Despite stealing almost as often as I eat I still feel my heart race and have a cold sweat break out all over my body. I can't fight that instinct to run and hide, but it's more than that. I understand that I'll never get caught, that they'll never see me and even if they do they'll never remember it. I understand that, really, but I can't help but hope. My stupid heart just keeps racing with anticipation that one day someone might notice me. I wonder how long that will last. It's been years now, how much longer will I cling to this last scrap of hope?
I fill my basket with lunch, grabbing anything that catches my eye and much more than I'll ever need. Picnic sized tubs of prepared food from the deli and some large water bottles before heading to the back of the store. I walk through the employee only doors, my heart hammering inside my chest. The push doors swing closed behind me, but there is no one in the room. There are pallets of food and discarded boxes, but no employees to look at me with confusion or try to stop me as I head for the back door and step into the sunshine.
I catch my reflection in the window of the car parked right outside. My white hair has grown well past my shoulder blades and flows back in a gauzy sheet, some strands crossing my ice like eyes. The rest of my face is similarly shaded, a faded ghost like complexion. I've grown use to the look in the past two years so the surprise of the coloring might be skewed, but I've never found the reflection frightening. Instead it's kind of beautiful, not conventionally so, but in the way that weird things can be striking. At first I couldn't believe that no one asked me about it, that no one had the guts to see if I was sick or if I'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on some experimental plastic surgery. It took a few days to figure it out. To understand that they didn't see me. People would talk to me... if I initiated it... but they always forgot. No one ever remembered me. I've gone to that same grocery store two times a day for the past month and no one has ever recognized me. I've even been lonely enough to strike up a conversation with a bagger as I left without paying. He'd have forgotten the moment I disappeared from sight, if not I would have been easy enough to describe.
I'd gone to this place every day for the past month too. I look up from my walk and see the sign for the women's homeless shelter, "Sarah's House," the logo showing a roof image sheltering the name. When I open the door I see Lindsey's working the front desk. She's young, right out of college, with a light to her that the other workers have lost over time. She is engaged to her long time boyfriend, has a dog named buddy, and always does her eye make up with liner that juts out in wings. I talk to her almost every day.
"Hello and welcome to Sarah's House, my name is Lindsey, how can I help you sweetheart."
"Hello, I need a place to stay tonight, I was sleeping out of my car, but it was broken into last night and it's not safe."
She looks at me with sympathy and slides a clip board with the intake form between us.
"I'm sorry to hear that, hun. We have some openings tonight, I just need to get you checked in. Please fill out this form, entirely.." she drawls out the word entirely, hinting at her annoyance with how many times information is left out. "...and I'll get your things together. Do you need any toiletries?"
"I'm okay, I have my things with me" I shake the bag on my back and she nods her head.
"That's great. I will have to take a quick look in there before you can go in though."
I shrug it off and pass her the bag while she explains the rules I have memorized. "No fighting, no drugs, no guests, be respectful of others, breakfast is at 6:30am and after that I can apply for approval to do a longer stay, up to 2 weeks. I nod to acknowledge the information she shared as I finish filling out the initial intake forms. I never have to apply for the longer stay because to them I'm always new. I hand her the forms and she looks them over carefully even though it's a waste of time because they will be lost and forgotten too.
"These look to be in order, thank you... Edith" she says after finding my name on the page.
I've always wondered what happens to the papers, the videos, the evidence that normally would prove that someone was here. There is never a trace left behind whether I want it to be or not.