1.

She had a dusty beauty, green ice and clouded ivory. In the half light of a gray summer morning, she filled her sneakers with money, hurled them over the bridge and barefoot, ran away to join the carnival.

Later that day, a young girl- blue eyes, lion's mane hair- would find the sodden sneakers. She would be crying, barefoot, on that polluted shore before she found them. The shoes would tie her tangled resolve and she would pull them on and pocket the money and she would not go back to school.