_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     trippin’,   like,   them  runaway brows  are trippin’ ?    they’re goin’ so many directions not even a damn  compass  could set ‘em straight.     ’       he almost takes a dig at lyric,   but he figures she has her reasons for not bringing that up.       ‘     i know what i’m about.    ‘n i ain’t had no  complaints,   is all i’m sayin’.     ’}

_{she wasn’t ready for that clap - back.     ❛     yo,  you ain’t got a leg t’  stand  on,  captain hook.    light hits ya the wrong way ‘n y’ start lookin’ like a damn  pirate  with that  pinpoint chin  straight outta google maps !     ❜}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{he’s never been to juvie,   but there were more than a few close calls in the past.    close enough that liz had to tear him a new one.    a handful of overnight arrests,   run - ins with truant officers    —    he never made things easy.    never tried to lay all the blame on some  sob story,   either,   despite the option being readily available :   dad split,   mom gone half the time.    he sauntered through adolescence with a cigarette in his mouth and a chip on his shoulder ;   upwards of twenty years ago now,   and  hindsight  never did him any good.}

_{there isn’t a profound  life lesson  he’s trying to teach,   here,   not that he figures she’d be all that receptive to one if he were.    but so much has been taken out of her hands lately,   things as basic and fundamental as the freedom of  choice,   that he wants to give back what little he can.    this is  her  life.    these are her decisions to make,   not his,   not the court system’s    —}

_{‘     hey,   nobody’s sendin’ you back home if that ain’t where you wanna be.     ’}

_{it’ll be tough to sell that to a judge,   he knows :   unlike a lot of kids in her position,   she has two loving parents who would willingly take her back.    (   she ran.    and there’s a  reason  she ran,   and no one gets to tell her it wasn’t valid.    she’ll run again.    he doesn’t want to see her  disappear.   )}

_{‘     let’s just take it one step at a time.    hear what these fools gotta say on friday,   ‘n go from there.    i got your back,   alright ?    whatever happens,   we’re gonna figure this shit out.     ’}

_{it’s not that she doesn’t miss her parents.    she does.    but she doesn’t feel  guilty  for leaving them.    they don’t get it and she doesn’t expect them to,  but she wishes they’d stop  calling.    doesn’t want to hear her mother’s broken sobs in the background when her father is begging her to not hang up.    doesn’t want yet another  reiteration  of a promise she’s heard a thousand times.    doesn’t want to be cruel but feels like she’s left without much choice.}

_{her house isn’t a home and it hasn’t been for a long time but that isn’t the reason she’s out on the streets.    (    mother and father kept up appearances.    the picture perfect family with the exception of a runaway kid.    she wonders if they’re still telling people that their rachel is gone to  boarding school  out of state.    if they’ve made a shrine out of her bedroom in remembrance for the girl she  used  to be while pretending that who she  is,  doesn’t exist.    )    she ran because she didn’t belong.    because she felt displaced and out of sorts and  rejected,  bullied.}

_{because she had it figured out that some people didn’t need four walls and a roof over their head to be  happy  with their lives.    it’s a struggle every day,  but she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.    this is who she is.    isn’t going to let anyone,  least of all the courts,  invalidate  that.}

_{nods in agreement,  hands shoved in denim pockets.    feels a little better knowing he isn’t throwing her to the wolves just yet.    ❛     you ain’t gotta do this  ––  throw your fuckin’ life away for another  two years.    you don’t owe me shit.     ❜}

_{CRAVESFREEDOM.}

           ^{fists remain tightened, the news burrowing deep into her heart, causing a searing feeling in her chest. she’d heard about the killings on the news but the REALITY never hit until now ; those girls were people she knew. her stomach lurches at the thought. she didn’t know kallie well, but she could tell she was a valuable friend & she had a good soul ( way better than that lyric chick bullet used to go on about. ) octavia shivers, though it could very well be due to the cold morning that seeps into the diner every time the front door is opened ( the chime of the bell irritating her sensitive ears every time ),  ❛  i’m so sorry, bullet.  ❜  her voice is tender but her body stands awkwardly still, paralyzed by uncertainty. should she reach out to comfort her? she tries ; hand unfurling, fingers moving to reach across the table & take bullet’s hand, but before she can get that far, she chickens out, her hand instead diving into her own hair, running through the tangles.  figuring they both struggle with being INTIMATE ; she settles for softening her eyes & using words as her sentiment,  ❛  i know you two were really close.  ❜}  

