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“Wait there.” She gestures over her shoulder, at a bench. I stumble forward. My legs give out. I collapse on the wood slats. I lean back. I close my eyes.

“You’ll need to wait there for an intake counselor. It might be a while.”

I nod, Okay. I don’t care how long it takes. So long as bulletproof glass separates me from the street. Here, I can see anyone who walks through the door. Like, for example—oh, shit!—Mr. Blue Eyes. His mouth moves, voice muffled. Underwater.

“No, sir, I will
not
let you in, I do not
care
who—”

I open my eyes and shit my pants for the second time. Mr. Blue Eyes looks at me. Miss Gospel Singer’s big head blocks his face. I see those blue-blue eyes. Ice cubes. They bore into me. I drop my head, chin to chest, but he’s seen my face, taken his picture. His eyes move down, to his left. Mine follow. There, hidden from her sight line, he pushes back his trench coat and strokes the knife handle.

I pass out.

I
wake. I’ve been moved to an office. A white lady with fake dreadlocks sits behind a messy desk. Before she opens her mouth, she bugs me. Reword. She bugs the
shit
out of me. I know her type. Even so, I give her a Once-Ovah (my version of racial profiling). Tragically, Ms. Irritata thinks just because she invested in dreads and shapeless hemp “fashion,” she’s doing “good work.”

Reality? She’d look so much better with a blond bob and dark blue suit. She could work in a bank. Ms. Irritata’s a classic, fat-ass example of white-people’s-crimes-against-humanity, the most serious count against her being Really
Bad
Fashion (not to be confused with “bad ass”). Call me classist, racist, ageist—maybe even a little bit antifeminist—but that’s what I see.

Rat-a-ta-tat. She types (loudly) on a laptop. She’s probably chews her food loud, too. And farts in public, clueless to the sound because she wears a
Walkman
and listens to Sade 24 / 7. Three strikes. Silent, I sentence her to twenty years. I glance at the screen. My life hangs in the balance and she’s … searching for
apartments?!?

“Uh—”

“I’ll be with you …” Her bored-but-brisk tone’s meant to make me—oh, hi? Runaway teen? In shelter?—feel like I am the one bothering her. Done, she looks up. “How may I help you?”

“That man, he—I—” I don’t know how to tell her. I’m not even sure I saw what I saw. Clearly, I’m supposed to tell her what happened, why I’m here and what I want.

“
Two
minutes,” she says, impatient as a waitress at lunch hour. Then what? I wonder. You need to take the eggs off the stove? Run a mini-mile marathon? Her left eyebrow cocks, Mr. Spock style. “Your pimp said—”

“Pimp?” I am confused. The left eyebrow drops and she cocks the right. If she takes requests, I want to see her do it real fast. Work it, Ms. Irritata, work your fancy eyebrow dance! “He? Who?”

I stop. Fuck her, there’s no way I can explain
everything
in two minutes. Besides, where would I start: Haifa’s Hasidim helmet hair? The supermodel dykes? Bloodthirsty dobermans? Gunshots? Illegal immigrants? Downtown Vegas, rent-a-cops and slot machines? Or—oh, yeah!—Mr. Blue Eyes. Deadly, you’ve heard about him? He carries a knife, and rapes and kills boys in the men’s room.

“Can I stay here?”

“I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what happened.” She narrows her beady banker eyes.
Now
I get it. I’d better barf up some trauma
now
or get the fuck out. She expects me to wrap my story with a little bow and hand it over. Here, for you, Ms. Irritata, for your collection. Merry Christmas! But I don’t celebrate Christmas, Jesus is the same as Buddha, and the twelve disciples were all drunks.

I do, however, remember the telephone number. I tap the digits in my palm, silently repeating the sequence. To her, I prolly look like a crazy kid who thinks he’s the male Helen Keller. I don’t care what she thinks about me: I know what I think about her, starting with the upper lip: “Lady, hasn’t anybody ever told you that you should get your mustache waxed?”

“Listen, um—” Busted! She doesn’t know my name. She has so many
other
items on her mind. Dry cleaning. Organic groceries. What’s on cable TV tonight. Where’s the vibrator (to go with the cheesy lesbian porn). Clearly, I am the least of her worries. “What’s your name again?”

