"I'll make you a deal," I said - keeping my voice as calm as I could while scanning the desk in front of me for a weapon, "I'll fill out an application right now, and I'll - hang on, hang on - I'll show you my bank account so you can see that I had the money until yesterday. And I'll call my job, right, and you can confirm with my boss that I'm still employed."

My eyes skimmed over the scissors and looked for something else. No letter openers or anything, but there was some sort of shitty award that was lumpy and pointy and looked solid enough. I knew I didn't really need to have a weapon, knew that it couldn't possibly help in this situation anyway, but I always felt better if violence was at least an option. One of my many state-assigned therapists had labeled me as having a "maladaptive stress response" according to the files I found on her laptop, alongside a whole list of terms that she or one of the others before her had considered.

Reactive Attachment Disorder and Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder had appeared in my older files, with the former being (so far as I could tell) the go-to diagnosis for kids in foster care and the latter being what they say when you're too young to officially call you bipolar. Later stuff shifted towards Borderline Personality Disorder which I wasn't crazy about not because it didn't seem accurate - I pride myself on being self aware - but because the name made it sound like I only almost had a personality.

More recently I'd been trying to police my thoughts more, as part of an ongoing project to be a somewhat decent human being and also not end up in jail for things like stealing my therapist's laptop or bludgeoning the manager of the Desert Oasis Apartments to death with some stupid award from his desk. He wasn't making it easy though.

"Miss, uh, Smith? You're more than welcome to fill out an application, but -" he started, his voice quickly fading into indistinct murmurs in my head as I felt my heart pounding harder. I wanted to smack the condescending look off his face. I made a fist so tight that the house-shaped keychain in my hand - a keychain that I knew wouldn't be getting a key any time soon - threatened to cut into the skin of my palm.

He stood and started to circle around the desk, still blabbing on and looking like a smarmy asshole. Something about three to five weeks, it didn't matter. I knew I couldn't actually hit him, but for a moment I vividly pictured him just tripping - if he did it one more step closer he'd be in the perfect spot to pitch forward and hit the corner of the next desk, it would serve him right for...

I abruptly shoved my chair back and stood, waving him away. Serve him right for what? Having a kinda punchable face? I was doing it again. This wasn't his fault. This was Adrian's fault. The manager looked alarmed by my sudden movement, and I had the thought that maybe he knew how punchable his face was - and now here's this crazy teenager freaking out. And yeah, I was freaking out. I could hear the manic edge in my voice, I just couldn't stop it. "Okay, okay, I get it. Shut up for a second," I said, trying to figure out what to do next.

Calling Adrian again wouldn't help. He hadn't answered his phone when I called after work and found an empty parking spot where his shitty van should be waiting to pick me up. He didn't answer when I called several times while making my way to the apartment complex on foot, nearly getting sun stroke in the summer heat. And now that it had been made clear that neither Adrian nor his girlfriend had applied for an apartment it seemed pretty obvious that he was never going to take a call from me again.

"Miss. I'm going to have to ask you to leave," the punchable manager said, probably offended by being told to shut up. He picked up my backpack and held it out, and something snapped. I spun and stormed out the door and across the parking lot. Running away again, like always. I hopped over the low wall at the edge of the property and ducked around the back of the Circle K where I could see a big twisted mesquite tree looming over the dumpsters, super easy to climb up since the trunk was nearly horizontal. Big trees have always had a calming effect on me, which was unfortunate given the fact I was in Phoenix, Arizona where they were in relatively short supply.

I pulled out my phone and texted Adrian again, just a simple promise that I was going to find and kill him - I didn't have the energy to use any flowery language - and then played a shitty Tetris clone I'd coded until it did the thing where it gave me the left-hand squiggle block over and over and I had to turn it off. By then my battery was getting low, and it was time to make an uncomfortable phone call.

"Hey, it's Callie. Calliope Smith. Listen, the apartment uh... the apartment isn't ready so I need to stay at the group home tonight. No, I know. Yeah I know I'm an adult now, but it's not like I fucked this up. I worked my ass off to get that rent money, and... No, I get it, rules are rules, but I'm not thirty or something. It's literally my eighteenth birthday today. I was there this morning. Well do you think you could help me talk to the apartment manager? I tried but I... no I know, but I'm not saying it's your job. I'm asking, just, for a favor. Please. Okay, fuck you too." I hung up and wiped my face since I was back to crying. Of course. It had been stupidly optimistic of me to call that douche, she barely even helped when she was legally obligated to. Bill had been the only good one, and I couldn't call him.

I reluctantly headed back to the apartment office, already trying to think of somewhere in the neighborhood to stay. There was a strip mall nearby with almost every spot vacant, probably I could find one I could break into. There was also a neighborhood within walking distance that would have some foreclosed properties, they practically never had alarms. I reached the door and pulled, and almost yanked myself into it. It was locked. I glanced at my phone, and... yeah, they had just closed. Cupping my hands on the glass to see inside better, I scanned along the desks looking for my backpack. Thirteen hours ago I had loaded my meager belongings into Adrian's van, everything but what was in my backpack, and I wasn't going to leave without it.

