He stares at the stained glass windows of the church, the steeple looming above him, but he dares not go in. There is a man passed out in the alleyway beside the building, or so he assumes. The man could, for all he knows, be dead. A siren wails in the distance, joining the cacophony of car horns and urban white noise. Night should be falling soon, but in New York, night never actually comes. It is stunted by the perpetual glow of the lights, the metropolis mecca of Times Square constantly pulsing.

He hates this city and everyone in it.

His social worker is a tired woman with dirty blonde hair who wears pantsuits and calls him 'sweetheart,' which he can't stand. Only one woman was allowed to call him anything like that. He needs to visit her once more before he leaves, tell her he got a tattoo for her and that he'll be fine on the west coast. He feels ridiculous sometimes, talking to a grave as if she could actually hear him; maybe some small part of him hopes that she can, though any likelihood of believing in heaven has been beaten out of him.

She was his only reason to stay, and with her gone, nothing ties him to this city. Not his case workers, who grew weary of constantly moving him and dealing with his misconduct reports. Not his flighty friends, who work labor jobs by day and shoot up dangerous concoctions by night. Only the memories will go with him. He savors the good ones of her, the way she sounded singing along to old showtunes and the smell of the potpourri around her house; him twirling her around at the top of the Statue of Liberty and silently admiring the art in the MET together.

The rest of the memories, the bad ones, will wake him up at night, drenched in sweat. A cracked Virgin Mary figurine, a God-fearing man's thick hands pushing open his thighs. Rows of cocaine and the stench of vomit. An old revolver and blood on the wall.

House after house, blurs of faces that he either could not remember or would never be able to forget. He is almost 18, worn out and scared, but he is taking a flight to try and escape. He doesn't know if Los Angeles will be any better than New York, but it provides miles of distance and anonymity. He wants the constant heat of a paradisal city; he wants the beach and the toxic flowers and the opportunity to become someone new.

He wants out. Three more weeks in that dirty halfway house, that's all he has to endure. Three more weeks and he's gone to L.A. with its Hollywood smog and glamour. He doesn't know what waits for him there in that city, but he knows it must be better than here.

It has to be.