I don't remember leaving the hospital.
Not really. Just flashes. Cold air. Metal doors. Shoes too thin for the pavement.
No one asked if I had somewhere to go. Maybe they thought someone was coming for me. Maybe they didn't care. Either way, I ended up walking until the buildings blurred together and my legs stopped knowing what to do.
I sat down on a curb that didn't feel like it belonged to anything. Just a random slab of concrete on the edge of a city too big to notice me. I didn't cry. Crying would've meant there was something left in me to spill.
It was quiet, in that loud way cities get. Car horns in the distance. Voices behind closed doors. The world spinning too fast for people like me.
Then I heard a small voice.
"You're not s'posed to sleep there."
I blinked. Once. Twice. I hadn't realized I'd closed my eyes.
A tiny girl stood in front of me, barely up to my chest, curly brown hair puffed out around her face like a halo of soft chaos. She had mismatched mittens and a purple coat with one sleeve rolled up and the other dragging. Her cheeks were pink with cold.
"I'm not sleeping," I said, though I wasn't sure it was true.
She tilted her head. "You look sad."
"That's not a crime," I muttered.
She nodded solemnly, like she understood everything and nothing all at once. "I get sad, too. But my mom says when you're sad, you gotta find warm things."
I stared at her. "Are you lost?"
She grinned, a gap-toothed, lopsided thing that shouldn't have made my heart ache. "Nope. I live in the big house with the soup."
I had no idea what that meant.
She reached out a mittened hand and grabbed mine. "Come on."
"I'm not—" I started, but she tugged with surprising strength.
"You shouldn't be out here. That's what Mr. Lou says. He says the night's not kind to girls alone."
Mr. Lou. Soup. A big house.
Shelter.
I didn't ask why a four-year-old was wandering around by herself. She didn't seem afraid. Like the world didn't scare her yet. Like she hadn't learned how ugly it could get.
I let her lead me. Maybe because I didn't want to go back to the silence. Maybe because I didn't trust myself not to lie down and never get up again.
She talked the whole way.
"My name's Mira. I'm four and three quarters. That means I'm almost five. I know all the words to the alphabet song, and I don't cry at shots anymore. Only a little."
"That's brave," I said.
She beamed like I'd handed her a medal. "What's your name?"
I hesitated. My name didn't feel like it belonged to me anymore. But I gave it to her anyway. "Rhea."
"Mmm. Rhea. That's pretty. You don't look like a Rhea, though."
"No?"
"You look like a snow lady."
"Because I'm pale?"
"No, because you're quiet. Like snow."
I didn't know what to say to that.
We turned a corner, and there it was—a squat brick building with a crooked sign and soft orange light bleeding out the windows. The door was propped open with a stack of old milk crates. Warmth spilled out like a breath.
"This is the soup place," Mira announced. "It's not fancy, but the beds don't bite."
She tugged me up the steps, into the warmth. The smell hit first—stew and bleach and too many people in too little space. Voices echoed, tired and thick with winter.
A woman behind a folding table looked up, startled. "Mira? Where have you—"
"She was cold," Mira said, pointing at me. "So I brought her."
The woman blinked at me, like trying to figure out what kind of story she was about to be handed. I didn't offer one.
"She can stay, right?" Mira asked.
The woman softened. "Of course she can."
Mira looked at me like she'd saved the world.
Maybe she had.