“If it's one of the guys coming home early, they've all got the key. It's probably my father drunk again.” They'd been through enough. They both agreed about that. They didn't even look out the window to see who it was. And downstairs she fished a pencil out of her coat pocket, and tore a piece of newspaper off the garbage can, scribbling a note to Lionel. “I love you, Li. I always will, A.” Tears filled her eyes. She had wanted to see him again before she left, but maybe it didn't matter now … she slipped the piece of paper into the mailbox. That was all he needed to know. She didn't want him to think she had turned on him too. He had to know she never would. But she couldn't stand it anymore. It had been unbearable ever since he moved out, and now it would be worse. She would never see him. She had only one choice, and she was surprised at how relieved she felt.

That night as they all slept, she quietly packed a small duffle bag, and slipped out her bedroom window, as she had done when she had gone to see Li. There were easy footholds all the way down the side of the house. She had used them before, plenty of times. And she slipped quietly down now, wearing sneakers and jeans, her hair in a long blond braid, a warm parka on. She knew it would be cold up there. And she had everything she cared about in the one small bag. She didn't even look back as she left the house. She didn't give a damn about any of them, any more than they did about her. She stealthily crept down the road, and walked all the way into L.A., and there she hitched a ride on the freeway heading north. She was surprised at how easy it was. And she told the first driver that she went to Berkeley and had to get back after the Christmas holiday. He didn't ask her anything else, and drove her all the way to Bakersfield before dropping her off.

And by then, Faye had found her note. She had left the door unlocked, and the note on her bed.

“That makes two of us you're rid of now, Dad. Goodbye, Anne.” No word to anyone else. Nothing to Faye. Her heart almost stopped when she found the piece of paper left on Anne's bed, and they called the police immediately. She called Lionel too, and he had found the scrap of newspaper by then. It was the worst time in her life Faye could ever recall, and she wondered if she'd live through it, as she waited for the police to arrive. Ward was sitting, stunned, in a chair in the den, the note still in his hand.

“She couldn't have gone very far. She's probably at a friend's.”

But Valerie took care of that hope. “She doesn't have any friends.” It was a sad statement about Anne, but they all knew it was true. Her only friend had been Lionel, and her father had banished him. Faye sat watching him with unspoken rage, as the bell rang. The police had come. She just prayed they would find Anne before something happened to her. There was no telling where she had gone, and she had already been gone for hours.





CHAPTER 22




After the first driver who picked her up left her in Bakersfield, it took Anne several hours to catch another ride, but this one took her straight up to Fremont, and she caught another ride easily from there. It took her a total of nineteen hours to get to San Francisco, but on the whole she was surprised at how easy it was, and all of them had been nice to her. They thought she was just another college kid, “a flower child” two of them had teased. None of them would have guessed that she was a few weeks shy of being fourteen years old. And when she reached San Francisco, she walked down Haight Street, feeling as though the streets were paved with gold. There were young people everywhere, in bright, homemade clothes. There were Hare Krishnas in soft orange robes with shaved heads, boys with hair to their waists in jeans, girls with flowers braided into their hair. Everyone looked happy and pleased with life. There were people sharing food on the streets, and someone offered her an acid tab for free, but she smiled shyly and refused.

“What's your name?” someone asked, and she whispered softly, “Anne.” This was the place she had longed to be for years, free of the strangers she had been related to and hated for so long. She was glad, in a way, that it had come to this. Lionel had John now, and maybe soon she would have someone too. Lionel would know that she loved him no matter what, and as for the others … she didn't care. She hoped she'd never see them again. On the way north, she had thought seriously about changing her name, but once on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury, she realized that no one would care. There were others who looked even younger than she, and no one would suspect she'd come here. She had said nothing to anyone. And a girl named Anne was as anonymous as anyone could be. Her looks were plain, her hair an ordinary blond, unlike Vanessa's pale golden hair, or Val's, which looked like flame. The twins couldn't have gotten away with this, even if they wanted to. But she knew she could. She could fade into any crowd. She had been doing it right at home for years. No one knew when she was there, when she was not, when she arrived, or when she disappeared, and she was so used to everyone asking “Where's Anne?” that she knew that she could easily do the same thing here.

“Hungry, Sister?” She looked up to see a girl in what looked like a white bedsheet wrapped around her spare frame, with a tattered purple parka over it. The girl was smiling at her and held out a piece of carrot cake. Anne suspected it might be laced with acid or some other drug, and the girl in the parka saw her hesitate. “It's clean. You just look like you're new here.”

“I am.”

The girl with the carrot cake was sixteen and she'd been here for seven months, having come from Philadelphia in late May. Her parents hadn't found her yet, although she'd seen their ads in the “Personals,” but she had no inclination to respond. There was a priest who roamed the streets, offering advice, and to make contact with their parents if they wished. But not too many did, and Daphne wasn't one of them. “My name is Daff. Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

Hesitantly, Anne shook her head. “Not yet.”

