“The fuzz?” asked Priya. What the heck did that mean? she thought.

“You know, the police,” said Sage. “They’re always riding us, man, cramping our style.”

Xander looked at Priya. He wondered if she was thinking what he was thinking. These people were very odd. And they sounded like they were from another time.

“And if we can’t get a bed at the shelter,” Rainbow continued, “then we’re stuck outside no matter how cold it gets.”

“I’m sorry,” Xander said. “I didn’t realize.”

“Not many people do,” Quest said. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

“What’s that mean?” Xander asked.

Rainbow explained. “People like you, well, they deliberately ignore us. Go out of their way to pretend we don’t even exist.”

Sage added, “Then when they do see us, they think we’re going to do something bad.”

“Well, you did kidnap our friend,” Priya pointed out.

Rainbow glared at Quest and Sage. “I told you that was going too far.”

Quest apologized. “We wanted to put a scare in the kid so you all wouldn’t come back. I swear we weren’t going to hurt him.”

“This place is that important to you?” Xander asked.

Sage nodded. “It’s our home.”

“Here we can just be ourselves,” Rainbow explained. “We don’t have to be ignored or judged or harassed. Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

Priya grabbed Rainbow’s hand. “No, I think I know what you’re talking about.”

Quest scratched his head of scraggly hair. “You’ve been on the streets?”

“No, but I know what it’s like to get looks from people who see you just one way. It’s horrible. You want to yell at people to stop with the pity stares.”

Sage frowned. “I hate the look the fuzz give us, man. Like they automatically assume we’ve stolen something.”

A woman with braids and an oversize tie-dyed shirt added, “Or what about those old ladies who’d rather pet a stray cat than give us spare change? They look at us like we’re filthy rats.”

Xander looked more closely at the group. Their strange outfits made them look like time travelers from the 1960s. He wondered if they had found their clothes from a bin at the back of a thrift store. If they had to root through dumpsters for food. Beg for money outside office buildings. He felt ashamed, realizing he was one of those people who would have prejudged them.

“People don’t see you for who you really are,” Priya said. “They see you as a thing.”

Xander raised an eyebrow. “Wait a minute. Priya, how do you know how they feel?”

She sighed. “Xander, you know how you’ve been wondering how I knew the hospital so well? A few years ago I spent a lot of time here. I was a patient. And for the record, they weren’t experimenting on anyone. That’s just a stupid creepypasta some jerk made up and put on the internet.”

“I didn’t know you’d been sick,” Xander said.

“I had leukemia when I was in third grade. I had to come here for treatments all the time.”