“I think I just got my period,” she said in an abashed tone. She rushed down an alleyway between buildings and rustled with her shoes, trying to remove them before she bled through the inseam of her camo pants. Being careful not to step on the floor with them, she removed her socks and wadded them into a makeshift pad, and motioned to Taylor who was staring at her, looking concerned. “Can you come stand over here and shield me?” she asked him.

“Do you want me to look away?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Aria replied.

Taylor leaned against the wall of the building, using the bulk of his shape to conceal her, while trying to act like he was just hanging out there in the alleyway. Aria tried to flatten herself against the wall of the building. She unbuttoned and unzipped her pants just far enough to be able to slip the socks between her legs. She felt like a slave to her own body, which had now put more pressure on her, as if everything else was not pressure enough. This was not an aspect of life on the street that she had even considered before today.

They’d decided to abandon their attempts to call Taylor’s friend who had promised to help him if he ever came to LA. She had not picked up a single one of his phone calls. Instead, they took three hours to reach a public park and Aria went straight into the public bathroom. She washed her socks out at one of the sinks as fast as she could, to cover up what she was doing. Her blood blushed deep crimson against the steel shine of the sink.

Aria filled up one of her empty water bottles and squirted a stream of orange hand soap from the dispenser into her hand. Using her elbow to try to latch the door of the bathroom stall closed, she straddled the toilet and used the soap and water from her bottle to wash herself off. Knowing she would bleed through toilet paper, she used it temporarily while trying to dry off her socks under the hand drier. It soon became obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to get them any drier without it taking too much time, seeing as how she had to stop for the other women who needed to dry their hands. So she folded her socks together and put them back in place. She would have to stay there near the bathroom for the rest of the day. Perhaps for the next five days.