She crouched shivering under the guilty moon as she waited for the sirens to stop. The whirling lights and screaming megaphoned voices would eventually fade away. They hadn't found her yet, and they wouldn't. They couldn't. Voices slid closer and she tucked herself further into her nook, covering her face and hands with her dark hoody so they wouldn't shine in the starlight. She wouldn't let them find her. It didn't bare thinking about. If they found her they would take her back, and there was no way she was going back into that hole they called a home. The smell alone would kill her. Unwashed dishes and spoiled food had been assaulting her nostrils for days on end as she lay resigned to bravery and refusing to speak despite the honey coated coaxing of the man she called “Father”. Neither he nor that woman that he had married could make her squeak despite their various methods. They had tried everything, and she did mean everything. She touched her puffy left eye and winced. That was the first thing they had tried. The bruises were fading now and were just at that stage where they weren't too noticeable but were still tender to the touch. She might even be able to pass as old enough to sleep in the battered wives shelter on 5th street once the cops left. A car door slammed and she jumped, knocking her skull against the protruding bricks above her and biting her tongue. She tasted blood but she didn't dare spit as she could hear the tap-tapping of the shoes of a beat cop in the alley. She could probably touch him if she stretched out her hand, but he would never see her. The dumpster was bolted down and supposed to be right next to the wall. It was too, for the most part, but if you wiggled just right and were small enough to squeeze you could slip in to this tiny alcove from the side that looked to the back wall of the blind alleyway. Eventually the tapping washed out among the sounds of receding vehicles. Now she could hear the Hollywood tears her father's wife was displaying and they made her sick. This woman was feigning that she was worried. She was playing a game with these honest policemen who had come to help her find her absent “daughter”. One of them was even trying to console her. It was almost enough to make her physically ill. It seemed to take forever before the cops stopped asking questions. It gave me some satisfaction that she couldn't even tell them what she was wearing when she last saw me. It didn't matter. They wouldn't find me. She would never go back to that hole. Finally, after her much abused legs had gone from numb to cramping the police left. The sound of their tires faded and she heard the creak as the front door on the house she had been forced to live in shut. Then waiting only a few minutes longer to be sure the coast was clear and finally slipped away under the light of the guilty moon.
