You've never belonged here, but it's gotten ridiculous, crazy, insane. You've always had to squirm and fidget under the neighbors' eyes, avoid the preacher when he looks down from the pulpit slinging fire and brimstone from his hands and spewing hate from his mouth, lie to your classmates so they don't call you a freak. You're used to that; it's part of your life, part of your routine, right up there with brushing your teeth and making dinner for your mom when she stumbles through the door like she's been ridden hard and brought home wet.

Things are changing, though, and you don't think you like the way they're going. The neighbors used to just look at you funny because of who and what you were, but now they go out of their way to avoid you, muttering imprecations under their breath, wearing their crosses more ostentatiously than they used to. Worse, your family is starting to give you the funny looks that your more tolerant neighbors used to give you. Distant relatives skitter away from you as if you were a leper rotting at the edges, aunts and uncles start to ask what went wrong with you, because they're sure something had to have happened for you to turn out the way you did.

And it only gets worse, because these things never get better. Time passes, and now the neighbors avoid your house at all times, refuse to talk to your mother in the street, spit on you before they cross the street to avoid you. The distance grows, and now the distance comes between you and those you love the most dearly. There are only two guys you've ever loved, and now your brother wants nothing to do with you and keeps his son away from you because you might infect him. He actually says that to your face, and you're not girly, you try hard to avoid being girly, but this time you have to cry because this is your own blood that's treating you this way.

But worst of all is when your mother starts to treat you the way everyone else has, full of stony silence and hatred and shame that someone, no something, like you came from her body. She won't eat the food you've cooked, she won't listen when you speak, she won't speak to you at all. It's like you've ceased to exist, turned into a ghost of yourself that now can only haunt the house that was once a home to you. You don't know what to do, whether you should try to save your family and remind them that you're still one of them and you love them, or if you should run away for once and for all. You've run away in your own quiet way before, body still trapped in the small town of your birth but mind roaming free through the Internet that connects you to the rest of the world. You know that these people are real, and maybe that's where you have to go.

And the stress is growing and the divide is widening, and there are nights when you wake up in a cold sweat because you've had too strong a nightmare about someone you love trying to kill you. You get a feeling in the pit of your stomach, where all the worst emotions live, that if you don't leave one way, you're going to leave another way, and the another way is going to be a lot more painful and permanent.

So one day when your mom's at work and is going to be for a long time, you take a look around your house, and that doesn't take long bcause it's a small house, and you say goodbye to it, because the house, at least, has never tried to do anything to you. Not that your family has yet, but you don't want to stay around and find out that in fact that's what they're planning. You go into your room and start packing the duffle bag that you haven't used in years. You take battered spiral notebooks and little scraps of paper with ideas on them that glow like fireflies in the dusk, and you empty out the metal can that holds your gross of pens someone gave you last Christmas (best gift anyone ever gave you except for the specialized stuff), and you grab a stack of yellowed magazines and a little stuffed dog for some company on this road. You don't take pictures, except for the one from when you were six and completely innocent and both your parents and your brother are smiling at the camera. You don't take mementos from family get-togethers, and you don't even think about taking anything that ties you back to this place that was never really home.

All the other necessaries, jeans that are always baggy on your skinny frame, t-shirts faded with much wear, the comb that keeps your hair at least a little presentable, toothbrush and toothpaste, every cent in the house right down to the change jar by the front door, go in around the edges of what's really important to you. The bag's heavier than you thought it would be, but you'll be able to handle it. You don't have any other choice, because you can't stay here and you can't go without at least something to go with. So you shoulder the bag with a grunt, you open the door, and you step outside.

And then you run.

Not literally, of course, because there's no way you're going to be able to get much above a stagger with your life over your shoulder, but that's what you're doing. You're running away for real this time, not just running and hiding online where there are people like you that you can talk to and have understand you. You're running away from a place that was never really home and the people who no longer even tolerate your presence in their lives.

