Camilla

What I hate most about Copenhagen, is it’s canals. They are easy enough to avoid, so that is usually what I do, but the few times where I had seen them, bad things had happened. Sometimes not immediately, sometimes not even the same day, but that didn't matter. The canals always brought bad things my way. One day, when someone was following me, I had the misfortune of stumbling into one of the wretched things, and not an hour later was I robbed for 50 kroner. Another evening, I was walking a drunk friend home when she decided to take a short-cut over the canal. She never came home. That last misfortune still haunted me somewhat, but at least it made me stop drinking.

Call it paranoia, but I believe it's some sort of curse, the kind of curse that I have to break. I’ve always had a thing for fairytales when I was a kid, and this idea might be some sort of resurfment of that little girl. I kinda miss her, but that doesn't mean I regret running away.

I ran away when I was 14. I had just been placed in my first ever foster home, and their other foster kid planted the idea in my head, told me that he had run away multiple times. So when the first hit from the foster parents came, I ran. That was five years ago, and I had yet to regret that decision. Cold mornings waking up in an alley, nights spent walking aimlessly through small towns, days running from cops or harassers, and still I saw myself as lucky. As free.

Today was a good day, I thought. It was a little gloomy, the air dusty with fog, but it was calm. I had woken up to birds singing in tune with the wind, I had stolen a new shirt and I actually liked it for once. I wasn't hungry, didn't feel as dirty as I used to, hadn’t been chased by anyone. It was nice, but it also felt a bit boring, like I didn't know what I was supposed to do with myself if I wasn't fighting for my own life.

So I decided to go to the library. It was the perfect place to spend the day. I could sit down and read, or check up on the news. The bathroom was also free to use, so I went there first.

As soon as I locked the door behind me, I looked into the mirror. I didn't feel like my appearance had changed that much through the years. Same long black-brown hair, same weird eyebrows, same mole on my cheekbone. What had changed was my clothes. I used to just wear a shirt and low waist jeans, call it an outfit. Now I had layers of torn, overused clothes in dark colors. All of it stolen, either from shops or from teens who had thought it would be cool or rebellious to befriend a homeless kid. The beanie I wore was from a suitcase someone had left behind on the train station, easier to take a single item from it than take the whole thing and get caught.

I spend a lot of time in there. Washing my hands, face and hair, cutting nails, rinsing the scabs on my hands with the disinfection I had stolen. I brushed my teeth, and drank as much water as I could. I took a piss, washed my hands a last time, filled my falsk and left.

Browsing through books, I knew I had to find something useful. A text book or something future me could use if I ever wanted to rejoin society, but I really just felt like relaxing today, so I picked up one of those coming of age books, and settled down in one of the reading nooks.

I had been reading for only a short while, when I heard footsteps approaching.

“Anyone sitting here?” Someone asked. I was shocked at first, confused not by the question, but by the language. The girl, who had dark skin and bleached blonde hair that curled like clouds, was speaking English to me. The international language wasn't anything unusual to hear in Copenhagen, but for a girl who usually avoided even talking to people who spoke Danish, hearing English sent up unpleasant memories. Memories of my mother talking in hushed English, or her singing Amy Winehouse to me when the weather turned cold. Memories of my parents yelling at each other in English.

My mother is from Italy, and her Danish isn't very good, so her and my father usually switched to English when it was important, and my mother rarely spoke Danish to me. I was surprised I even knew the language when the girl spoke to me, but I answered her clearly with my mom’s Italian accent, mixed in with my own Danish to create something that properly sounded way more exotic that I was.

“No, just me.”

“Just you?” The girl said as she sat down, and I realized that it was a question, like she was asking for what a ‘you’ was.

“Mille” I lied easily. Never give out your real name when you are on the police watch list for breaking every kind of law that could be broken.

“Erika” She told me her name, and I could see it in the way she smiled that it was the truth. I smiled back to her and continued reading, now with this Erika distracting me. She wasn't doing anything, just reading like me, but I always had my guard up when I was this close to someone else.

And it was a good thing that I had kept my focus on the surrounding sounds, because a couple minutes later, another pair of footsteps approached, this time quieter than Erika’s.

“You know, you are very hard to find,” The guy said. I assumed he was speaking to Erika, since his voice was unfamiliar and was also standing in front of her, but for a girl on the run, those words were very frightening to hear. I slowly closed one of my hands around my bag, strummed my fingers on the spine of the book, ready to throw a punch if necessary. Who cared if I got banned from this library, there were many more I could lounge in.

Then he said something that send shivers down my spine. “Camilla.”

As soon as he started saying my name, a name I hadn’t used since I first ran, my hand moved. I finally looked up at him as I was about to hit him, but at that moment, Erika pulled my other shoulder, hard, making my punching hand retreat to rub my aching shoulder.

“Aiden for fucks sake!” Erika yelled at the boy. “We were supposed to do this peacefully. Not frighten her, talk to her like civil people, that kind of stuff.”

A librarian hushed at her, and I took this as my que. Grabbing my back, I sprinted towards the exit and out. I knew they would try to follow me, but they wouldn't be able to find me, nobody ever found me when I was running. Nobody ever existed when I was running.