Tell ’em that it’s my birthday! That’ll make ’em want to help me. No!” “Let me guess. Your name is Rose?” She didn’t answer me, instead turning her back on the kids and walking away. “Why does she want you to help her?” “Why does she want anything, ever? That’s how the world works. It’s how I work.” In truth, I don’t really understand it either, but Rose always seems to get what she wants. As far as I know, she’s never asked for help or for anything for herself. She just gets it. I don’t really know why. At least a dozen people had stopped to watch the scene before me, and now I was becoming the center of attention. I could feel the eyes of the crowd on my back, and my shoulders hunched up under the pressure of all of them. I stood for a moment, but I wasn’t quick enough to avoid Rose’s next words. “Why don’t you get her something to eat?” she demanded. Now that, I couldn’t help but feel, was something she really shouldn’t have asked me to do. If she wanted someone to stand over her and help her with such trivial things, she had a funny way of showing it. But still, I figured I couldn’t object. If I didn’t do what she wanted, what choice did I have? I began walking towards the entrance of the store, and Rose scurried up behind me, taking my hand and dragging me along with her as we moved. Even though I didn’t really want to go, I didn’t exactly have a choice either. “Hey, wait up!” a sharp voice called out to me from behind. I froze, looking back over my shoulder to see who had spoken, but no one was there. “I know you! I saw you two weeks ago on the streets! You know why I saw you?” A nervous chuckle came from Rose, and she held her hands up in front of her in a sign of defense. I turned around, trying to spot the person behind me that was accusing me of something. “Yeah, yeah. You came up to me, right, and… what’s your name?” “Yeah. That’s right, I remember now,” I said, as if the man before me could actually be one of my own memories. “It’s not every day I get accused of being a girl.” I let that sit with him for a moment, before the man stepped forward and pushed me aside. I had to look down at the floor, and it felt as if my heart was skipping beats. From the corner of my eye, I could see the man walking towards Rose, but I don’t think I could see anything else at that moment. “Hey, Rose, she’s not your wife. I don’t know why you asked her to come out here, but you shouldn’t have.” The man’s voice brought me back into the moment. I wasn’t alone anymore, but what was going to happen now was almost too much to imagine. Rose had a smile of such pure triumph on her face that the world seemed to hold still around me. “No! You don’t understand! You can’t do this! That’s not how this works!” she cried out, as she tried her best to physically push me away. But I wouldn’t let her get a grip on me this time, as I stood there and backed her into the corner of the sidewalk. She was in my world now. My life was in the balance as I felt the air being pulled from my lungs in tiny bubbles. It was a slow and easy process to be shoved out of the way, and I didn’t try to fight it. “This is why you can’t be in this world. This is why I have to be here!” I don’t know how long the man and Rose stood there arguing. It felt like an eternity to me. I didn’t want to look over my shoulder at him, because I knew how much more strength he would have. So instead, I just stood there watching it all unfold, until I couldn’t take any more. “STOP!” My body flew through the air and crashed into the side of a building as hard as it could. The force of it made me see spots and made the air come out of my mouth in big whooshes. I could hear cries and screams from others around me, but all I wanted was to put my head on the ground and let myself breathe. Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked up, and my stomach turned over in fear. On the other side of the sidewalk, a dark man was standing in front of me, and next to him was a broken Rose. She’d been knocked to the ground by the force of my body slamming into her, and it looked as though she had bruises all over her body. “So that’s why you wanted to go outside? Is this some kind of sick game of cat and mouse you were playing? We figured you’d do something like that! What’s with all the screaming? Is it just that pathetic way that women have of trying to catch you?” The man looked me over as he talked, and I was certain that he was mocking me. I couldn’t do anything else, so I just glared at him. He seemed to notice this, because he smiled at me as he wiped the blood from his lip. “Oh, it’s just the blood from your lip. I didn’t realize it’d be this red. It’s almost like you’re bleeding from everywhere!” I jumped up to my feet and wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. At the same time, I looked to see how I could make myself disappear from the woman’s sight, but I couldn’t seem to find her anywhere. It was like she’d completely disappeared from the world. “If you want, I can hit you again. If you can’t handle that, you’ll never get close to her. It wouldn’t be me messing up your face, it would be someone worse. So are you ready?” “What?” I was momentarily distracted by the man asking me something. I didn’t really pay much attention to what he was saying, and I only saw what he was doing by luck when the moment came. I looked up and saw him pull a knife out from inside his jacket, and it was that moment that I forgot about everything else. The man charged towards me with all of his might, screaming for me to get out of the way. “Run!” I felt so many things in the moment. Pain. Fear. And desperation. The last of these hit me hardest. I couldn’t think about it. I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t allow myself to cry, but I felt something wet running down my cheek and onto my mouth. I realized it was my own tears, though I couldn’t have stopped them even if I wanted to. I couldn’t think, or make a plan, or stop the tears from coming. All I could do was run. I didn’t bother with thoughts of where I was going. I didn’t even look around and wonder how I’d get there. I just did it, running faster and faster and faster. It was as if someone was trying to catch me, so I did everything I could to go faster. I didn’t even care if I got stuck in a building or a door. I didn’t look for options. I ran, and ran, and ran. Finally, I felt that familiar emptiness rush over me, and I felt myself fall to the ground. I could feel my body collapsing in on itself, and I realized that I would never run again. The darkness engulfed me, until the tears were so heavy that it felt like my head was going to split open. My body heaved with tears, and I choked on them as I tried to make myself inhale. I looked up at the stars, but they were just faint specks of light in the distance, and they didn’t matter. They never would again. Eventually, everything faded from my sight, and everything went dark. The last thing I felt before everything went black was my own self-loathing. I didn’t deserve to live, so I didn’t deserve to feel anything. I heard someone say my name. I thought that perhaps the darkness was lifting. I hoped that it was so, but all I saw was a shadow that started out as a form, but it quickly turned into a dark fog and spread out before me. I closed my eyes, sure that this had to be my end. “Ryver…” I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything. It was as if I were blind, but it felt wrong. Why could I see everything and still not see anything? “Ryver?” “Huh?” I said out loud, hearing someone say my name again. I felt something warm on my face. I turned my head slightly, but still nothing was there. I just opened my eyes and turned my head