Taz listened to Belle's stories as they sat by the pool and for a while she forgot about community service, about her life, about everything and felt herself immerse in the panorama of the countries conjured up by the descriptions. Belle was a gifted story teller without taking herself too seriously, though. They laughed together and she listened to suspenseful parts with baited breath, admiring how Belle and her band outmaneuvered the obstreperous, and officious trouble makers. It was such a delight. When Belle interrupted her day dreams of sunny, and exotic locations, with a reference to their reality she emerged only reluctantly and frowned at her scuffed up boots.<br/><br/>"A lot of the homeless kids are gay," she said quietly, "kicked out when they came out." She was silent for a while, before she said, "out of the closet, out of home, and hope." She thought back on Danny, her best friend. She had found him lying cold next to her one morning. He had become depressed after getting kicked out by his stepfather who used his coming out as a convenient way to get rid of him. He had written a note for her in his pretty handwriting, and then taken an overdose. She still had the note, the purple ink fading slowly, the paper disintegrated at the folding lines.  His boyfriend lasted five weeks longer before he too decided to call it quits.<br/><br/>"Would you like some help back in the house, Belle, or did you want to stay here?" She asked a little sadly, but it was time to go. "The P.O. only comes once in the beginning and then again at the last installment of the sentence, unless there is trouble," she said. "In between that I have to report daily to the station, and you need to call in every week after my shift." She smiled, "so you see, it's really not that bad." They made the kids pee in cups every time too, but if that was the price of not going to jail it was a minor nuisance.<br/><br/>She stood up "is there anything you want me to do before I leave? Anything you need?" In a way she hoped Belle would say yes, another hour of staying here versus going back. She had left her backpack in the entry way of the house, and in it pretty much all of her belongings, including what clothes she owned and her prized possession, an ancient iPod, her sketchbook, and her pencils.  She had nothing at her mother's, since the bitch had hawked everything to score dope, and never knowing where she would live, there was nothing she owned which she didn't carry with her. She was the ideal minimalist. It would be so easy to just skip town and leave, but she knew better, they would catch her at some point and then it meant prison.  She had been in juvie and that was bad enough. Summer was easy, it sucked as hell in Winter, but even then there were ways to survive on the streets if one was smart and knew how to go about it.