make sense to you, but I was really nervous about lifting that suit. I don't
like
stealing stuff, believe it or not. I do it, and I'm good at it, but that doesn't mean I
like
it. And normally I don't feel
bad
about it because I steal for survival, not for fun. Usually I'm just so hungry or cold or whatever that I can't be distracted by thinking that what I'm doing is wrong.

But this sparkly blue swimsuit was
not
something I needed for survival.

It was just something I wanted.

I told myself that I'd come a long way to swim with dolphins, that I couldn't exactly do it in my underwear, that there must be a HUGE markup on these bathing suits, and that come on—how much would it actually hurt the store if one went missing?

But it still felt wrong.

         

That didn't stop me from wanting it, though.

And it didn't stop me from trying to steal it.

         

It was four o'clock when I finally decided to do it. Everything seemed to be lining up for me: The mariachi band had moved right across the way (and was making a lot of noise with their singing and strumming), I knew a shortcut out of the boardwalk (in case I got chased), and a big group of women had just gone into the store (which meant that people would be busy on the inside and not thinking about the racks outside).

I checked for cops (they walk up and down the boardwalk).

I strolled over to the rack.

But my heart started racing like crazy and I…chickened out. I just walked by.

What's the
matter
with you? I asked myself. It's easy! Just grab it and go!

So I went down about six stores, circled back to where I'd started, and looked for cops again.

I strolled over to the rack again.

I reached for the suit….

But at the last second I decided to pull the suit
off
the hanger, and the next thing I knew, hangers were tangled and clanking to the ground, suits were tangled and caught on each other, and people were coming out of the shop.

I panicked. I don't even remember seeing what I was doing. I just grabbed the suit and ran.

I could hear people shouting, and I think someone chased me. I remember stuffing the suit up my shirt to hide it, but other than that, it's all a blur. A weird, dreamlike blur.

When I was sure I was in the clear, I stopped running and caught my breath on the curb between two parked cars. I didn't feel like ha ha, I got away with it. I felt bad. Like I'd crossed the line from survival to crime.

I told myself I was being stupid. Who draws the line? Why is it drawn there? Why isn't it drawn, you know, over
here
? I didn't feel that way when I stole food. Or clothes. Or books. Why was I freaking out about a bathing suit?

I sat on the curb for a long time, trying to figure it out. And when I finally pulled the swimsuit down out of my shirt, I couldn't believe my eyes.

It wasn't the pretty, sparkly blue suit.

It was an ugly green-and-brown one!

With a
skirt.

And it was way too big!

I felt like that lame magician at the boardwalk. Shove in one color, pull out another.

I got mad. So,
so
mad. It had taken me the whole day to lift a lousy swimsuit, and I'd stolen one that wouldn't even come
close
to fitting.

I shoved it inside my backpack. It was getting late. I was hungry. I couldn't go swimming with dolphins. I had to find something to eat.

Crud.

I had to
steal
something to eat.

After that I had a real lousy night, which I'm not even going to get into. What I
am
going to tell you is that this morning I finally broke down and put that stupid suit on. I had to tie the shoulder straps together in back with a piece of string so it wouldn't fall off, and I felt like a giant piece of ugly seaweed in it, but I put it on and I parked my stuff on the beach like everyone else does. Then I hiked across the sand to the sea.

And you know what?

The water is COLD.

And SO salty.

And full of sand and foam and seaweed.

And, as far as I could see, no dolphins.

         

Saturday, August 21
^st
, 5:30 p.m.

I was tired of writing. I wrote way too much. All those details. What do they matter? All I had to say was: I met some psychic kitties, I stole a suit, I went swimming.