But there was something else I had to do before signing the petition. Sign the lease on my own apartment.

That had proved to be tough as anything. DC isn’t exactly a cheap place to live. I’d found a place. In, well. Southeast. Not the worst part of Southeast. It was a 350-square-foot studio and cost about 700 a month.

I could do that with what I had coming up – as irregular as my income was, I could probably do more. But it had a major downside. No air conditioning.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers. My other downside, of course, was not having any furniture. I’d bought a futon, and was looking for cheap tables on Craigslist. Kanesha leaned over my shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“We’ll work something out. It’s a lousy spot for you anyway…”

“I’ll manage. You know. And this place is controlled access, at least in theory. What do you think to this table?”

“And it’s only until we both graduate,” Kanesha pointed out.

“Yeah.” Technically, they’d still be able to touch her until 21, but they usually wanted kids out of the system as soon as they were out of high school. “One year lease, and then I can go month-to-month until we get out.”
To New York. We were both getting out of this city. I wasn’t sure we’d come back. “New York’s worse, though, housing-wise.”

“But has way more opportunities for you to make a ton of money. And plenty of need for teachers,” she pointed out. She slipped an arm around me. “And they might not even notice if I’m not actually at whatever place they stick me in.”

I giggled. “If they noticed, it would be a first time. As long as we don’t get some homophobe watching us.”

“If we do…”

I grinned. “We’ll deal with it. But not by hurting them.”

“I was more thinking of as many PDAs in their presence as we can get away with.” She grinned again.

“Evil woman.”

“If they’re going to accuse us of flaunting our lifestyle, I’m dang well going to flaunt our lifestyle.”

She had a point. “So, you sneak in with me. I did get a double futon. We’ll fit.”

That made her blush.
“What? You’re the one wanting to flaunt our lifestyle.”

“You’re the one making me want to go upstairs right now.”

So, well? We did.