It was a hot day in August when Lisette Duncan ran away.

She wasn't going to say 'from home' because that sounded too formal, like something you would read in a book, one of those awful long books that teachers made you read in school. Also, Lisette Duncan did not consider the apartment that she and her mother had shared until recently –all right, thirty seconds ago- a proper home. A home was somewhere that you came home to that you loved. Lisette did not love the room that had been hers nor the house that had been partly hers. Perhaps it had been something about the grease stains on the cheap wallpaper, or the lack of a bed except the very hard floorboards and a sleeping bag that smelled. A home, returning to the earlier subject, was somewhere that you could be comfortable, not have to edge by your mother's door and pretend you don't hear the sounds that were coming from behind it. Most importantly to Lisette, a home was where your family was, and your heart, just like the saying. Lisette despised her mother and the men that her mother brought home daily and obviously did not believe that they counted as a family. Her mother, a waitress at Chico's Cocktail Bar, pointedly ignored Lisette unless she noticed that her daughter needed something bad, for example, shoes, then she would give the kid twenty bucks and let her figure it out from there.

So one day, her mother at work and no beer-slopping, hulking figure of her boyfriend slumped on the couch, Lisette had looked up from her electronic Yahtzee game, noticed that it was an unnaturally nice day out, and had decided to be independent and take control of her own life. In other words, she would run away, which she did, but with quite a bit of ado first. In a tattered canvas bag with a strap to be thrown over her opposite shoulder, Lisette packed several changes of underclothing, one pair of leggings and one pair of jeans, shorts, no less than three shirts, a sweater, quite a few socks, and two sundresses. Those were the clothes.

She also packed gloves, a visor and a sunhat, a few toiletries, some worn but serviceable flip-flops, all of the decent and edible fare in the fridge, her life savings and some money that she took from her mother's top drawer. Babysitting and other jobs available to a twelve-year-old had earned her exactly two-hundred-and-thirty-one dollars. It was amazing how many things that people did not want to do for themselves, thought Lisette, counting out the money from her mother's drawer. Forty-three dollars. She did not feel at all guilty taking it. After all, her mother had never given her any allowance or paid her for the many, many chores that she did around the house. Vacuuming, for instance, and also gathering the laundry, washing the laundry, folding the laundry, and putting away the laundry. The list went on from there, but Lisette did not wish to recall her former life of unavoidable drudgery. If she had not done the work, no one would have done the work. Lisette knew that much. She wrote a note to her mother and left the tiny, cramped apartment for the last time, slamming the door shut and not caring if it fell off of its hinges, the cheap thing.

Half of the flimsy Post-It note was lifted off the dented tabletop by the brisk wind of the rotating fan. The apartment was unnaturally still after Lisette had departed, the lightly-scrawled words on the note providing the only clue that only minutes before a living person had been there.

10:23 a.m.

I have run away. There is no use looking for me, or sending the police after me, because I will merely run away again. I do not like you and you do not like me. I am not a stupid kid but I couldn't say that about your 'boyfriends'. I know that I will be happier away from here where you are. Trust me. Unlike you, I know the kid who used to live with you, who your friend named after Lisette Model the photographer. Thank God it was her and not you who named me, or else I would be another one of those Jessicas or Emilys floating around. With high hopes that we never meet again - Lisette

The sun burned down on the back of Lisette Duncan as she walked, then ran away from the greasy, decrepit life that was no longer hers, dwelling in Apartment Number One-oh-Five, Cheever Run.