This latest foster home ranked up there with the worst. My foster mother was relentlessly neurotic. She had me cleaning her house to perfection and would always find something wrong with what I did. She'd curse me out if I didn't ring out the kitchen sponge after washing the dishes. Then she'd turn to her dogs and talk baby talk with them over how wonderful they were. She'd say to her dogs, "My little puppy dog would never forget to ring out the spongeÉ" She was insane. She literally insisted every time I stepped out the door that I was going to be raped; that murderers lurked in every nook, waiting for my teenage body. She methodically went through everything I owned once a week to ensure that I wasn't hiding any cigarettes, letters from boys, liquor or drugs. I had already been orphaned, seen group homes, reformatories and almost a dozen foster families. I was a good girl. I was burnt out. I was 15 years old. I needed those cigarettes.

I had a job at a flower shop. Despite the fact that I was barely old enough to work, I loved working as many hours as possible because it was a legit excuse to get out of that house. I was making money and was able to buy myself some clothes, my cigarettes (which I hid in my locker at school) and makeup.

One Saturday I finally snapped and quietly decided my time there was done. Before I was to leave for work I packed a bag with a few items. I had an extra change of clothes and that was about all. I knew I couldn't leave the house with too much stuff or my foster family would notice. I called in sick to work and figured the eight hours that I was supposed to be at work would give me a head start on the cops and foster family's chance of finding me. But without a lot of thought I didn't have a place to go.

I had no plan, but I was an experienced runner. I knew I couldn't go to my good friends because I knew that would be the first place they would look for me. I couldn't even tell my good friends what was up because my runaway experiences in the past proved that good friends always crack under pressure. Eventually somebody asks them too many questions and they give in. They always give you up to the cops or parents. I went downtown to the record store where I knew some of the guys working there.

I hung around just trying to make small talk. One of the guys, Kip, was sort of a heavy metal burnout and was in a band with my good friends. I knew he was fond of me because I was a not a typical girl. I was not a preppy '80's girl. I was a bad mix of new wave and punk rock. I was stealing most of my clothes out of the theater department's costume room. I wore the vintage dresses and band uniforms I found there.

So I hung around for quite some time before I finally told him how I was on the run and had no place to go. No plans. I felt fine right there, then, but this was winter in Minnesota and I knew it was going to be a long, cold night. He was concerned but I could tell he really didn't want to be involved with a young runaway. He did tell me that if I waited until after midnight or so he would leave his car open and I could sleep in it. But he said I had to sleep on the floor so that no one could see me.

OK! This was my plan. Next was to find a way to spend the rest of the day out of sight. I started to think about my sister in Minneapolis and how if I could reach her I bet she would take me in. She was 19 and had her own apartment. But I was in Steele County, about 200 miles away. I developed the long term plan of hiding out for a few days until the smoke cleared and then talking to one of my friends about driving me to Minneapolis. It was at this point that some boys from school came into the record shop. They were rich boys, just fucking their Saturday away. They invited me to come with them to a party. It was out in the country somewhere. They said everyone from school would be there. So I went with them. We hung out all day, drove around and then at about 7 or 8 P.M. we drove out to this keg party.

Now I had never really drank much. I had never experienced the type of intoxication that comes with bottomless kegs of beer. But I knew I had hours to kill before I could slip into Kip's car to sleep. So I was drinking beer, talking, they had a band playing in this sort of machine shed of a building we were all in. There were a few hundred people there. I kept my mouth shut about the fact that I was on the run but secretly hoped that someone would see it in my eyes or something. I secretly hoped that someone would take me home with them. Don't get me wrong, I was very much still a virgin at this point in my life. I was as tough and bad on the outside as a 4'11" teenage girl could be, but I was naive in lots of ways!

So with all the people at this party, they had a Port-O-Potty that we all had to wait in line to use. I had drunk about two beers and was drunk. As I waited in this line the guy behind me, out of nowhere and without warning, puked over his shoulder and directly onto me. He showered the entire right side of me from my shoulder to my ankle. It was beer and red-spaghetti puke. I was mortified. I tried not to make a scene. Up until this point I was just trying to hang out and be relatively invisible.

I pushed my way to the front of the line and people just made way for me with looks of absolute disgust. I slipped into the Port-O-Potty and began to undress. I was crying in my half-drunken fog. The bathroom was covered in beer piss and dirt from the machine shed's floor. I teetered on one foot trying to get out of my pants and tried not to touch anything. People outside the door were getting pissed that I was taking so long. They were banging on the door. I was losing it. More tears.

I shook the vomit-covered clothes out a little to release the strings of pasta. I rolled them into a tight ball, keeping the clean side out so that I would not get puke inside my bag. I put on my one change of clean clothes and cleaned up my eye makeup. I walked out of that toilet with my head up as though nothing had just happened. I darted to the other side of the party with hopes that I would die. Or maybe find people who did not see my horrific embarrassment. Or maybe I would see someone I knew to hang around with. And get a beer.

Success was mine. I got a beer. I found a cluster of girls that I knew from school. I had lost the boys and was a bit concerned about how I would get back into town and to Kip's house. The girls had offered to take me "home." The car was packed. I was stuck in the back seat with this one girl and her boyfriend as they made out with a fervor; their zippers down. I was blushing. Someone up front was complaining that they smelt puke but no one knew it was me! I had them drop me off at Kip's. They thought it was my house.

It was absolutely freezing outside. I got into Kip's car and found a thin blanket stuffed between the seats. I curled up on the floor and let the beer I had drunk put me to sleep. Day broke a few hours later and I awoke to find that I was not in Kip's car after all. In my drunkenness I had crawled into his parent's car! My heart dropped because I could hear people inside his house. The car was parked just outside the kitchen window.

I slipped out the opposite side door and down the street. I had nowhere to go. I walked for miles. I had a bag full of puke. It was cold. I was hungover and tired. I smoked cigarettes to give myself the illusion that there was heat somewhere.

I never did go back to that foster home. I did find my sister but it took another year or so. My friends did buckle and give me up to the authorities. By the time they got me I was so sick from the elements and so pathetic that they took pity on me.

email Ducky or visit her website http://www.drducky.com