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I first noticed Grace in the Billings station, arguing with Cartman at the desk. She looked smelly and carried a small guitar with her. I asked her what it was when she sat next to me on the bus; it’s a small guitar, she said. Oh, because I have a mandolin, etc. Yeah, this is bigger. I was tired. I had meant to fall asleep but she was talking on the phone and I had to listen; I kept hearing words that I was overly familiar with from a world I was not a part of, Kate’s world – squat, punk house, etc – and I couldn’t fall asleep, and it felt like she was throwing them out there just to keep me up with my eyes glued on nothing in particular. There was a braggardly confidence in her voice that she’d lack the next day, as she complained to a guy with a new girlfriend about how all her friends are guys and their new girlfriends take them away from her, and then about getting drunk and playing video games in a punk house, and a million things that don’t matter. I went to sleep when she did, with my right leg and her left leg resting against each other and swaying back and forth in a weird and completely non-romantic way, but in a way that was comforting and necessary.

Grace was nineteen and young, a “newly ex-punk” with a recovering mohawk sloping down the right side of her head, and filthy, mostly-ripped clothes.  She was a capital-letter Traveler and Street Kid. She was traveling from Philadelphia to Olympia, jumping trains, but she busted her leg in St. Louis and took the Greyhound the rest of the way. (She says, “Johnny Cash wrote all the time about jumping trains but he never actually did it.” “Yeah, he never actually wore black either.” I had to explain that I was joking.) She assured me that jumping trains was mostly just boring, waiting hours for the thing to get moving. Street kids all have nicknames like Piss and Puke, mostly given to them within hours of “becoming” a street kid. It wasn’t that interesting and it didn’t have to be. She wasn’t attractive and she had three lip rings so I wouldn’t know how to kiss her anyway, and I was glad. By Seattle we had inside jokes. Only connect, or whatever.