4:17 p.m. found me waiting for the 517 bus that would take me through the bad part of downtown. Past the decrepit tattoo parlors that clients would walk out of with a new butterfly tramp stamp and a recommendation to be tested for chlamydia and the grotty old pubs that that only housed the drunkest of alcoholics this time of day; that was where I was headed.

I supposed I'd be a totally different girl if I had two working, doting parents and lived in a part of town with a name like Golden Heights or Swallow Falls, but both my parents are gone and I'm stuck living in the bad part of town, in a neighborhood aptly named Hell's Kitchen because either Gordon Ramsay lived here or the damp, musty air always smells like rotten meatloaf. One of the two.

Anyways, I was waiting for the bus to take me home and I watched a drunken homeless man pleasure himself in an alleyway across the street. Not that I was trying to watch him, but I had already memorized all the meaningless graffiti on the bus stop walls and there really wasn't much else to look at. Besides, every ten seconds he'd look up from stroking inside his pants and meet my eyes and give me a lewd grin which sent shivers up my spine.

My bus finally came and I got on and I sat in the last empty seat close to the front. I continued to watch the homeless guy through the grimy window, and what a sight that was, seeing this dirty man performing a dirty act through a dirty window. It's a lot of dirt to handle but I'm used to dirt and so I just shrugged it off.

I didn't really care, though. I firmly believe that everyone should have a cause in life and that's what keeps us going, and for some people it's masturbating in a public alleyway and that's okay.

At my old school nobody believed me when I told them about my dad's lighter. It's always with me, always in my pocket or in my bag or in my hands where I'm itching to light it and burn everything I know to the ground. Any time someone touches it it feels less like it his and this is all I have left of my dad so yeah, my threats were legitimate.

I said to people who touched it, I said that I'd break their arms and stuff them down their throats. But people didn't believe me, probably because I am quite skinny and also a girl and according to Sam Schorr, the quarterback at my old school, I didn't look like I could break a pencil in half. But I did that and so much more.

What people thought about me never really mattered to me. Probably because I've always had my own plans and being called names or being kicked out of my old school didn't affect my plans very much. If I could do it over again, though, I'd throw that pencil much harder at Sam Schorr. I only grazed the side of his neck and that didn't feel like very much retribution for what he had done to me, touching my dad's lighter.

As it was, the scene wasn't pretty. The set up was that I was sitting on one side of the principal's office with my aunt next to me, and Sam Schorr and his doting parents that live in Willow Falls, the new luxury tenements, where sitting on the other side glaring daggers at me. Sam's dad was a franchise guy- he owned two Subways and three McDonald's and he did pretty well for himself, considering there was a street behind the school named Schorr Rd. because had donated bajillions of dollars to the city.

Anyways, the principal was sitting with the Schorrs, and he was also glaring at me, so basically I was in a room full of enemies besides my aunt but she didn't really count because she was whacked out on Valium and was busy twiddling her thumbs and counting the number of bumps on the popcorn ceiling.

"Are we ready to begin?" the principal asked in this weirdly honeyed voice, and the Schorrs nodded looking all serious and I just said, "Sure, old man," which went down like a ton of bricks.

Sam's dad said, "Max, we are ready to forgive you if you apologize," with this expression on his face that sat halfway between pity and disgust.

"I'm not forgiving the bitch," Sam said angrily, his voice still cracking from his late puberty which no one was allowed to comment on unless they wanted their head shoved in a toilet. "I'm going to miss at least two games."

I said, "I'm surprised they let you play if you haven't even finished puberty yet," and Sam stood up with his fists clenched, ready to shove my face into a toilet, but he couldn't, not with his parents sitting there trying to be all civil. Sam's dad put an arm on his shoulder and sat him back down.

The principal said, "Max, do you have anything you want to say?"

I hooked my thumbs in the pockets of my worn jeans and looked the whole disgusting lot of them in the eye. "Your little football prince shouldn't have touched my lighter. I warned him he'd get a pencil in his neck, and he got a pencil in his neck."

And that went down like a ton of bricks, too, because the Schorrs were apparently very respected in this town and to insult one of them like that was basically to commit slander. "Max, if you're going to stay at this school, you must apologize to Sam and his family."

I looked at Sam, then, at this tall, muscled boy that needed both his parents and the school principal to protect him from me, and I grinned. "I am sorry, Sam. Sorry I wasn't clearer. Don't touch my fucking lighter. Eventually, all these people who dote over you are going to disappear, and you're going to be all alone, and then we'll see-"

I stopped because my aunt had just squeezed my leg, so she must have been at least partly present.

My aunt is one of the nicest people in the world. My dad's older sister. She was the only person left that understood me, and when I drove back because she was still coming down from her high, she said she was sorry things had ended up like this for me. "Your dad dying and your mom going away is a lot to handle, but stabbing people won't fix anything."

And then she enrolled me in a different school with no comment and took me out to see a sad movie, one of those films about a dog where you know exactly how it's going to end before the title even shows up, but you still end up sobbing quietly into your shirt anyway. So we both cried a lot and afterwards we went out for ice cream, the kind you eat with big spoons because my aunt said it was a big spoon kind of day.

Anne Walker was so kind to me, and all I'd done so far was make trouble for her. I resolved that day to be a better person.

Except trouble was my cause in life, and it was impossible for me to avoid.