It was like any other busy night at Bill's Diner. People were yelling, demanding beer, and combined with the constant battle to not get your ass pinched, it was enough to give any normal person a migraine. As a standing veteran in the art of avoidance, I have a knack at knowing which guys will do the pinching and when they decide the strike. I may only be twenty, but in this dump you either learn quick or you drop out like a fly. That's why so many runaways have trouble at Santa Carla. You have to know how to survive and adapt to this putrid place.

Many naïve people see an attraction at Santa Carla. I do not. Shifty people often gravitate to this hellhole. They're not noticed as they would be in normal cities or towns. Their colorful choices in words, clothes, and careers are remarkably telling. It doesn't matter if you're not from here, you can easily see the spark in their hard eyes. They are only here to damage this place. Innocent runaways are not safe from these scumbags. Most disappear in a month's time, the lucky ones that is. Others, like me, stay and live unhappily.

It's a hard life. I can't stress the humiliation when you first get pinched at Bill's Diner. The hooting and hollering flies from all directions and it alone makes you light headed and very much aware of the disabling scrutiny. You're pined by their stares. After, there are redundant catcalls and jeering remarks from your patrons. I don't say anything. I can't say anything. As much as I hate it here, it's all I got. The minimum wage provides me a little shack in the country and the gas in my dangerous car, which isn't covered by insurance.

Yeah, I'm making it and trying my best to stay strong; only taking each day at a time. Never thinking about tomorrow or better yet the future, it's a dog-eat-dog world and I'm only a passing ghost in a sea of self-important people. I have no place. Only myself.