She hasn't told anyone her name since she was seventeen and riding a bus for hours to run from a home she hated, and then hitching rides on trains with kids not much older than her all the way North to a place that felt a little more like home than home ever did.
They all call her by different names. Some call her Red, for her hair, or Freckles. One or two assholes call her Fire-Crotch for the same reason, but always quiet and behind her back since the last one to say it in ear shot hasn't ever smiled the same again. One friend calls her the Girl From Boston (she hasn't ever told him she's from West Virginia, and she won't ever. He has to know though, just listening to her voice.)
She's not sure why she stopped using her name, maybe just because no good ever came from it. Sometimes she gives fakes, but usually she lets other peoplen make up their own for her. That started on the first train she hopped.
There was a ratty looking kid in a black shirt, eyeing her, not in thhat hungry-creepy way that people on buses do, or the way some men do to every woman they ever meet. There was a curiosity there. She asked him what in the hell he was looking at, not knowing why exactly she was so angry someone wanted to meet her.
"Hey there. I'm Sammy. Who're you?"
"Me."
"I meant what's your name."
Silence. Shifting of weight. "I don't have one."
No one speaks again. Sammy didn't understand why, thought she was threatened by him. But she wasn't. She was just tired of being what she was. Tired of being anything in particular. So after that she wasn't.
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