When God Forgets Chicago, Move to Cancún

The winter during my sophomore year of high school was so fucking cold. Every fucking day. It was like God had forgotten about Chicago.

All I wanted that winter was to be warm through whatever means necessary: arriving to school early, staying late in the public library when it was open, and fucking football players on the weekends – there’s no warmth like an oversized, well-fed linebaker passed out on top of you. A girl is nothing if not resourceful: I got what I needed. 

It was during one of those long, languishing afternoons in the library, on a day when it seemed like someone had put white out over every window, that I had finally had enough. I decided I didn’t want to be cold anymore. I decided to move to Cancún. 

It was so obvious. Spanish II was my highest grade. With a B+ I was practically a native speaker. Sure, I didn’t have any marketable skills, but I could give a decent blowjob, and that felt like enough to get by on, at least if the guys in Cancún were anything like the guys in Chicago. Plus I wouldn’t have to worry about housing – I’ve always been one of those people that could sleep anywhere. I’d get things figured out. 

The only hurdle – and it was a big one – was getting that plane ticket. A quick search on the library’s public computer showed direct flights from O’Hare to sweet, sunny paradise almost on the hour. The problem was that they were all north of $600. This would take some planning. 

At 14, I was too young to work in anything except animal processing. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to be cold inside so I could carve out pigs for hours on end. Fuck no. I flipped through a borrowed copy of Teen Vogue and tried to think. I might be able to steal the money from people at school, though that would take a while – most of them were almost as broke (or broker) than I was. I might be able to shoplift makeup and resell it, but that was risky. Even at $20 per lipstick I’d have a lot of cold nights ahead of me before I could make my escape. Then I remembered a small bedraggled woman who begged for money outside the Catholic church on 95th street. She was someone who truly had nothing – she wasn’t even allowed in the library anymore. Here I was, trying to raise $600 to go somewhere warm, and she probably didn’t know where her next meal was coming from, having to rely on the kindness of strangers passing by. 

Naturally, I began panhandling opposite her outside the 95th street cathedral. At first, I was slow to divert traffic from the woman; she looked worse off than I was. I soon learned to change my appearance: to wear a trench coat I’d hacked up with a steak knife, to smear my face with dirt, to adopt a persistent cough and a limp that switched legs every once in a while. When I learned that I could double anyone’s handout by telling them I was pregnant, it was over. After a few weeks, the old woman gave up. 

I was raking it in. Eventually, I had enough saved for a business-class ticket to Mexico, plus a little extra to get me started. With glee I rode the subway to the airport, all my necessities packed tightly into my school bag. To make sure I could really take everything, I’d ditched my textbooks in a sewer grate outside the library. 

Once I was into O’Hare, I bribed a downtrodden thirty-something hippie to pretend he was my dad and purchase the ticket directly from the counter. After that, I sailed through security like piss through snow. 15 minutes until boarding. This could truly be it. The beginning of a new life. 

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Unfortunately, the truancy policy in Chicago is weirdly strict. Still, it was weeks before anyone found out. I also learned that I burn like fucking tissue paper.

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