For the briefest of moments, Aria entertained the thought of walking back through the door, but then she reminded herself of their plans to return her to the group home. Having said goodbye to Clifford, who did not seem upset to leave her, and having seen how forgettable she really was, she let her anger rescue her from the despair. It lifted her up and out of her state of drowning. Because of that anger, she could not access the feelings of grief underneath. They existed like watery depths inside her somewhere, beyond her awareness. And she was glad of that.
Aria took her shoes off, holding them in her hands, and ran. She ran as if by running away from those watery depths within her, she would not carry them with her. She ran until she couldn’t.
Several neighborhoods away, there stood a vacated house. The real estate sign in front of it had been there for so long that it now projected crooked from the earth. It was obvious from the wear of the siding and the untended landscaping that no one had lived there or visited for a long time, and most likely wouldn’t.
Aria spotted a doghouse through the chain-link fence. The heavy chain affixed to the metal post beside it meant it was most likely built for a guard dog. The red paint had faded so badly that most of it had given way to gray, weathered wood. The once-black shingles had turned the color of ash and were lifting and corroding at the edges. Despite the dilapidation of the little shelter, she felt it calling to her, a promise of being able to let go of the tension of living like a fugitive for so long. She slipped her shoes back on, leaving the one that still had laces untied, and walked toward it.
Most people would have felt demeaned by crawling on their hands and knees into a doghouse. But Aria had always felt much closer to animals than she had ever felt to people. Though the dust that covered the floor made her cough, she felt soothed by the thought of the dog that once lived there. She curled herself up in a fetal position, not caring whether her head was in the dust. Not caring how much of it she breathed in. She imagined herself curled up with the dog that once lived there. The image of him was so strong she could feel him guarding her and soothing her to sleep.
There are times when the pain that someone faces is so great that the mind cannot wrap itself around it. The mind cannot dissect it to find meaning and it cannot analyze it to figure out how to avoid it in the future. Instead, the mind simply submits to the dizziness of it. This was one such time for Aria. That dizziness came upon her like a sandstorm. And in the process of submitting to it, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 5
A week had passed since Aria had spent the night in the abandoned doghouse, a slipshod week of learning the ins and outs of life on the streets of Chicago. She had found a mission that allowed vagrants to stay for three nights per month. Having lied to the staff about her age, she was shown to a room that looked roughly like a refugee camp. It was a large gymnasium, converted into a human-scale rat cage. The flooring had been peeled up, exposing the cement floor underneath. It was easier to clean this way. Pipes of different sizes platted the ceiling like a maze overhead. The entire room was covered in bunk beds, with no sheets to cushion the thinness of the mattresses. Standing in the crowd of other women and children who had been ushered in with her, Aria suddenly regretted being there. But being too shy to draw attention to herself by rescinding her decision, she stood still and contained her feelings, listening to two directors who were in charge that night, reading out the rules of the shelter.
One woman read them in English, then the other repeated them in Spanish. They were made to strip to their underwear and hand over their shoes and then clothing. Aria watched one of the mission volunteers take her clothes and backpack over to a metal locker, among a row of hundreds, and lock them in. They were to sleep in underwear. It was