“There's a place on Waller. You can stay for as long as you like. All you have to do is help keep it clean, and help cook the food on the days they assign.” They had also had two outbreaks of hepatitis recently, but Daphne didn't tell her that. Outwardly everything was beautiful and loving here. The rats, the lice, the kids who died from overdose were not something one discussed with a neophyte. And no matter, those things happened everywhere, didn't they? This was a special time in history. A time of peace and love and joy. A wave of love to counteract the useless deaths in Vietnam. Time had stopped for all of them and all that mattered was the here and now, and love and peace, and friends like this. Daphne gently kissed her cheeks and took her hand, leading her to the house on Waller Street.

There were roughly thirty or forty people living there, mostly in Indian garb of rainbow hues, although there were some in patched jeans too, and outfits with feathers and sequins sewn on. Anne felt like a plain little bird in her jeans and an old brown turtleneck she'd worn on the trip, but a girl who met her at the door offered to lend her a dress, and she found herself suddenly wearing a costume in faded pink silk. It had come from a thrift shop on Divisadero Street, and she slipped her feet into rubber thongs, unbraided her hair, and wove two flowers into it, and by that afternoon she felt and looked like one of them. They ate an Indian dish, and someone had baked bread, she took a few hits on someone's joint, and she lay back on a sleeping bag feeling full and warm and content, looking around at her new friends, feeling a warmth and acceptance she had never felt before. And she knew she would be happy here. It was a lifetime away from the house in Beverly Hills, her father's angry edicts about Lionel … the perfidies of the people she knew … the stupidity of Gregory … the selfishness of the twins … the woman who called herself her mother that she had never understood … this was where she belonged now. Here on Waller Street, with her new friends.

And when they initiated her three days after she arrived, it seemed suitable and right and loving. It was a supreme act of love in a room filled with incense, as a fire blazed warmly in the hearth, and the hallucination carried her from heaven to hell and back again. She knew she would be a different person when she woke up again. They told her that before she ate the mushrooms, followed by the tiny tab of LSD absorbed into a sugar cube. It took a little while for it to take hold on her mind, but when it did, there were friendly spirits there, and a room full of people she knew. Later, there were spiders and bats and terrifying things, but they held her hands while she howled and screamed, and when she felt her body racked with pain, they sang her songs, and cradled her as her mother never had … even Lionel had done nothing like this for her … she crossed a desert on her hands and knees, and then at last she came to an enchanted forest, filled with elves, and she felt their hands on her, and felt the spirits singing to her again. And now the faces that had hovered over her all night, and waited for her to be free of the evil of her past life, came forward toward her. Already, she felt purified, and knew that she was one of them. The evil spirits had been killed, they had left her, and now she was pure … now they could complete the ritual with her. Gently, they peeled away her clothes, and washed her with oils, each one gently massaging her tender flesh … she had come far that night, and parts of her were sore, but the'women gently massaged her, getting her ready now, reaching slowly into her, and stretching her as she screamed. She fought them at first, but they whispered so gently to her, and she could hear the music now. They had her drink something warm, and poured more oil on her, as her two guardians tenderly massaged her most secret place and she writhed beneath their hands, howling with agony and joy, and then her new brothers came, the spirits who would belong to her now, to replace the others she had left behind, and each of them knelt beside her as the sisters crooned, and one by one the brothers entered her, as the music grew louder, and birds flew high overhead … there were sharp arrows of pain at times, and waves of ecstasy, and again and again they came into her, and held her there, and left again, until the sisters returned, kissing her now and reaching far far into her until she could feel no more, and heard no sound. The music had stopped. The room was dark. Her past life was gone. She stirred, wondering if it had all been a dream but when she sat up and looked around, she saw them there, waiting for her. She had been gone for a long, long time, and she was so surprised at how many there were. But she recognized each one of them, and crying, she held out her arms and they came to her, embracing her. Her womanhood was complete, her sisterhood was sure. They gave her another acid tab as a reward, and this time she soared with them as one of the flock, dressed in a gown of white, and when the brothers and sisters came to her again, she was one of them this time, kissing them too … touching the sisters as they had touched her. This was her privilege now, they explained, and this was an expression of her love for them and theirs for her. She was to participate often in the ritual in the next few weeks, and when a new face arrived in the house on Waller Street, it was Sunflower who greeted them, with her blond hair woven with flowers and her gentle smile … Sunflower who had once been Anne … she lived mostly on LSD, and she had never been as happy in her life. And three months after she had come to them, one of the brothers took her as his own. His name was Moon, and he was tall and thin and beautiful, with silver hair and gentle eyes. He took her to bed with him every night, and cradled her, and in some ways he reminded her of Lionel. She went everywhere with him, and often he would turn to her with his mystic smile.