She was seven when she left home.

The first few nights had been hell. Tucked away under an awning in front of a closed shop, jumping at every little sound like a boogeyman was going to drag her away into the night. She missed her bed terribly, but not enough to risk another attack upon return home. Her ear was still bleeding from the last one, and her hearing had yet to return.

During the day she wandered, pilfering bits of food from various places or finding tossed out remnants behind convenience stores. It was actually surprising how much food got thrown away because of expiring dates, even when it still looked good enough to eat. 

At nights she got better at finding safe places to sleep but learned quickly that nowhere was safe for very long. She was but one of many out on the streets and found it hard adjusting to the local community of homeless folks. 

Eventually, she stumbled upon a group of slightly older kids who took pity on her and told her about a local 'Papa' who tended to help out the younger street kids in the area. Papa, as it turned out, was a guy named John. Some of the other kids tried to explain that he used to be a she until she found out that she was really a he, and adjusted accordingly. Eisley didn't understand a lick of what they were saying. Papa looked like a papa, acted like a papa, and called himself papa. 

Never having had a positive male influence in her life before, she took to John like glue. She was youngest of his little troupe and she contributed nicely to the family by bringing home items everyone needed.

That happiness only lasted a few months. Papa had always stayed inside his little apartment, curled up on an old couch with a warm blanket over his lap. It turned out that he was sick, very sick, and by the time she met him he didn't have much time left. Papa passed away surrounded by their makeshift little family, and after he died any hope that the rest of them would stick together died with him.

Eisley watched from her spot on the couch, next to Papa's stiff feet, as the rest of the kids and strangers she had never met came in and started hauling away all of the stuff in the apartment. The only things left when they were done were the fraying carpet, Papa, and Eisley. 

She learned an important lesson that day, one that stuck with her as she grew. When you died you were gone. Poof. Nobody left inside the flesh on the couch. Nobody cared the second your heart stopped beating.

It was an important lesson, and not one she had ever seen in any of her shows on TV.

When she turned eight, she managed to find a bed in a local shelter for children. It was called the 'HAT House.' A shelter for Homeless Adults and Teens located toward the bottom end of Manhattan. She had been lucky to find a bed, as they were hard to come by in the city. Luckier still that the shelter ran on a 'no questions asked' basis, which meant she didn't have to worry about anyone trying to contact her mother. She settled in the first night after the program being explained to her feeling safe for the first time in a while, with a bed and blankets to cuddle into as she drifted off.

The next day she was walked through the paperwork of various programs that would help place her in a more permanent home. Eisley was all too excited at the prospect, too, imagining that she might be placed with her very own Mr. Rodgers.

The second night in her new, temporary home she got more familiar with a few of the girls she shared a communal room with. Most of them were older, with piercings and dyed hair. One girl was a new mother at 16, and getting help with adjusting to it. The older girls welcomed her into their group, which she was all too happy to join. Did that make her popular? She hadn't ever had a real friend before other than Papa. Now she had five!

Aubry was 15 and had run away from home because she felt like it. She wouldn't elaborate any more than that.

Tennessee was 19 from Tennesee and said that her father had been abusive to her and her younger brother, so they left. Apparently, her younger brother had gotten picked up by CPS and placed in a home. She was too old.

Sam was 14 and discovering his own identity and had left home because his family disowned him. He couldn't room with the other boys because he had been a girl before. He always seemed so sad about it, but had friends to help him cope.

Jessica was 17 with a birthday coming up soon. She had been born in the states, but her family hadn't. At some point, they had been deported and she was left on her own. She told stories of how horrible the foster care system was and said that was why she was on the streets.

Madaline was 15, and she seemed like the leader of the group, which just made Eisely want to impress her as much as she could. Madaline was fond of sitting at the end of Eisely's bed and telling her all sorts of horrible tales. She had been on the streets pretty much all of her life because her parents were homeless too. She told stories of tragedies that had befallen her and those she loved. Stories that had unexpected happy endings, like when her brother managed to find work and a place to live in a different state. She gave advice and warnings about where not to go, and what places were safest and when. 

Eisley made up her mind that she would never go back out there, but... at the same time, the foster care system didn't seem that safe either, or at least not from Jessica's point of view. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she knew what she wasn't and that was that.

From then on she started purposefully sabotaging her own work at finding a home. When people came to meet her she played sick or threw fits. Anything to push off the inevitable appointment. Her choice had unintended consequences though, as she found out after a few days. 

The girls turned on her.

They told her that she couldn't stay. She was the youngest, least damaged. She didn't need the bed as much as others did, and thus she needed to leave. Eisley was confused at the change. She was eight and didn't know why someone else deserved it more than her. She refused.

Their efforts turned from simple persuasion to more aggressive tactics as time went on. They harassed her during the day, made sure she was secluded and left alone from the others. At night they would rip her blankets away from her and pelt her with pillows. That eventually ramped up to her finding a dead rat in her bed. Still, she refused. Partly because she was afraid to leave a place with a bed and two meals a day, and partly because she didn't want to give them the satisfaction of scaring her off.
 
Nasty rumors started to spread about her, and where she came from. It started to change the way people looked at her. She didn't like it.

