Chapter Twenty-Three
Juniper
A second black Range Rover with tinted-out windows drove past in as many hours, and I knew my time was up.
With a stupid kink in my neck that never went away anymore, I sighed and picked up my cell that I tried to never touch at night. Super quick, in a move I’d become way too adept at over the past two years, I woke up my phone to see the time and battery life, then shut the screen back down.
Eleven percent battery.
Seventeen minutes before sunrise.
Trying not to think about a time when I didn’t need to know the exact minute the sun set and rose, I gathered my long hair into a messy bun. Except this wasn’t one of those cute, messy updos you saw all over the internet with stupid-sexy wisps falling around your face.
This was the I-haven’t-washed-my-hair-in-two-days-and-I-sleep-in-my-car bun.
The homeless bun.
Because I was homeless.
Homeless, homeless, homeless , I silently chanted as if saying it over and over would make it suck any less, not that I had anyone to blame but myself. Or if I wanted to get technical, I had no one to blame except—whatever. I didn’t say that name, and I wasn’t going there this morning.
Or any morning.
Cracking open one of the shitty, thin plastic water bottles I used over and over, refilling them wherever I could find a free water source that wasn’t totally suspect, I took a swallow. Then I grabbed my toothbrush from its little plastic tube that was probably less sanitary than the constantly reused one-time-use water bottles, and squirted toothpaste on it.
Staring at the ocean that was beginning to turn from a midnight blue to a deep aqua, I brushed my teeth.
If I had to be homeless, Miami Beach wasn’t the worst place I could’ve landed.
With that stellar thought, I cracked my door and did the whole camping toothbrush routine of rinsing and spitting, then quickly shut my car door before anyone saw me because this wasn’t a campsite.
Not even close.
But the private parking lot for the commercial building wasn’t gated, and it cleared out at five p.m. like people had better places to be than an oceanfront lot with perfect views of the Atlantic. Whatever. It made my absolute shit life a little better when I dared to park here a couple nights a week, and I could stare at the waves instead of a Walmart parking lot, or some random street location that could get me stabbed in my sleep or, worse, carjacked.
Daring to check my cell once more for the time because that simple act that most everyone took for granted, it turned out to be borderline compulsory. It was also one of the many, nearly impossible habits I was trying to break because shit got real when you lived in your car.
Like, don’t run the engine and waste money on gas just to charge your cell phone real.
Stupid reality.
I glanced around to make sure nobody was watching me. Not that I didn’t have shades in the back windows, but I still looked because I never closed up my front windows or blocked the windshield. If I needed to cut and run in a hot minute, I didn’t want to be messing with accordion sun shades.
Not seeing anyone, I grabbed some wrinkled clothes.
Then I shimmied out of my day-old leggings, tossed them into the back seat on top of the growing dirties pile, and groaned at the thought of going to the laundromat.
Before I could contort myself enough to whip my last pair of clean leggings over my ass, the rogue thought took hold.
I didn’t have to go to the laundromat.
I could go to Reena’s.
Where there was a washer and a dryer, the water and electricity were still magically on, I had the only key, and where no one but me had seemed to step foot in since Reena left.
Okay, one other person.
But I wasn’t going there either. “Stop it,” I muttered into the dank interior of my Cherokee. “I am not using her house again.” I didn’t need to get arrested for trespassing.
But it’d been two years.
Two stupid, shitty, horrible, I-hate-myself years.
Yanking the tight waistband over my bubble ass, I growled in frustration as the material snapped around my waist and dug into my flesh. “Only you could get fat while being homeless.” Out of nowhere, tears suddenly sprung.
But it wasn’t out of nowhere.
It was that last word, because despite how many times I said it, I hated it.
I hated it like nothing else because it reeked of failure and dripped with self-pity, and I wasn’t a victim. Homelessness was a circumstance. And I didn’t know why I hated the word more than the fact that I was sleeping in my car, but I did. Because words mattered.
And screw the universe for inventing a shitty word for a shitty situation that made you feel like you were less than other people. I wasn’t. I’d just made choices. Some of them worse than others.
Like losing a key two years ago while I was between jobs, which set off a series of events.
And thinking Reena Alano was my bestie, or friend at all, wherever she was.
I still didn’t know.
Same as I didn’t know why she’d given me a key to her house after only knowing me for six months. If I owned a house—okay, not going there either—but if I owned a house again, I wouldn’t give a key to anyone.
But Reena had said it was for emergencies. That someone besides her should have a spare key to the house she’d inherited from her dead grandmother. Then she’d just handed it over, saying she didn’t know or trust anyone else in Miami, right before she fed me a whole sob story that was so damn familiar, I’d bought it.
Now, I almost wondered if I’d imagined her.
But one glance at the ignition told me I hadn’t because dangling from my keychain was the evidence.
Reena’s rekeyed house keys.
Where there was still a washer and dryer, air conditioning, and a shower.
There were also neighbors.
And two years of breaking in to a place that wasn’t yours, empty or not, was bad.
Really bad.
Like, get myself arrested, fingerprinted, and run through the system bad .
Which made me think of the system and runaways and missing persons.
Guilt hit, and I grabbed my cell, swiped, and ignored the now ten percent battery life as I recklessly texted a number that I hadn’t gotten a reply from in two years.
Me: I’m still really mad at you. Whatever. I’ll get over my anger and myself. But I suck. I never reported you missing. I don’t even have a pic of us. So like, maybe you can forgive me for that. But like, not if something really, really horrible happened. Which I seriously hope it didn’t. I hope you just fell into a life of bliss with Mr. Perfect.
I hit the little arrow, and the message went through, just like all the others.
Stupidly, I held the phone for a minute and waited.
When no response came, I patted my dashboard with both affection and superstition. “Come on, Mr. Jeep Stud. Do your thing.” Closing my eyes, I turned the key.
The engine rolled over, and I exhaled in relief. Then I blasted the air conditioning just as the sun broke past the horizon and rose above the ocean.
For a minute, I watched the sunrise that was nothing like anything I’d seen before coming to Miami.
“Time is magic,” I whispered into the universe before turning the old SUV around.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, another black Range Rover drove into the garage of the fancy high-rise down the street.