The safe sex poster hangs crooked on the wall, directly over Ms. Irritata’s dreads. I noticed they’re flecked with lint. Cool! I choose the smiling boy on the left.

“Edward,” I say. We’re friends. Why stand on ceremony? I ask, “Can I stay here?”

“Edward,
by law,
after seventy-two hours, we are required
by law
to notify your parents.”

The hair prickles on my neck. She should
know
this stuff. She should be
prepared
for kids like me. Be ready to
roll out the red carpet.
Know there are those of us who
don’t
want their parents notified for—a lifetime would not be long enough—of their whereabouts.

“Unless you disclose your circumstances, we can’t help you.” She smiles. Or, grimaces. I can’t read the face. She has gas?

“Oh.” We? Really.
We.
I give her my spaced-out / those crazy kids smile. Truth, I’m not willing to disclose anything, circumstances or circumcision, to this self-coronated queen. Her principality being The White People’s Wannabe Banjo Republic of Hemp and Linty Press-On Dreads.

“You can tell me what happened,” she says.

Yeah, I think, holding my spacey smile. I’ve heard that before. “Trust me. It’s okay. Tell me your secret. I won’t tell. I
promise.
” I shake my head. “Go fuck yourself, Rasta poseur.”

“Take these.” She plants her hands on the desk, gives it a hard shove and rolls her chair back. She reaches into the desk and removes a stack of rectangle-shaped packets. She places them down on the desk. Her gesture’s care reminds me of a flight attendant’s long fingers closing an overhead luggage compartment. I hear a voice. Dude! Rouse thyself! Ye not on thy ladies plane!

I look at her. Her mouth moves. For a moment, I think—She’s talking?—but all I hear is a
wah-wah-wah. A Charlie Brown Christmas
special teacher voice. I tune in and hear, “
Wah-wah-wah
you can get food with these vouchers, but honestly, Jeremy, I think your best bet’s calling your parents. Go home. The streets aren’t for you.”

Done, she sits back. That’s her pitch: Go home. The streets
aren’t for you. Who, I want to ask, are the streets for? I love that she called me “Jeremy.” Was he the kid in the bus station? The one who got murdered? Did she suggest he go home, too? I look at her.
All
attitude. Yeah, I have it in me: I can be a shady biatch. I feel like I should tell her that this
job
isn’t “for her.” She sucks. There hasn’t been one “sweetheart” or “honey” in all of her canned “advice.” Which sounds like something you’d hear on a community access show. When this little interview’s over, I plan to fill out the comment card with a simple “YOU SUCK.”

I look at the vouchers. She looks at me. I’m supposed to answer.
Now
.

“Can I make a phone call?”

“Local?”

No, I want to say, you stupid fuck, I’m calling Saudi Arabia to order a prop plane jihad on this lame-ass shelter.

I nod. She gestures at the phone but doesn’t move from her seat. I tilt my head down, and look up. Not to be confused with my helpless look, this is my shy face.

“I kinda need to be alone, so could you …”

I glance at the door.

She must be desperate to leave and pick up her organic dry cleaning, because she stands and leaves, no questions asked.

I pick up the phone and dial. Listen. One ring.

“‘lo?”

“Hi,” I say. I try to sound as normal (relaxed, not desperate or panicked) and gay (done) as possible while asking for help from a stranger. “I’m, uh—” What’s my fake name again? “Ben! I called before. Left a message. But I had to leave the bus station.”

“Where are you?”

I search for something that will tell me where I am. There. Blue letters stamped on white pen.

“Larkin Shelter.”

“Tell them you need to use the restroom. There’s a set of stairs at the end of the hall. On the third floor, there’s a women’s room. Hide in the last stall. Don’t move.”

“But, should—”

The line goes dead, the door opens and Ms. Headda Dreadful steps into the room.

“Are we good?”

“Can I use the bathroom?”

“Down the hall and to the right.”

I
reach into my pants and pull out the blue notebook I “borrowed” from the Shop ’N Go. Plus, the pen I stole from the social worker’s desk. Go ahead. Say it. Natural Born Klepto.

