The air tasted damp and dry at the same time, the aromas of rainwater and cigarette smoke mixing into a heavy haze. Fat droplets of rain washed the layer of grime off of the huge, decrepit building.
When it came to big-city slums, rainy October evenings were the worst. At least 2013 had not been that rainy so far, but when the rain did come, it drenched everything.

There were three hundred and four crumbling, eroded rooms in the building, occupied by mostly rebellious runaways or street gangs. Inside room two hundred seven was a dark-haired, green-eyed girl aged about fourteen, named Mercy.

Mercy Grey was a peculiar girl trapped in an equally peculiar world. As of now, her world consisted mainly of the shabby room two hundred seven, several dusty photographs, and an El Diablo loaded with three bullets laying on a table next to a chair.
The chair was spewing stuffing in all directions like a fountain, and the table listed severely to one side. Mercy sat perched on the fountain chair, smack-dab in the middle of all the peculiarity like a queen on her throne. She sat chipping at her dark-blue nail polish while replaying all of her reasons to run from her home.
“Go die in a hole, Mercy. Seriously.”
“You know what, Mercy, get out of my house! You’re useless!”
“Can’t believe you’re thinking that. Are you really thinking that now? You think you have any hope left?”
“Who doesn’t know that, Mercy? Who doesn’t? Why are you so stupid?”
“Go ahead and hang yourself, I don’t care.”
Sentences echoed around her head. Her hands began shaking. Finally, without another thought, she leapt from her chair, grabbed the El Diablo, and whipped around, firing two of the three bullets. The glass from her family photo and her class photo shattered as they both fell from the wall.
She strode up and stared at the two bullet holes before stomping on the frames, twisting and warping the fine wood. Gritting her teeth, she ground the heel of her brown combat boot into her mother’s face on the family picture.
A soft knock came at the door, followed by the voice of Zoey, a fellow runaway and one of the nicer residents of the building. “Mercy? You okay in there?”
Immediately, tears began running down Mercy’s face. The photos blurred in her vision as hot tears curved under her chin and dripped to the cracked wood of the floor. “I’m fine!” she called back, her voice squeaking a little.
“Are you sure? I heard gunshots.”
Any normal neighbor who was used to a sheltered life would have panicked and bashed down the door. But Zoey was used to the streets, and gunshots, and metal baseball bats.
“I’m sure, Zoey. Everything’s fine.”
There was a long pause. “‘Kay then. If you say so.” Her footsteps echoed back down the hallway.
Roughly wiping the tears from her face, Mercy gritted her teeth, shoved the gun with its only bullet into her pocket, and placed her sweaty hand on the doorknob. After staring at her dust-covered, filthy hands, she snatched up her only umbrella, which was so full of holes it looked like Swiss cheese, and stomped out.
Deciding to collectively avoid the shortcut, Mercy made a beeline for the main city streets, where there were plenty of people and no gang fights about. She climbed over the fence of a nearby alley, her eyes unmoving from the buildings above her. Completely unaware of her surroundings, her feet slipped from the metal loops, and she landed right on top of an unsuspecting city-dweller.
“Sorry!” she squeaked, quickly scrambling to her feet and taking off towards a nearby diner, bruised and humiliated. Perhaps she should have taken one of the shortcuts full of gang fights. Life did not get much worse than falling on top of some rich, huffy highbrow.
Behind her, the pedestrian, a boy aged about fifteen, gingerly felt the place on his spine where her knee had smashed a bruise. He looked up and had a sudden flicker of recognition.
He realized who the runner was.
“Mercy!” he yelled, running as fast as he could. “Wait! Mercy, get back here!”
Mercy kept running, not hearing a thing around her. She was just reaching for the door handle of the diner when a hand slapped her wrist.
“Hey! What do you think you-,” she snapped, whipping out the gun, before focusing on who it was. At that moment, all the blood was drained from her face and her eyes widened. Suddenly remembering that she was holding a gun in her hand in plain sight, she hastily jammed it back into her pocket. Fortunately, no one had seen.
The boy nodded towards her pocket. “I see you still have it,” he said bitterly.
He was her brother. The one person in the whole world who had been all for it when she had told him she was running off. A lump swelled in her throat as she still remembered the night she left.
“Three bullets, Mercy. That’s it. Use them wisely.”
Right before she leapt out the window, he put the gun into a zippered pocket on her backpack. Only two weeks ago.
“Don’t give me that look,” Mercy croaked back. Her voice ached from disuse. Besides Zoey, it had felt like forever since she had spoken to another human being.
“Why not?” He snatched up a stray newspaper that the wind had blown into his shoe, flipped frantically through the pages. “They’re looking for you now. You’ve been reported missing.”
Suddenly, she felt anger rising up into her throat. “Wha-why? You promised you wouldn’t tell them! You said to just leave it to you or something to come up with some-”
He bowed his head. “I tried. They wouldn’t buy any excuses.”
“What’re you doing here now?” she snarled, shoving him. “Here to drag me back to them like this? That’s it, right?”
He stared at her for a long time. Mercy stared back, feeling betrayed. She wanted him to surrender, to break his gaze.
He still held as he said, “Yeah. Exactly, we want you to come back. Everyone’s worried about you now.” He finally dipped his head out of her line of sight and raised his hands in surrender. “But that’s up to you.”

She still remembered all of it, the dark tunnel that she couldn’t seem to escape from. Even in the dead silence of sleep, she could hear all the words swirling around her head like a mad storm. She recounted the many nights she had spent drowning in tears, or seething with frustration. She recalled how the silence of her house at night roared so loudly that her ears nearly bled.

“Everyone thinks they were there for me?” she asked carefully, raising her head. “Is that really what they think now?”

“That’s what everyone says. Like I said, they’re all worried.”

She wiped her nose with a dirty sleeve. “Then let them think. Let them worry. There’s no way I’m going back to that hellhole, and you can’t make me.”

A long pause. He closed his green eyes and nodded. “‘Kay, then. If that’s what you want. I won’t tell them I saw you.”

Mercy swallowed hard and nodded. “Thank you. Oh, and one more thing. Tell them not to look for me.” She took a deep breath and said in a low voice, “I can’t come back if they look for me.”

He reached over and patted her shoulder. “Mercy. You know I can’t tell them that. That girl from your class- I think her name’s Kate- she said so she was worried and…”

With remarkable calmness, Mercy pulled out the gun again and placed her finger on the trigger. Without another thought, the final bullet found its home in her brother’s head.

Immediately, people all around her shrieked and fell, scattering in all directions like water ripples. Shutting her eyes, Mercy raised both her hands and dropped the gun.

“Yep,” she said. Then, she turned on her heel and walked away from him, from the false tears of all those people, from a life of breakdown, murmuring to herself, “I can’t come back if you look for me.”