[Fiction]

From Chapter One of Girl Walking Backwards

By Bett Williams

Runaways are romantic. The girls are waiflike with dyed ratty hair and baggy pants. They usually own a stray dog of the mutt variety and drag it along by a rope, plopping down in front of storefronts to beg for money from passersby. They're a mess. It is likely they'll charm you, make you think you're their best friend and savior only to end up using you and then they'll disappear. That's why they're romantic. They're there and then they're gone. Romance is always about people appearing in a flash out of nothing or people who are there and then suddenly are not. A magic trick.

It was a fantasy I had for a long time. I find the girl behind the Dumpster, half dead. I pull her into my arms and try to love the life back into her. She starts crying. She lets her pain come out all over me and I take it into my heart. A heroic thing, I guess, my runaway fantasy. Of course, fantasies have no smell so there is no body odor or stale cigarette aroma and in my imagination the girls never call me "poseur" and ask for ten dollars like in real life. They're always pretty, tough on the edges, and mysterious.

A therapist once told me the runaway girl was really me, that I wanted to save myself. Whatever. So where do we go from there? If everything you dream is just you, where is the world in all of it?

If you wanted, you could do community service instead of Study Hall. It was written in small letters at the bottom of the weekly school newsletter than nobody read. They didn't really want us to know, more paperwork for them. I only saw it because I read everything -- cereal boxes, random flyers found on sidewalks, any kind of magazine. Compulsive reading is a symptom of having no social life.

Other than hanging out with my boyfriend, my life had no real events, nothing that could be organized into any kind of plot. Despite schoolwork and volleyball, it seemed like I had more free time than anybody else I knew, time that loomed ominously, void of phone calls and over-the-top teen activities like sliding down hills on blocks of ice and stealing mascara from Wal-Mart. At sixteen, I was already looking through the classified ads for volunteer jobs. I considered working at a soup kitchen but my basic laziness prevented me from stopping by. Any kind of community service would have to involve some selfish interest on my part.

The runaway shelter was only a few blocks away from my house. The stucco building with the brown gravel roof had an air of mystery and heartbreak. I was always walking by it slowly, trying to see inside the dark one-way windows. No one ever came in or out. I always wanted to go inside but was too afraid, fearing it might be some sleazy back-door operation run by Scientologists. The newsletter gave me an excuse to drop in under the guise that I was looking for a volunteer job to get school credit.

Thinking about working there, my runaway fantasies took on a whole other dimension -- holding a girl down on a cot while she convulsed and gagged from heroin withdrawal, her hand in mine as the memories of incestuous torment came flooding in on her again, stopping fights, spaghetti dinners followed by cores, the inevitable bonding. Moments of tenderness.

I skipped volleyball and went down to the shelter after school. I walked up the stairs into the building, nauseous with nerves. Inside, it looked like the place where my mom picked up Meals on Wheels during her brief interlude with volunteer work. The carpet was worn through and smelled like dog pee. The fresh paint and posters promoting safe sex didn't cover up the water stains on the walls. I went down the hallways and knocked on a hollow-core door. A man wearing an African mud-cloth jacket greeted me. He looked about thirty, with long blond curly hair.

"How are you doing today?" he asked. He looked familiar, like he might have been one of Mom's friends from her personal-growth workshops.

"Fine," I said.

He didn't say anything else. He looked at me with such an unflinching stare, all I could do was stare back at him like a frightened rabbit. I told him I was interested in helping teens with drug problems and kids who lived in abusive families. I was curious about their volunteer program and explained that I had some experience in counseling. His stare made me feel like I was required by him to speak from the very depths of my soul, like he could catch me in a lie if I wasn't careful. He gave me an application to fill out. I took it to the waiting room and answered the questions in pencil using a copy of Psychology Today to support the page. Address -- age -- hobbies. I went back inside his office and handed it to him.

"Sit down," he said, looking at me from head to foot and back up again, taking interior notes. "Why do you want to work with runaways?"

I said something about wanting to help people, knowing right off it was the wrong answer. His godlike persona was making me nervous.

"What year were you born?"

"Nineteen eighty-two."

I forgot that I had written down my age on the application as being eighteen instead of my real age, two years younger. My face flushed red. He looked down at the paper and was quiet for a long time. He took a deep breath.

"Why did you lie about your age?" he asked with a pained expression.

I was more embarrassed than I should have been. Lying has never been something that comes easy for me. My whole body hurt. He kept staring. I averted his gaze by looking up at the posters of Tibetan monks on his wall.

"I don't know. I wanted the job. I wasn't sure if it was okay to be only sixteen."

"Why did you feel the need to lie?"

"I don't know."

"Are you okay? You seem afraid."

"I'm a little nervous, I guess."

"Maybe you came here because you needed something?"

I started crying. I don't know why. It seemed like anything could open the floodgates. All it took was -- the counselor stare. I got paranoid that he was going to call my mother and report that I was disturbed, that I came into the runaway shelter seeming to need some help. The number was on the application.

"Can I have my résumé? I want to check something."

"Why?"

"Can I just have it?"

His cheeks had a pink glow, like a German. He radiated health.

"I need to go."

"I'd like to invite you to stay and talk. It seems like a lot is going on for you right now. What's your home life like?"

"I really need to go."

"But it seems like you -- "

"You don't know me."

I stood and took my application from his desk and walked out of the office, tears streaming down my face. My walk turned into a run. My lungs were bursting but I didn't stop until I got to a park where no one could find me. I wasn't sure if he had the right to arrest me or what. It was a runaway shelter. I'd acted like a psycho.

From Chapter One of Girl Walking Backwards

By Bett Williams

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