Being hounded by - what is it this time, a rabid shrew? - is the kind of thing you don't talk about. Evidence: no one else talks about it nearly as much as they should, for how often this kind of thing happens. Sometimes even while it's happening, people stop to say things like "that is not normal" or "this never happens here" even as it is undeniably happening right in front of them. Even as it's been getting more common.

Getting away takes long enough that he's out past curfew. And since it's the kind of thing you don't talk about, it's not an excuse he can give. And given that, he doesn't really want to go back tonight anyway. Might as well try to find a motel that won't care how old he is and will take cash.

He is not carrying fifty pounds of stuff. It has not even crossed his mind that that's a thing he should be doing right now. He's just got the same stuff he had with him all day. He's wearing a polo shirt and cargo pants, and socks and underwear and tennis shoes, and a water bottle on a shoulder strap. Nothing in his hair, which isn't even half an inch right now. No glasses or anything. No jacket, right now. No need for a binder yet, and at this point it's starting to look like maybe it's not a "yet" after all. He does have a packer, which he crocheted himself and inside of which he has hidden a small Swiss Army knife. It's there in case anyone objects to the Swiss Army knife in his left hip pocket and tries to take it away; he tries to keep that hidden, and its silhouette isn't that distinguishable in the mess of things in that pocket - gauze, paper tape, one condom (to make it more likely that someone who gets into his stuff will have a Talk with him and then he'll know who and when) - but people go around pretending to not want people going around armed, which is probably related to the thing where they pretend there's such a thing as safety and that animals don't just randomly attack people and that your parents love you and maybe even know what's best for you. In his right hip pocket he carries the weapons he's more willing to have people see, pepper spray and a disgustingly cute kitty-shaped knuckle duster, on keychains attached to his house key and a one-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer. Also in his right hip pocket: cash, mostly paper, a couple of quarters. His other outside pockets contain his phone, his phone charger, and one energy bar (the kind other people claim to hate, but that tastes better than the ones other people claim to like). The inside pocket that he added himself holds a ceramic knife.

It turns out he's neither staying at a motel nor going home tonight.