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School lets out just after four and the clock starts ticking.

Curfew is at ten for you and every other kid at school. You don't

want to go home because home isn't home. Home is someone who is paid

$500 a month to give you dinner and a bed.

You don't bring friends home to hang out and they don't bring you.

Besides, your friends don't live anywhere near you or each other.

Everyone is scattered throughout the city in a different boarding home.

So you've got about six hours, but not really because first you've got to find a

grown-up to buy you the booze and afterwards it's going to take an hour or two

and a bus or two buses and a lot of walking to get back to your bed.

A runner gets you the liquor in exchange for a few beers.

You don't walk the streets with your backpack of bottles.

Too risky.

You take the backpaths. Behind the big box stores, the Silver City

movie theater, the shoppers Drug Mart, you go across the golf course and through the

park. High fives, jokes, teasing, a huge weight lifts just to be around

each other and away from everything else in this place.

You keep walking.

You're looking for somewhere safe, somewhere no cars go where you'll all be left alone.

...