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Logically, I knew it I could just go crash somewhere and get my bag in the morning. My life wasn't totally blown up yet. I'd slept in abandoned buildings plenty of times, and while I might get in a little trouble at work if I couldn't find a way to shower I could hold out until I got another paycheck and then... well, I couldn't get an apartment. Not by myself, not with the prices in Phoenix. And as an adult, I couldn't fall back on the group home. There were programs to help with shit like this, but most of them expired when I turned eighteen and I hadn't thought that I needed them - plus my case manager had made it pretty clear that she was only going to help me with them if I forced her every step of the way when we talked about it a year ago.

I felt a deep rage building. I'd done everything right this time. I'd stopped breaking into places, and being mean to people - mostly - and I'd stopped running away. I'd gone to most of my therapy appointments, and I had graduated high school even if my grades had been shit.

And it didn't matter.

My lock picks were in the backpack, but that wasn't a problem. I knew the secret to getting a door like this unlocked without proper tools. It was simple, really. A child could do it. I leaned down and picked up the universal lock pick from the landscaping next to the office door, hefted it in my hand. Two voices screamed over each other in my head, one telling me I couldn't risk going to jail and the other just wanting to burn it all down. I looked at the large river rock and imagined how good it would feel to smash it right through the door. I could just reach through and unlock it, grab my bag and anything else valuable I could see, and then run. The manager almost certainly didn't remember my name.

I sighed, and let my head thump against the glass. It wasn't worth it. I still had my job, and I could be homeless for a little while as I saved up. Someone out there would need a roommate, and I could maybe get a second job somewhere with food I could take at the end of the night, and even if it would be shitty I still really didn't want to rush into the gutter. Be the main character of your story, someone had told me once. I could fix this, somehow. I'd come too far not to. The cool glass felt good on my head, and I just closed my eyes and tried to calm myself down and make a plan.

I was startled back to the world by that loud WHOOP WHOOP sound the cops make their car do when they want to get your attention but don't feel like actually kicking the siren on. I sighed again, and turned around to see that, sure enough, some cops had pulled into the parking lot. One was already getting out of the car.

"Keep your hands where I can see them!"

I wasn't sure what they were expecting. Did they think I was an escaped fugitive? Did they see a teenage girl and just jump right to assuming I was... I looked down at the rock still in my hand. I let it drop, and held my arms a little out at my sides. "Hey officer, my roommate was supposed to leave our spare key under this rock and..."

Normally I was good at talking my way out of stuff, but as he started to pepper me with questions - with the hostile suspicion that seemed to be the default for most police I'd dealt with - it was clear this wasn't going to go well. Any other day, I would have maybe shown them my ID and said something about it being the worst birthday ever in order to make sure they saw what day it was and hopefully had some sympathy.

But instead, I hesitated and stumbled and basically made it very clear I didn't really know anyone at the apartment complex at which point the questions got worse. "No sir, I'm not on any drugs. No I wasn't going to do anything with the rock - what? No, I was checking for a key because - I'm trying to tell you - I'm not arguing, I'm trying to explain." My head was suddenly pounding, and I was feeling lightheaded. I knew that if they put me in that car I was fucked. Any chance at keeping my job would be gone, and without a home it would be next to impossible to get another one. I'd be in the downward spiral, with no support system I could use to pull myself out.

So I ran.

I vaulted over the fence into the pool area, the yelling of police behind me. I heard a crash as the one that was already out of the car biffed it trying to follow me, and felt a surge of hope as I scrambled over the next fence into the complex. After only fifty feet or so I caught a glimpse of the other cop, rushing around the side to intercept, and I veered the other way. The headache was getting worse and my vision was swimming, I couldn't decide if I was having some sort of panic attack or what. I felt pins and needles all over and there was this stretched feeling, as if I was attached to an invisible rubber band that had been pulled tight.

I reached the parking lot, ran up the back of a car, and pulled myself onto the covered parking - planning on jumping over the wall into whatever property was next door on that side - but as I leapt I seemed to slow down in mid-air and everything went dim. The world was completely silent and I felt... weightless. Honestly it was lovely, and I had the thought that I should pass out more often. I couldn't feel my body... but I had this need to... reach out...

I was still flying over the wall, falling. But I was also on a snowy mountainside, or maybe floating over it somehow. And I was in a strange room surrounded by gears and bright glowing lights like neon signs, though I couldn't see the actual source of the light. And I was standing in a forest clearing, surrounded by huge boulders covered in strange writing. Everything was frozen in place, overlapping. And then the universe seemed to pick one and I slammed down into the snow.

There was a piercing, horrible pain in my head - I'd never felt anything this terrible. My skull literally felt like it was going to explode. My ears were transmitting only a sharp ringing sound along with more pain, and I was dimly aware of blood running down the sides of my head as well as gushing out of my nose. Did someone stab me in the ears? Had I been shot? Did the police shoot me in the head and then... wait... why was there snow? My vision was blurry, and before I could decide what was real and what wasn't everything went black.