Aria watched her walk back to the van. She was intimidated by Ciarra. But she was also envious of the way Ciarra seemed to tame the world around her. That was not something Aria felt able to do.

Taylor, Luke and Aria walked a long distance until they reached a church that Luke had promised contained a food pantry. Aria had expected to find a soiled storeroom with various canned goods, which she would then have to try to figure out how to open. But to her surprise, the line that they found themselves in led up to a plastic table where a woman was handing out sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrap. Luke and Taylor each accepted one. She paid no attention to them. But when Aria reached the end of the line to take the sandwich being held out to her, the woman said, “There you go, darlin’,” with an almost southern drawl that owed more to cultural upbringing than it did to geographical location.

This unexpected bit of intimacy confused Aria. It both comforted her and contradicted her sense of reality. Aria had come to expect cruelty or at least self-centered altruism from people. This sense of genuine kindness was like a shock to the system and she couldn’t quite decide whether she liked it or not. Given the strange nature of the interaction, Aria read the lettering on the woman’s name tag. Her name was Imani. On that cold June morning, Imani was simply someone who had been unexpectedly kind; Aria could not know then that she had met a friend.

That day Taylor and Aria followed Luke endlessly to different parts of the city. Aria was beginning to feel the same way Taylor did: that they had hit the jackpot by meeting him. After visiting shelters and locating a mission that allowed a 15-minute shower for each of them, by the time they were headed back to the car lot, Aria felt better than she had in a long time. She had found a sleeping bag in a donation pile at one of the shelters. She was holding it under her arm like a treasure. And, except for her clothes, which hadn’t been laundered for weeks, for the first time in weeks she felt clean.