Chapter 2

When I was thirteen, I decided that I would be god. I would be in control of my destiny and beat Lady Ebony at her own game. So I left.

Poof.

Gone like a jet.

And that's what the other girls ended up calling me after I was caught the third or fourth time. Jet became my identity, and any other label I had that Lady Ebony tagged mindlessly on pieces of paper, records, files, documents, became symbolic of the life I had no control over, the life they wanted for me. My real name may as well have been a number. A bar-code.

A girl named Liza was the only person I talked to. Whenever I got brought back from “escaping” she would make me tell her everything. Where I went, who I talked to, what I did... We'd stay up for hours and she tried helping me to fool-proof my plan, so that the next time I got out it would be the last. The whole idea was romantic to her, like some kind of story-book hero setting out to brave the big bad world alone. I asked her plenty of times if she wanted to come with me, thinking two heads might be better than one, but she wouldn't.

“No offense or anything,” she'd say whenever I offered, “but I'd rather not be the one coming back here in handcuffs.
”
Sometimes I wonder if she regrets not coming with me that last time. I mean, to be honest, sometimes I find myself regretting that I left. I guess everyone gets those nagging could-have-been thoughts. I'll bet Liza does. I'm sure she would have loved the freedom, but maybe not the sacrifice. I guess her spirit was in a whirl of wanderlust versus common sense. All mine was focused on was getting out from under Lady Ebony's thumb.

Things happened that way for a reason, I'm sure. I mean, it would have been a hell of a lot easier for them to spot two of us on the loose than just one. She definitely would have gotten me caught, or the other way around. And I'll bet she wouldn't have been willing to shave her head. That's the first thing I did after I got out for the last time. I went completely bald. I was young enough to pass unquestionably as a boy. I've never considered myself to be particularly “feminine” and the rest of society must not have either. So I lived the majority of my teen years as a boy.

I got really good at stealing. I sort of had to to live. It's not like I had somewhere to turn in at 6:30 every evening for supper. I was constantly moving and at first that was good enough. I hitched and walked for miles- it became a sort of a purpose, to keep moving. I wanted out of Pennsylvania and out of everything that had been previously associated with my life, my bar-code. I became Jet. Non-gendered, non-beautiful Jet.