You didn't bother saying goodbye on paper, because you know in your heart of hearts that it won't take long for them not to care. Oh, they'll make the right noises, and they'll probably get annoyed at the way you took all their money, but deep down inside you know they'll be giving thanks to the God they have so zealously embraced that you're gone. You became their shame through no actions of your own, and now you're gone.

You hitch your way to Richmond, and in Richmond they tell you that you just missed the most recent bus to New York, and they only run every two weeks because no one really wants to go to New York, and in fact they look at you strangely when you say that's where you need to go, and you can tell that they think of you what the people in your hometown thought of you and what your family started to think of you.

But there's a bus to Washington that leaves in an hour, and you buy a ticket for that because at least it's going north, at least it's a step in the right direction. You have people there you can rely on, a cousin with a heart of gold. He's got a new roommate now, a young man with a sweet face and eyes as shy as yours, and you bond in silent understanding. They tell you that you're not the only one facing hatred and disdain from people who used to care for you, and they agree that it's time to head to New York.

But you don't have time to wait for them to tie up loose ends at home, because they're guys and they're domestic and they can't just walk away from it all the way you did. The urge to run has changed into an urge to get to New York as soon as possible, so you start moving along a network of Greyhound buses, because it seems that no matter when you get there the bus for the City already left and it's a long time until the next one. From Washington it's on to Baltimore, from Baltimore to Philadelphia, and finally you're in New York. If you can't be yourself in New York, it's time to hang it up because there's nowhere even remotely like New York, or at least that's what you've heard.

The most recent address you have is from the package you got for Christmas; it's high summer in the city now, clothes sticking to your back, sweat making its way down your arms. You're a Southerner, you should be used to this heat, but it seems to be homing in on you as if it knows you've been dying to test it for the last seven years. That doesn't matter, though. You've got a goal, and you'll see it through if it kills you.

There are taxis at the bus terminal lined up like docile cattle- for some reason the image sends a shiver down your back- and when the line finally reaches you, you toss your bag in the backseat and follow it in and read the address to the driver in the crimson turban. He gives you an odd look, which doesn't surprise you because you've heard that cab drivers do not like going to outer borough destinations, no matter how much money there is to be made in the long journeys. But you're white and the neighborhood is apparently safe, so he guns the gas and you learn why a New York City cab ride is something to fear. You've seen it all, or at least you thought you had, sitting on the passenger side over rutted country lanes, but this takes the cake because of the elements of difficulty; the pedestrians don't care what color the light is, the other drivers seem to be trying to kill you, and the cyclists have rules all their own. Your white fingers clutch the door handle and turn your knuckles a ghostly translucent color, and panic fills every pore of your being until he slams the brake for the last time and now you just have to worry about paying the fare.

The apartment building is a little bit of a disappointment, because the romantic in you wanted it to be seedy and mysterious, but the only knock against it in reality is that it's a little beat-up and worn-down, like it's had enough of this crap and it frankly doesn't care anymore. The name next to the apartment number you seek matches the one on your envelope, but as you reach for the buzzer, someone opens the door and lets you in. You shrug and figure that it's a little more fun this way. Not that you were planning to have crazy amounts of fun, but hey, for running away from home you should get something to enjoy.

It only takes you two wrong turnings to find her apartment, and you ring the door bell once, twice, three times a lady, and finally she opens it. There's a totally blank look on her face when she sees you, because she doesn't recognize you in person. You've never met face to face, although you know her face from a photo she sent you from her high school; she had long brown hair that she still has, laughing brown eyes that she still has, a warm smile that she doesn't have, and a glittering rainbow necklace that she's not wearing.

"Hey. It's me," you say, and you hope that whatever you sound like over a few hundred miles of telephone wire, it's close enough to what you really sound like that she won't push you away.

It works. There's the smile. She's taller than you thought, and when she seizes you in a warm bear hug, you realize that she's softer than you imagined. "Welcome home," she says, letting you through the door, and you realize that she's right. You've never been here, but this is home, this is hope, this is the place that you've always longed to be without really knowing that this was where you were meant to be.

You've always belonged here. It's rational, proper, sane.

And you stop running.