I hate my mother.

Cold out. I throw on my ski jacket. Ugly red thing, but it’s warm. I need warm. I’m not going to be stupid about this. It would be dumb to go out in the cold without a coat and get frozen.

You always hear about how dumb kids are, how they have to get carried home by some policeman: starving, shivering, so pathetic they’re glad to be dumped back at the home they ran away from in the first place.

Me, I’m smart.

I round the corner past the spindly trees, go into the ticket depot. Everyone in line is smoking. I hold my big ugly ski jacket over my face like a gas mask. The smell gets in anyway.

A homeless guy spits near my foot. “Ew,” I say.

He grins and does it again.

I pick up a train schedule and thumb through. Three hours. Past the river, the brick apartment buildings, the stands of bare trees out in the snow.

I’m no idiot. I know he won’t want to meet me. But I need to find out who he is. Because I know my mother, and I’m not like her, so I have to be like him.