The girl was wet-nosed and unkempt, blinking against the cruel light of my cellphone’s high glare. She turned her head back into the scarred nylon of her sleeping bag and lay still, as though I might disappear if she could no longer see me. I sat down on the grimy cement stairs a few feet away from her spot in the alley and waited. She seemed to fall asleep after a while, but I checked that she was still breathing every ten minutes or so while keeping an eye on my backpack.

A couple of hours later, she sat up. I went to her and set up my old camping lantern; I studied her by its light as she drew her legs up under her chin and locked her fingers around her knees. Dark smudges under her eyes accentuated glittery cheekbones. Hard to tell if it was makeup or grit.

She watched as I drew some items from my bag. A box of Kleenex, a tube of Neosporin, water. When she reached for them, I tried to breathe slowly. Her inner arms looked almost purple, their long thin length punctuated by darker spots that clustered near her elbow.

I handed her sandwiches next, along with some multivitamins. I thought I saw a wisp of a smile when she took those, but it was hard to tell, and in any case, the expression was fleeting. I told myself that she had appreciated the irony; it made me feel better to believe she was still in there somewhere.

The girl threw what I’d given her into a plastic shopping bag, either for future use or sale. I had no way of knowing. When she stood, I resigned myself to the end of our time together. As she moved away, she said, “Thanks, Mom.”

When I could no longer see her in the gloom, I pulled out my marked-up city map. I found the alleyway and drew an X on it in red Sharpie.

She never slept in the same place twice.

Carolyn R. Russell’s latest novel is In the Fullness of Time, a dystopian thriller published by Vine Leaves Press in 2020. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been featured in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, Third Wednesday, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, Club Plum Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Orca, a Literary Journal, and Lowestoft Chronicle. Carolyn lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore. More at https://carolynrrussell.com.