Tags: writing, raven, jennifer

Raven sighed and pulled her hair out of the sink.  Her heavy hair slapped
against her back, covering her in splatters of water and pink dye.  She
shrugged uncomfortably. She never liked the feeling of wet hair. She'd had
dreads for two years once, just so she could pretend that she didn't have to
wash it. She thought it always felt like something trying to slither into
her, and that always made her uncomfortable.

She turned sideways to sit on the edge of the sink and try to twist the
worst of the water out of her hair. The dye had mostly set, so this time
there was only faint pink in the water, and she smiled as she watched it
trickle down the drain, as if it might be blood coloring the water instead
of the chemical cocktail. She twisted until her head hurt, trying to squeeze
as much as she could.

She sighed and stood up, pulled her backpack underneath one of the dryer
blowers and sat down, head under the vent. She concentrated for a second,
then kicked the button from her sitting position. "Yeah!" she yelled to
nobody in particular as the heat came on and blew on her wet head. She
always felt powerful flexing her muscles with that kind of precision. 

The dryer ran for not nearly long enough, so she kicked it again.

And again.

And then used her fist to turn it on.

And again.

"Guess that'll do." She stood up and heaved the heavy pack onto her back. A
cup jangled against a clip and she grabbed at it with a stifling hand, used
to quieting the pieces that hung from her backpack.

She kicked her wedge out from under the door and shoved it in her back
pocket, yanked the door open and flipped the sign on the door off with what
seemed like a single, practiced motion.

"Gotta tell the man".  She smirked to herself. A man pushing a shopping cart
did a double-take as she stepped out of the men's room. She hefted her pack
a little higher and tried to adjust the straps to be comfortable across her
chest. She sighed and headed away from the park restrooms and to find
something to eat.

Raven stepped out of the park and into the street, and was surprised to find
how busy it had become since she went to dye her hair. She was used to being
out on the street by 7. She guessed she must have been working on her hair
for two hours. 

"Anything to pass the time. Geez. I hate this." She elbowed her way into the
crowd of tourists walking too slowly up the sidewalk. Her backpack felt
ungainly in the crowd, and she didn't like feeling like she was as ungainly
as the tour-bus crowds waddling up the street.  She silenced the cup's
jangle again as she passed. "I can't do this anymore."

She turned three blocks later into an alleyway and ducked under a dirty sign
that read "Wynkoop House".

"Hi, Raven. How's life?"

"Shitty."

"Nice hair."

"Thanks."

"There's a bed here for you."

"I can't. You know that. I just can't."

"Raven, please? I know you slept in the park last night."

"Yeah. So?"

"City council just told the police department to start arresting vagrants
again."

"Oh, man. That sucks. I remember the last time."

"I know. You can stay here."

"No, I can't, Maddie. I can't. I can't have drugs, I can't have alcohol. You
won't let me be me here. I have to follow your stupid rules, I can't."

"Raven, I know, but it's for your own good. A few days at least?"

"I can't. I just can't, okay?! I just want a meal. I want to eat something
that isn't going to make me throw up for 24 hours, and I don't want to have
to have that religious crap forced on me."

"I know... But they run the place. They want to help. They just have their
way."

"No. I can't. I just can't."

"Fine, but be safe, okay? I care about you."

"Yeah, I guess."

Raven turned and walked out the door, her face harder than it had been all week.
"I hate this."

She kicked a trashcan as she walked out. A thunderclap sounded overhead as
she did. "What am I, the queen of cliché here?!" she yelled. 

A second thunderclap answered. 

"Fine. I am."

She kicked the trashcan once more for good measure, trying to take pleasure
in her stompy boots hitting something solid. "I'm hungry, I'm tired, and I
hate this." She yelled at the sky again. It rained harder. She pulled her
hoodie around herself as tightly as it would go.

She turned out of the alley, away from Wynkoop House and aimlessly picked
a direction. She turned west onto State street, and then wandered up Bolero
drive, and past the entrance to the school.

"Ooh. Now there's an idea." Raven walked along the fence, heading for the
forest behind the school. At the first patch of trees, she found a large,
leaned-over oak tree and put her backpack up in the highest branch she could
reach and fastened a strap around the branch to hold it in place.

She ducked out of the forest and headed for the school, slipping into the
cafeteria and into the nearest group of freaks she could find. She grinned.
High schools always had a small pocket of kids with dyed hair and tattoos
who everyone tried to ignore. She stood near them long enough to find them
gathering in line for lunch and slipped ahead of a few, past the meal-ticket
lady and into line. She held her tray up in front of the woman dishing out
potato bits, and again in front of the salad bar. She sat down and ate the
salad as quickly as she could, and slid the potatoes into a bag in her cargo
pocket on her pants. 

As the first couple of tattooed and pierced kids left their tables, she got
up and followed them out as they went to smoke. She slipped away, hoodie
still wrapped tightly around her and back to the forest.

* * *

"Bastards" Jennifer yelled inside her head as she ran out of the school.

The school security guard and the principal ran out into the rain after her.

She kept running across the slick grass, feeling the adrenaline pumping
enough to keep her upright despite sliding with every step. The principal
wasn't as invested in the chase and gave up quickly, and the security guard
was heavy enough to not want to follow in the rain. They chased her only as
far as the edge of the soccer field behind the school, and then left her
tearing across the next field, watching her backback bounce against her bony
body.

The principal huffed to a stop. "Mr Simmons, keep an eye out for Ms. Ash. If
she comes back in the school, detain her. I'm calling her parents."

"What's she done?" 

"She was wandering the halls without a pass again, I'm sure. This time she
just took off running out the door when she saw me."

Jennifer Ash rounded the backstop of the ballfield and paused, looking
behind her. She knew that the principal had stopped chasing a while back,
but she'd decided that the running felt good. She held onto the wire of the
backstop and waited for her legs to stop shaking. She had never run anywhere
that distance at a sprint before, and she was surprised at how far she'd
been able to go.

"I am so tired of this shit. I hate school, I hate being spoon-fed little
interesting bits between moments that the teachers are busy keeping the
class in order. I just want to be able to read."

She sagged against the fence for a moment. She punched the fence, feeling
the sting of the wires against her clenched fist, then she sighed and walked
off toward the forest at the edge of the school grounds.

The forest was supposed to be open greenspace, a park of sorts, but it had
been deeded to the city a long time ago but nobody had ever come up with
funds for developing it, and at the edge of the city, it wasn't a priority.
The city concerned itself with basketball hoops in the slums near downtown
even before this place. She was happy that it worked out this way. It gave
her a place she felt like was her own.

She climbed into her favorite oak tree, just out of sight of the school.
The branches were high on all the other trees, but this one had been knocked
sideways in an ice storm years before, and it leaned over at a strange
angle, and Jennifer decided she liked the way it looked the first time she'd
seen it.

Today, though, she was just glad that it kept most of the rain off. She was
muddy already, just having walked a hundred feet into the forest, the thick
soil sticking to her legs, feeling gritty as she walked. She perched on the
first branch, trying to get the worst of the mud off.

"Dude, don't fuck with my stuff."