IT SMELL LIKE Christmas out here because of the trees. Carolina says they’re pine. The needles crunch under our feet like cereal. The ones still on the trees pull at the fur on my coat. I stop and stick my tongue out, catch me some snowflakes.

Every day we use the back door to leave the house. Sometime it’s dark. Sometimes not. Guess it don’t matter. People don’t see us nohow. It’s like our house is invisible. Buried in trees. Seems like we live in a park or forest, but we don’t. Earle say we got neighbors ’bout ten, fifteen blocks away. Maybe they’ll see us one day, find us or call the police, I said the other day. Gem told me to shut up and be quiet.

Air blows on my cheeks, scrubs my chin till it hurts. I’m freezing in fishnet stockings and a short skirt that was too short ’fore it shrunk in the last wash. Roxanne’s in front of me. The other girls is ahead of her. I say for them to step it up, but it’s hard walking on sticks in heels. Sometimes, I count the trees. I got up to seventy last time I tried. I drop stuff too. A red fingernail, a yellow pencil, bread, broken glass. Daddy figured it out. Asked who done it. Roxanne took the beating for me. So, I owe her like I owe April. Roxanne say God don’t keep score.

It’s the first snow to fall since I been here. It melts on my tongue and lips. Gem swiped the lipstick for me when she was out by herself with Daddy. So, I guess I owe her too. It’s called Ripe Red Raspberries. It don’t come off no matter how much kissing gets done. Plus, it’s expensive.

“Here.” I brush snow off Roxanne’s bangs with my hand and wipe her wet cheeks. “You look pretty tonight.” Kate done her hair. It’s down her back, strawberry blond, a million curls. My wig is black, stops at my chin. I’m happy my bruises is all gone.

“Make a wish,” Roxanne say once she walking again.

I say it to myself. I wish I was home. I look up at the moon instead of where we going. It’s a half-moon with half of that half stuck behind a cloud. I look down at my shoes and icicle toes. And ask Roxanne what she wishing for.

“A Christmas tree.” She been here a whole year and a half and they ain’t never had one.

I watch the moon while she telling me what all she’ll put on it. “I hope you get your wish.” She hope the same for me.

The van don’t got no seats, or rugs on the floor, just benches and a window so Carolina and the driver can look back and keep their eyes on us. We get in, slide across the seat far as we can, then sit facing each other. They padlock us in. There ain’t no windows, so we don’t know where we going until we get there. He uses The Fount, motels, and other places. He’s got other girls too. Says he wants to be a billionaire. Me too.

I rub my hands, blow on my cold fingers, pull out a cigarette and light up. Roxanne hums. Kate talks ’bout her daughters. Twins. They live with her grandmother somewhere in California. The state took ’em from her. Put Kate in a group home. Left her father free. She ran two months after that. That’s something we all got in common. We run, but trouble always catch up to us.

“I had my first pimp at thirteen.” Kate pops a pill in her mouth. She snuck on a train going from DC to Virginia, hitched a ride to New York. Found another pimp there. Anthony is number three. Kate sneezes, digs up her nose, checking her nose ring for snot. She Irish with a bunch of freckles and red hair that look like it never stops. She got a Irish accent when she want one. Says it gets her bigger tips. Daddy take most of those too, but he still let us keep some. Shaking her legs to warm ’em, she bang on the wall. “Heat! We need heat, Miss Carolina. Those men don’t come to buy Popsicles.”

I ain’t like the rest of them. They don’t belong to nobody. I bet nobody is looking for ’em, wishing they was home either. I got JuJu, Mr. Bobbie, and Maleeka. Maybe even Miss Saunders. At work, I think about ’em, in my head I talk to ’em, ’cause if I didn’t, maybe I would be like Gem and think I was supposed to be here, stay here, like it here. I don’t. I never will.