Goodbye

She's sitting alone in the hotel room, watching, waiting for the sun to come up and shower her with it's rays, washing away the grime and dirt of the prior night. The blanket wrapped tightly around her hides a small, fragile body, completely naked except for the thin, red ribbons running snake-like up her wrists and ankles. Her cheeks are streaked and stained where the tears and 99-cent mascara made their way down her face. She stares out the window overlooking downtown Ottawa with dark eyes that have seen too much for fifteen years. Too tired to cry anymore, she just sits there, thinking, remembering...1

**She was standing on the corner of Montreal Road almost exactly a year ago, trying to drown her pathetic misery in the fumes rising away from her cigarette, but life loomed too large to forget. Some guy pulled up beside her and asked her if she'd like a ride, and she knew she was wrong in accepting, but everything else seemed so wrong anyway; what was the point of resisting the tides?2

He looked her up and down as she climbed into the passenger seat, a greedy expression on his face as he took in her tight, red miniskirt and black fishnets. When she unconcernedly let slip she didn't really have anywhere to go, he invited her to the party he was going to. 3

The house was dark and beating with music about sex, drugs, and women, playing so loud that the very floor was moving, pulsating to the rhythm. There were bodies everywhere, grinding against each other in what could vaguely be called dancing. As he pulled her through the throng, bodies pressing in on them from all sides, her eyes fell on the huddled heaps in the corners, pairs wrapped around each other so tightly that you couldn't tell which hands belonged to who, and she felt as if she were watching one of those scenes portraying a high school party. And she was the star of the flick, the innocent girl being exposed to 'real life'. She both hated it and loved it at the same time, wanting to escape from it, but longing for the company of others, knowing she had nowhere else to go.4

Someone shoved a shot-glass into her hands and she drained the fiery, bitter liquid, sputtering as it burned down her throat. A few more glasses later, she had somehow attached herself to a group of teenagers whose faces she couldn't quite un-blur, making attempts at slurred conversation as she took random drags from the perfectly rolled joint nestled between her thumb and index finger. It was like smoking ignorant bliss. 5

She woke up at dawn the next morning, with a headache and her first ever hangover, naked, next to some bald, tattooed, middle-aged man. Looking around at the littered mess around her, she realized she wasn't even in the same house as the night before. She retrieved her clothes from where they had been thrown on the floor and found herself a bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her cheeks, letting the tears mingle and lose themselves in liquid less salty. Drying her face on her own shirt, she peered into her reflection's eyes. 6

'You're doing everything you swore you'd never do,' she whispered sadly. 7

Fighting back a fresh surge of tears, she kissed the young girl in the mirror, bidding farewell to a past she could never return to.**8

The door of the hotel room opens and a short, squat woman bustles in, humming. She stops, startled, when she sees the young girl huddled on the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks. Childless, and not knowing how to comfort her, the woman awkwardly says 'I'm sorry, dear, but you have to leave the suite now.'9

'Yeah,' says the girl, wiping the tears away with a little sigh. 'Could you give me a minute?' Her voice is demanding, confident, hardened from a year on and off the streets. 10

'Of course,' replies the woman, retreating quickly out of the room. 11

The girl gets up, puts on her frayed clothes. Spotting a pack of cigarettes her client from last night must have forgotten, she slips it into her pocket, considering it payment along with the 65$, and leaves. On the street outside, two elderly women eye her red skirt and torn, net stockings with looks of dirt, whispering shrilly and obviously about young whores ruining society. But she walks on, pretending she doesn't see, she doesn't hear; pretending she doesn't care. 12

She makes her way along the familiar streets of downtown, past people sleeping on the cracked, stone-cold cement; past lingerie shops with windows covered with posters of playboy models; past empty strip clubs and dark-windowed dance bars and 'escort services' (Ottawa's euphemism for brothels). 13

On Montreal Road, she takes out one of her client's cigarettes and places it between her chapped lips, breathing in the poison, hoping it'll take affect soon. Glancing across the street, she notices a young girl, couldn't be older than thirteen, dressed in ripped tights, knee-high boots, and a tank top that reveals her pierced navel, standing alone and smoking with a pained, yet hopeful, expression on her fair, round face. A man pulls up to her in an old car and after a moment's hesitation, the young girl jumps into the passenger seat. 14

She stares after the car speeding away, wishing she could call out, warn that girl of a fate, so horrible, no one should have to face. But she can't. 15

All she can do is say goodbye, goodbye to another childhood lost, as she watches the young girl whisked away.16