I plant my kicks on the toilet seat, open the notebook and prepare to write. Sitting this way is awkward. I close the notebook and sit, ass flat on the seat. This is G-R-O-S-S since there’s no t.p. or any of those wispy coverlet things. I force myself to ignore the fact there’s nothing between me and billions of E. coli. I open the notebook and lay it flat on my knees. White paper with light blue lines. It’s been almost a whole year since I could write what I want to in a notebook. Pen to paper.

i

The gesture fills me with dread. At any moment, cops or bounty hunters might break down the door, take the notebook and use what I wrote inside as evidence.

FUCKING HELL!!!!!!!!!

I’m mad. I want to throw the notebook against the stall. Hard. Kill it. I worry this is how Mr. Blue Eyes got his start. Calm down. This notebook’s cousin is the whole reason I was
locked up and tortured in Serenity Ridge. Fool, I
trusted
my thoughts to the notebook when I wrote

i might be queer

Not

i am queer

Just

i MIGHT be queer

One. Two. Three. Four words. “Evidence.” Of what, I never got an answer, but my stepmother, father and a whole bunch of adults were convinced those words meant everything. The worse part, I was
so
careful. Porn and gay chat rooms? Before I logged off, I’d erase the browser history and clear the cache.
Every time.
And I didn’t do anything ridiculously stupid like create a blog (The Secret Diary of All-American Gay Arabian Teen). I left no clues. I got caught only because I wrote with pen on paper. Dummy. Moustapha and Haifa were so obsessed with my computer, I never dreamed they’d even think to open a notebook. Diaries and journals being just so last (20th) century. Cool and kinda retro! I assumed they thought, no one as smart as our son would be dumb enough to write down his thoughts. Deep breath.

four FUCKING words

There. My hand feels looser now. I could never have written those words in the hospital. I could never have spoken those words. Deceitful notebook. I could rip this one to shreds and flush it, but I don’t because then I’d really be alone. I’ll vomit my thoughts and
use
this dumb-ass notebook—
then
I’ll flush it. Attn. notebook: You’re safe. But when I’m done with you, you’re D-E-A-D. Dumb-Ass Word Turd, I’ll LMAO and flush—

I reread the words. They make perfect sense.

i feel—

The pen stops. Feelings? Mine are global and quickly expanding. Chaos, soon to equal those of creation. Deep breath. My alma mater, Serenity Ridge,
remember.
There, feelings were like yesterday’s trash, a chore. Your job was to stuff them in a plastic bag, tie the top and take them out to the curb. Problem was, the psychic trash collector never showed. Budget cuts.

I can’t write about my feelings, because there’s
one
feeling that makes sense. At Serenity Ridge, I was “taught.” Who am I kidding? I wasn’t taught; I was brainwashed. For months, someone told me what to feel. But here, alone in the women’s room, with a kazillion chaotic feelings (and germs), the real problem is feeling what
I
feel. Or … Everything. For a moment, I consider hopping off the seat, diving into the toilet and flushing myself.

Get A Grip

what do you feel?

IDK. IDK. IDK. I. Don’t. Know. Answer Fail. I’m the one asking the question.

Now I remember why I chose to use journals in the first place. Class assignment, one. But more, I needed to tell
me.
My
Story. I was both audience and actor. If I could make sense of my life, then … If I could—can—tell myself a story, I could—will—survive.

I pause. Write.

i might be queer

Tap tap, knock knock.
Oh, shit! I’ve been found! “Hey, you in there?” A girl’s voice. “Ben?” Ben? Who’s Ben? Oh, yeah. Takes me a second, then I remember.

I. Am. Ben. Ben is me. The new me. The Ben Me. The Ben-E-me of Ahmed. Parry, thrust, Ben stands over Ahmed. Triumph! Long live Ben! Etc. I lift my shirt and slide the notebook underneath.

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“C’mon, move it,” she says, “open up. We don’t have much time.”

I lift the latch and open the door. Short and fat, Miss “C’mon Move It” wears Chunky, Nerd Girl glasses and rumpled clothes. She smiles. “Ben?”

“Ah—” I catch myself, reminding myself to say my new name. “
Yes.
I am Ben.” I sound so FOB (fresh off the boat) but then, I guess I am. Except in my case, it’s fresh off the bus.

“Hi, I’m Marci.”