She was wild. She was freedom and bravery and impulsiveness and emotion all wrapped up into a fiery, small bundle. She was like a flower blooming impossibly from a crack in the pavement, or a butterfly in a graveyard, or an eclipse, brightness as great as the sun shining from the darkest of places, so bright you would be swallowed up in it if you looked for too long. On the outside, she wasn’t much: hand-cut and hand-dyed hair pulled back under a black beanie, brown-green eyes gleaming out from under smudged glasses, thick arms and a thick stomach showing under a baggy brown tee sprouting with flowers, hand-embroidered jeans cuffed a little too high at the ankles and falling-apart shoes. She was imperfect, real, alive. And that was hard to come by in a place like this.
The first night, she tumbled in through my window and rolled onto the threadbare carpet, popping back up just as blue-red sirens blinked from below. You can imagine how angry I was at a random hobo interrupting a rare peaceful night alone in my room, but as I furiously signed at her, she signed right back, painted and smudged hands flying at the speed of light.
I let her stay until the lights were gone.
The second night, she invited me to a hotel. I shouldn’t have gone, but I did. It was past midnight when I arrived, and I should’ve known I’d find her on the roof. That night she told me of her dreams, her greatest hopes of traveling the world and finding someone to love. But more than that, she wanted a family. She poured her heart out to a perfect stranger that night, not hiding a single thing, Everything was out for the world to see. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t shy. She was a blazing fire that would either warm or burn, and no one could touch her, not even me. And she was so full of hope that it took my breath away. She was so present, always, every single day, that she almost seemed surreal. Otherworldly.
She wanted to run a cafè. She said those were the only places she ever felt at home, surrounded by kind people and fresh, growing things and delicious smells. When I asked, she described to me as best she could the sounds that came from a place like that. In the background was always good, old music, and those songs felt like the good sort of nostalgia you get when you see an old friend. The clinking of cups felt like a family dinner, or good friends meeting up for an outing. The hiss of coffee brewing and the swish-swish of the foam machine felt like home to her, like warmth and comfort and dependency. The small chatter and the tip-tap of keyboards felt like purpose and belonging, a sense of drive and creativity and freedom of expression.
I told her a cafe sounded like family. She said maybe I was right.
The next time I saw her, there was another girl with her. She was older than Rose, but she looked up to her like a daughter would look at a mother. Like the sound of a coffee machine. We spent most of the night teaching her sign language, while finding her a place to stay. She was running away, she said, and we didn’t question why.
By the next time I saw Rose, rumors of her had spread around the city like wildfire. Every tale was larger than life: a black-cloaked figure stealing across the rooftops, kind messages hidden in mailboxes, stolen packages mysteriously returned, little baked goods appearing on desks when unsuspecting desk workers went on lunch break. I thought she deserved those wildfire stories. They felt like her. Little, loud, important. Like what I wanted to be. I asked her how she was so true, why she lived so loud and fast and bright. Her response was always the same: “I only have one life. I want to live it. I don’t understand how anyone can see people hurting and not do something about it.”
Once she crashed into the wrong window and almost got arrested. I snuck her out onto the roof via a hatch I’d discovered since our last meeting.
A month later she appeared again, out of nowhere, taking my hand and leading me to an abandoned building in the heart of the city. It smelled of mold and must and decay, but the structure was sound enough. Every corner of that derelict, crumbling building shone with love and care: paintings were taped, nailed, or hung to the wall, short stories lay scattered across homemade desks, a crocheted sweater or three spread across a patched multicolored couch. New wood intermixed with old in the walls, the bathroom pipes were all brand new. People I’d never met before were all lounging around. Some were studying, some were painting on the walls, the ceiling, the doors. Two guys in the back were teaching a girl how to play their video game. “Look what we’ve done!” She exclaimed, eyes shining, lips quirked up in that wonderful, bright, dorky, crooked, perfect smile of hers as her hands flew. “We’ve got a real base! It’s like a found family, like a book!” Then she showed me all the dystopian stories she’d written, and I realized she was making her dreams become a reality right here, right now. Every single story had one thing in common:
The hero was never alone.
She never asked if I wanted to be a part of her renegade. Because of course I did. How could I not? She drew people to her like she was the sun and we were planets, constantly pulled in by some invisible gravity. The ‘Base’ became my second home, where I went when I couldn’t sleep, when I needed someone who could actually understand what I was saying, when family life got a little too… harsh. Every week one of us found a new person to adopt: at school, on the street, on a rooftop, at a dance. New reports flooded in all over the city, in the inner and outer city alike, about some kind of vigilante group– roadside art classes being held for free in the inner city, guerilla gardens springing up on roofs and in impossibly high places, encouraging messages sprayed in graffiti on concrete walls. Color and life being forcibly imbued into our home. The city being drawn together by some invisible force, some undercurrent of beauty pulling away the ugly and the hateful things that had been eating away at our city as long as I could remember.
One time, three of us stepped in to stop a guy from being assaulted, and from then on all of us were taught self-defense. From Christopher I learned how to pick a lock, and from Zara I learned how to move almost silently. The place became a refuge, not exclusively for youth. Menstrual products, books, hygiene items, medical supplies, art supplies, technology, everything. A lot of us met just because we were the only place in fifteen miles with decent, free WiFi. There was always food on the table, and we ate whenever there were enough people around to call it a meal. Twice the police came to shut it down, but they found no evidence that anyone had been there. Or at least that’s what they said. I think they just liked the sandwiches we made them too much, because after that, they stopped trying. We had an insignia, now, too– red and orange and pink painted over in a half-moon shape. Rose got it tattooed on her arm, and one by one, all of us followed. If asked, all of us would deny that The Hope even existed, but everyone knew it did. You could see it in the person holding a door for an elderly woman, the suspicious lack of trash on the streets, someone forcing a drunk man to back off. In our own Base, there was never any alcohol, never any drugs, only caffeine and adrenaline-fueled sleepless nights to blame our moments of stupidity on. On one such occasion, I finally learned why Rose had tumbled into my room in the first place: she’d punched a man in the face for insulting her friend’s mottled skin. Vitiligo, I think it’s called? “I didn’t mean to hit the pressure point.” She’d insisted, shaking out her hand like it still hurt. I think she didn’t mean it, and I made a mental note to never get on her bad side. I didn’t quite keep that promise.
Every day I pass someone on the street, I see the hint of a tattoo peeking out under a shirt, a subtle nod, a Taser poking out of a jean pocket. We are the unseen protectors who chose to care. In the past five years, crime rates have dropped significantly, the percentage of homeless in the inner city have begun to decline, the amount of stray animals on the streets is down to almost zero. The jury is still out on the debate between dogs and cats, by the way. The rooftop gardens have been providing food for families and shelters for animals for four years now, and the city has stopped painting over our insignias and messages. We’ve never been on television, we’ve never gone official, never branched out past our city— heck, most of us don’t even own a car. But I think that’s the beauty of it. Hope is quiet, invisible, secret, it appears in the most innocent of moments and in the most subtle of ways. And most of the time, it’s like Rose came into my life– sudden, quick, and not in the least way how I expected it.