           ^{her eyes find the partially healed scar across bullet’s throat ; they rest there for a while before she lifts her sight back to her blue eyes. she wants to ASK ; she has to keep biting the inside of her cheek to keep the questions from flooding out.  ❛  where are you staying now?  ❜  she knows if she doesn’t keep busy her eyes will find their way back again, so she shifts focus to the menu, feeling the cracked laminate & how dirty it felt ; like syrup tainted fingers had touched it before her.}

_{she never wanted  sympathy.    didn’t quite know how to respond to it and that hasn’t changed,  even now,  sitting across the table from a friend.    one of the few she has left after  everything  that’s happened.    one of the few that didn’t end up in a biohazard bag.    didn’t abandon her,  shut her out because she got  too friendly  with the pigs and squealed.    on the other hand,  octavia can’t  react  to something she doesn’t  know  about.    people talk.    it won’t take long for word to spread like a disease    (    if it hasn’t already.    )    she breathes in,  avoids eye - contact and glances at the menu.    catches a glimpse of movement through peripheral vision and,  on  impulse,  jerks her own hand back.    isn’t  ready  to be touched yet,  not just by octavia,  but by anyone.    maybe when she’s less sober and the prospect of comfort doesn’t make her skin crawl.    she’s relieved when octavia plays it off.    it means she doesn’t have to give an excuse.     ❛     we were at beacon the night it happened.    crazy bitch should’ve just  taken  my damn ticket.     ❜     guilt is making her  rot  from the inside out.}

_{their waitress has to be in her mid - fifties.    red hair tied up in a knot on top of her head.    makeup caked on.    she pops a piece of bubblegum as she approaches the table and bullet sends her off again.    hasn’t given the  menu items  much consideration,  but a diner’s a diner and nothing sets one apart from the other in seattle except for the specials.    she doesn’t care for pancakes and grits.     ❛     you know how i do.    wherever there’s a place t’ sleep at night.    beacon’s shut down ‘cause pastor mike’s a quack,  so the shelter’s’ve been full.    the pigs been runnin’ us outta our squats.     ❜}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     best brush me up on what kinda  bills  you been payin’,   thug life.     ’       feigned indignation as he shifts to lean against the chain - link,   arms folded,   weight braced comfortably on his left shoulder.       ‘     yo !    the hell you mean  low standards.    she is outta your  league,   son.     ’}

_{❛     bite me !    ain’t even  legal  t’ be workin’ at my age unless you got three hour shifts.     ❜     she knows because she  checked  online,  just out of curiosity.    takes a bite of the sandwich and washes it down with hot cocoa.     ❛     if she’s outta mine,  then she’s outta yours !    what,  she dig yo’  molester ‘stache ?    girl must be trippin’.     ❜}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     so you were gettin’ yo’  thievin’ hands  all up in my  crunchberries,   too ?    p’ft    —    whatever.    i ain’t  paid  her ‘cause she ain’t  SELLIN’.    i got  standards,   li’l man.     ’}

_{❛     didn’t see yo’  name  on the box !     ❜     using her knapsack as a cushion,  she settles down comfortably and takes a sip of the hot chocolate,  free hand still holding onto a half - unwrapped mcmuffin.     ❛     ‘n they  hella  low standards,  too.    i’m just bein’ real,  yo.    no offence.     ❜}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     gettin’ your  sleuth  on,   now ?    alright,   i feel you.    but one date don’t mean we’re  datin’    —    you  know  i ain’t got time for that.     ’}

_{fair assumption.     ❛     wasn’t  like  that,  asswipe.    it was ten in the mornin’ ‘n i was havin’ me a bowl of  cap’n crunch  on the couch,  watchin’ animal planet,  then out comes this chick lookin’ like she  just finished  filmin’ a damn  porno,  yo !    so ?    how much’d you pay her ?     ❜}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     well seein’ as how i don’t  got  one    —    you try’na tell me there’s a new  honey  you been eyeballin’ on the sly ?    oh,   SNAP.    bullet’s got  game.     ’}

