The girl hissed.

She wasn't "feral".  That didn't really happen, people acting like stray cats...unless you were mentally unstable, and then you weren't feral, you were crazy.  She wasn't crazy either, or at least she didn't think so, though it seemed like every day there were fewer good ways to test that.

She hissed because acting feral made people wary of you.  It made you seem scary and unpredictable in a way that was hard to do otherwise, particularly if you were short and thin and a girl.

This time it worked.  The guy she hissed at dropped his side of the cardboard sheet they'd both grabbed, watching her warily.  He didn't have a weapon, and he didn't think it was worth fighting over, possibly getting killed by some crazy girl.  If he'd had one, she'd have immediately run.  If you were lucky, you could get an injury treated at the ER or the free clinic, but you'd be slow or weak until it fully healed.  But once someone decides you're worth hurting, it's not a big step to decide you're worth killing, for whatever else you might have, or just for pissing them off.

The girl hissed again to cement his impression of her, then jogged off, folding the cardboard as she went to make it smaller.  She didn't want to attract attention.  Attention when you were rattling on the Avenue was ok...it meant maybe money, maybe a meal, maybe just conversation, even if it was clueless or judging.  Attention after dark when you were carrying something worth having was not ok.  Fatal, sometimes.

Cardboard was worth having.  Angled right, it could keep rain off you, let you sleep.  In winter, nearly anything on top of you would let your body warm the air underneath, but having something with air in it between you and the ground was life and death.  The winter ground was jealous of your body heat, wanted to take it all, take you, make pretty spring flowers from your corpse.  Of course, cardboard was hard to take care of, never lasted.  But people always seemed to make more.

This time it wasn't for her, though.  Some people who rattled full time did pretty well, if they were really crippled or so old it was the same thing...good rattlers needed an obvious, visible excuse for the pretty people to want to help them.  If you were young and relatively healthy, most figured you wanted drugs, even though it was easy enough to tell meth-heads apart from fringers.  Maybe not easy for pretty people.  They never looked very close.

Tully was one of the old ones, really old.  He got good money sometimes, paper money, frequent no-drugs-for-you meals.  But he couldn't scrounge the way you needed to, couldn't even move around enough to spend his money smart.  So he traded with fringers like the girl, people who weren't likely to just beat him up for the money...too weak to try, or smart enough to know the city was better with Tully to trade with than if he died from a cracked head.

"Got you a Victory, Tully."  The girl didn't know why cardboard sheets were called Victories, they just were.  "Big and dry."  Tully blinked up at her with rheumy eyes, one clouded over.  He chuckled.

"Good on you, Betty!  You're my favorite niece."  The girl's name wasn't Betty.  Tully called everyone he could identify as female Betty.  Maybe he really did have a niece named Betty, maybe he was just being weird.  Whatever, she'd answer to any name he gave her if it meant paper money.  He dug into his can, peering carefully at the bills an inch from his face, gave her a couple.  He meant to give her ones, but sometimes one of them was a five, once a ten.  Even so close, his eyes still didn't work all that well.  Or maybe he was sweet on her, but he never grabbed, never propositioned.

Their transaction completed, the girl headed away from Tully's spot to find someplace to crash.  She was good at that, so good that she never tried to keep a place of her own, risk someone trying to take it away.  She could always find things she needed, like she had a compass in her head that pointed to shelter or unspoiled food.  Never on purpose though, wouldn't work if she wanted something in particular.  So she traveled light, made sure she always needed things.

It made sense to her, anyway.

This time her compass had taken her outside the normal neighborhoods, on the edge of the warehouse district, where sometimes the pretty people would line up for night clubs that wouldn't be there next week.  Pretty people in lines were really good at ignoring fringers, even if you knew they had wads of cash they wouldn't be going home with anyway, blown inside on booze and E.  Maybe if you had a good patter you could pass off baby aspirin from the free clinic as some club drug, but usually there was no point in coming here unless you were bored and wanted to rag on people who'd almost never step out of line to call you on it.

The girl stepped cautiously, looking around carefully to see what she needed here.  But she still didn't hear the lady come up behind her.

"Looking for something?" came the silky voice.  The girl spun around and jumped back in the same movement, ready to run in any direction.  The woman she saw was a pretty pretty person.  Not just nice clothes, but a face like people on billboards, shiny black hair, boobs that could earn her serious cash dancing at Sam's.

The lady didn't say "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you", she just smiled and waited.  Her smile seemed to say she had meant to startle.  It was creepy, and if the girl had seen it on a man, she'd already be running.

"Maybe.  Yes.  I need bus fare...I'm trying to get home?"  The woman laughed.  Laughed.  The girl scowled, shrugged.  She'd had to try.  "What do you want, lady?"

"What's your name, child?"  The girl was seventeen, she thought, but her height and weight made her seem younger.

"Betty," said the girl, immediately.  The lady looked thoughtful.

"Not true, I think, but also not a lie.  Do you know your real name?"  For the few people she talked to other than Tully, the girl went by "Jewel", but she somehow knew that wasn't what the lady was asking.  She didn't think of herself as anything, she was just...herself.  The girl supposed she'd had parents once, or a mother at least, but she had no idea what her name might've been, and the question made her uncomfortable.

"I'm late for something...else," the girl snarked, and began walking briskly away.

"Would you like to know your name?" the lady called after her.  The girl stopped, turned back.

"You don't know me, lady," the girl said, scorn dripping from her lips.  The woman smiled that smile again.

"I know you can do something other people can't.  So can I."  She shook her head so her glossy hair tossed about, and when she stopped, it was white instead of black.

"Mine's better," the girl shot back, but she swallowed nervously.  The woman laughed.

"Perhaps.  I could show you far more, though..."

"What would I have to do?"  The girl was wary, but she always liked to have choices, and her heart was racing.  Maybe this lady did have something she needed.  Maybe something she really needed.

"In essence, not much more than you have been doing already."

"What, fringing?"  The woman showed her creepy smile a third time.

"Surviving."