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 thought. 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?" A woman not much older than she sat at the makeshift desk, surrounded by dirty blankets and typing on what might, in Raven's mind, be the singularly most worthless computer in existence. She figured that might be for a reason, considering who tramped in and out here. "Shitty. Hi, Maddie." Of course it was shitty. It was raining, her hair was still wet and she hadn't eaten anything. "Nice hair." "Thanks." It was a nice dye-job, and she managed to keep her hair looking alright despite not showering regularly and not liking wet hair. It always reminded her of something trying to crawl around her and choke her. "There's a bed here for you." The woman gestured up the stairs. "I can't. You know that. I just can't." "Raven, please? I know you slept in the park last night." "Yeah. So?" She always slept in the park when she could. There were a huge number of hiding spots, most of them protected by trees and bridges. This time of year, it was as comfortable as anywhere else. "City council just told the police department to start arresting vagrants again." "Oh, man. That sucks. I remember the last time." Last time had ended with her two friends of the moment being searched by the police at gunpoint, then locked up on drug charges. She hadn't seen either of them after that night, and word had gotten back to her that they were in jail on ten year sentences. "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." She didn't have any drugs, and didn't have any money for alcohol, but what she wanted right now was a drink. "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." Maddie sighed. She didn't like the religious overtones of Wynkoop House either, but the church paid her small salary and owned the house. The rest of their services were paid for by any fundraiser they could manage to make. "No. I can't. I just can't." "Fine, but be safe, okay? I care about you." Maddie did care. She liked Raven a bit more than most of the people who came through the house. "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 group of kids with tatoos and piercings. 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 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 Ash 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 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 mess with my stuff" Jennifer looked up, startled. In a year of coming here, she had never seen anyone else here. "What stu...", she trailed off as she looked around and saw Raven's backpack strapped to the branches behind her. "Oh. I didn't even know it was there." "Whatever. Let me get it." Raven climbed up the branches next to Jennifer as she watched and yanked her backpack out of the tree and jumped down. "Um, hi. What are you doing out here?" "Getting my stuff." Raven stood with her feet shoulder width apart and glared. Jennifer glared back. "Just leave me alone, okay?" "What if I don't?" Jennifer was actually surprised at that. She was used to people trying to cajole her out of a mood, try to get her to play nice. Outright confrontation was something she only expected out of the principal. And her parents, she thought to herself. She hesitated. "I'm Raven." Jennifer's surprise rattled her a little. Jennifer hesitated a little longer. "I'm Jennifer. I'm sorry. I just kinda came here to be alone. It's been a shitty day." She wasn't sure why she was opening up to this pink-haired pierced freak. Heh, I know the feeling, thought Raven. "Well, yeah, it's raining." "No, I mean, Mr. Simmons and the principal and my biology teacher and nobody will leave me alone and they're calling my parents right now, and it's really just a shitty day. I wanted to keep working on my project for social studies — I'm reading some really neat stuff — but I can't get any time to myself. So I left class and they chased me out here." Okay, that's not strictly accurate, she thought. "Well, I ran anyway. They just wanted to punish me for leaving class." "Hah. Now I remember why I left school. Geez. I forgot how much they suck your soul." "You left school?" "Yeah, I dropped out when I was 15. Just stopped showing up. I was living with my brother, and since he'd moved like three times since I started, nobody came knocking." "You still live with him?" "Nah." "Why not?" "Couldn't stand it. I had to sneak in, he wasn't supposed to have visitors in his apartment. Low-income housing rule or something." "Geez."