_SEPIOL.

          elliot gestures vaguely with his cigarette, pinching it between his lips and fingers and looking for words to use instead of just expecting some telepathic level of communication.  ‘ synthetic opioid. eighty times stronger than morphine. faster acting but faster to go away, too. ’  it’s funny, because -  ‘ it’s funny because right after it happened it didn’t even hurt. ’  just warmth. just my own blood.

          he stews in many of the same thoughts. elliot already had reasons to be self conscious - largely they never interrupted his life, but now they do. i don’t know what it’ll be like, the first time i’m shirtless again in front of someone who loves me, in front of someone who loves my body. elliot is still stitched and bandaged and healing and he wonders what will happen the first time that he catches up to bullet with raised pink keloid lines, too obvious to be anything other than exactly what they are.

          i hope bullet is alive years down the line to be a person with a scar instead of a scarred person. i hope she’s alive long enough that i’m forced to stop thinking of her in frightened maybes. it’s not just death or even the displacement that happens so often to homeless youth that elliot worries about; it’s himself, the distances he makes, things like the long months lapsed where he missed this shit happening.

          ‘ i know what it’s like. you know i do. ’  even beyond the things that happen to us; the way we are. weak because you got hurt. weak because you’re a girl (even if you’re not). weak because you’re rough around the edges, because you’re different. i’m very different. bullet is too. ash drops off the end of the cigarette unnoticed and elliot dusts it away from himself.  ‘ and i know you can put them in their place. ’  beat.  ‘ because they’re wrong. ’

_{sounds like a dream.    to not feel hurt when blood is pouring out of you.    she doesn’t have to  envy  that because she’s been there before and it’s exactly how he described it.    no pain.    just initial shock and trying to wrap your head around what happened while doing one of two things:  staunch the bleeding,  or stare at it until you make sense of it.}    

_{half - expects her palm to be stained with red every time she looks down.    to see it caked beneath her fingernails from where she gripped her throat after the fact and felt warmth spill between the spaces of fingers.    she wonders which he chose.    staunch,  or stare ?    did he come up with another option ?     ❛     where’d ya get hit ?    you been takin’ care of it ‘n all that,  right ?    you know gunshot wounds can get nastier than  r - kelly,  yo,  f’ rilla.     ❜}

_{she has a lot of scars  ––  not just the most recent  ––  that are littering her body underneath two layers of clothing and maybe she’ll show him one day,  because those are the ones she’s proud of.    the ones that have better  stories,  like getting glassed with a broken bottle and baiting a guard dog to see if it’ll attack    (    it did.    )    she inhales and looks at him,  listens  to him.    she  knows  he knows.}

_{and maybe that’s part of the reason she’s comforted.    elliot isn’t run of the mill like everybody else.    he gets it and she knows that but sometimes it’s hard to keep that in mind when you’re fifteen and feel like the whole  world  has turned against you.     ❛     no  shit.    just kinda pissed i can’t kick that piece of shit’s nutsack up int’ his fuckin’ throat.    guy who  did this  t’ me.    same one pickin’ off all those girls one by one.    can’t put him in his place ‘cause he’s already there,  ‘n that ain’t doin’ shit for me.     ❜     as in,  six feet underground instead of serving out a prison sentence.}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     that’s just how i  roll,   playa !    say it a little louder for the haters in the back.     ’       there’s more,   in the form of  hot chocolate    —    promptly handed over.       ‘     you stayin’ outta trouble ?     ’}

_{a quiet scoff,  more than half - amused.    takes the cup with the same hand holding the bag,  then  swaps  hands for sole convenience.     ❛     you’re an idiot    ––––    ‘n i ain’t done nothin’ t’ be gettin’ in trouble  for  ‘cept bangin’ yo’ lady.     ❜}

_{ORIGINALGRILLA.}

_{‘     yo,   bullet    —     ’       he tosses her a paper bag,   folded over at the top,   its contents still warm :   hash browns and two bacon - egg - and - cheese breakfast sandwiches.       ‘    think fast.    ’       @junkyardteen.}

_{❛     –––––     !     ❜     she has good reflexes.    catches the bag one - handed and unfolds it,  eager  to get food in her system this morning.     ❛     you the  bomb,  bugs !     ❜}