Eventually, the harassment shifted to violence. The girls would pinch and punch her places that were hidden under clothes. Each night they would pressure her to leave until she cried. There was only so much they could do without getting kicked out themselves, though... so she endured it. 

She had managed to keep her bed for a year and a handful of days. She was proud of herself in a weary sort of way but told herself that it would eventually be alright. They would get bored, or tired of harassing her, and it would stop. 

February, 2007 things changed again. It was a Wednesday and the lights had been out for a while. Everyone in the large communal bedroom was fast asleep, or at least she had thought that. 

Eisley was woken up from being manhandled out of her bed. A sock was shoved in her mouth to silence her before she could wake everyone up. Five girls dragged her small form to the bathroom, shut the door, and proceeded to hold her down.

She kicked and screamed through her muffle, trying to wrench her arms away. Madaline dropped down onto her knees on Eisley's left side, a cheap box cutter gripped in one hand. "Should have gotten the hell out of here when we told you to, brat. You brought this on yourself." 

The girls shaking hand descended. The point of the blade glinted in the dim light....

Shelter staff found her in the bathroom a short time later on the floor and screaming her head off. It was deep. There was so much blood... They spotted the stained tool on the floor and her fate was sealed. An ambulance arrived a short time later to fetch her and take her to the nearest hospital. When she was stable enough to talk, no one listened to her.

No one believed that she hadn't done it. That the other girls had done it to her.

Eisley spent hours out of it as doctors worked to sitch her wrist back together. The cut had been deep, but wouldn't affect her ability to use the hand. They deemed it intentional, flagged her as a severe risk, and had her committed involuntarily to a wing of the hospital where they could monitor her.

When she was coherent enough to talk again she told her story to anyone who would listen. No one understood, though. Every nurse and doctor looked at her with those same sad eyes, unwilling to believe that a group of girls had attacked her for a bed. They didn't understand how it worked.

She refused to give in and falsely admit that she had done it. It made the people caring for her unwilling to believe that she was safe to release.

It felt like weeks passed... she wasn't sure. She had never learned the classic way to keep track of time, so days and hours all tended to blend into one another. At some point she attempted to escape.... it ended with her being tethered to her bed, left to watch whatever cartoons happened to be on the rooms TV at the time.

It took some time, but she finally relented. She calmed down enough to be released from the straps on her wrists and ankles. She made up a convincing story about why she had tried to kill herself. They believed her.

Someone from childcare services came to visit her at some point, she told the woman that she just missed her mom. She just wanted a home. Eisley agreed to start seeing a therapist who worked with troubled kids and she was out of the hospital before she knew it.

She spent a week being moved around from one place to the other before her tempory caretakers got too comfortable around her. They assumed she was a shy, well-mannered child who did as she was told. If she was told to stay put, she would.

Her last handler learned the hard way that had been a lie.

--

She was back on the streets, and with a new determination to avoid everyone if she could. She didn't want to try and make friends anymore, she didn't want someone to help her find a home. She just wanted to be by herself.

From that day she worked on her pilfering skills, watching videos of people caught shoplifting on phones at gadget stores. She got caught a few times, but managed to avoid capture for the most part as she went along.

She kept notes about safe places. Where she could sleep, shower, find food, etcetera. She stole a few kids books here and there to try and teach herself more useful things. The ability to count higher than twenty helped a lot.

She made enemies from a lot of the families on the streets. She didn't want anything to do with drugs or selling herself. She was afraid of establishing longterm connections with people, so she didn't. She stayed aloof, and if she needed to trade something she kept it short and simple.

She spent equal parts of time avoiding those she had angered, and trying to survive.

Eisley was Ten, and there was a boy who hated her.

Over the course of a few years she had grown a lot as a person. She was better at avoiding trouble, better at finding the things she needed, and had a mapped network of safe routes and places to sleep. She had a short list of people who were safe to be around for short periods of time, as well as a mile long list of people to avoid.

Liam's name was right up there at the top.

Liam was a few years older than her and had pestering her for the better part of a year. He thought it was funny that she wore boys clothes and had taken to calling herself 'Tom'. He refused to call her anything other than Tom Girl, and the nickname was catching on among the other kids.

It started out innocently enough. He was brown haired and freckled, taller than the other kids, and he liked following her around and trying to start a conversation. "Where ya from?" "How long you been out here?" "What's your name?"

The questions went on and on. She answered something with just a few words, never really giving out much information about herself. She avoided more personal questions about where she was currently staying and the like. Eventually ignoring him got more of a reaction than just persistence. He became more aggressive with what she perceived was an attempt at friendship and became more insistent in her rejection of it.

The next thing she knew she had a black mark through her name among the rest of the homeless community too. People started calling her a Scab. That she wasn't to be trusted... had no morals, and would rat on you if you gave her the chance. She pulled further away from people as the few she had worked with stopped assosiating with her.

She was truely, 100% on her own.

Word got around slowly and soon she was banned from whole areas of the city. Some territories would simply ignore her and if she lingered long enough someone would eventually chase her away. Some were dangerous and if she was caught she typically left with a shiner and any useful items stolen from her. She heard whispers here and there that Liam was still on the look for her, and he was quickly settling himself in with a pretty big money laundering racket in the city.

She got accustomed to trying to change her look often, to keep people from spotting her easily.