I can't seem to remember how I got to the train station, which is probably a really bad thing since I'm sitting behind the wheel of a car. The harsh, cheap lights at the station are an uncomfortable shock to my eyes. It doesn't seem to matter what time of year it is: you know it is going to be cold at 1 o'clock in the morning here. So I'm wearing a sweatshirt and shorts and no make-up; I'm momentarily glad it's so early because no one is seeing how ridiculous I look. Then I remember I'm at the train station at 1 in the morning so the bar for good things is set pretty low.

After a while, a train pulls up to our sad excuse for a station and three people are inside the car in front of me. A college student who is hunched over reading a biology text book between naps. An older woman who looks as though she has never had a home. Clothes that don't fit anymore and a trash bag bulging with everything she ever owned. I suddenly feel eternally grateful for my father and the 'grueling hours of saving lives that no one is this family appreciates'. The third person I tried not to look at. She was pretty, of course, she was always pretty. I didn't need to look at her, all high and loopy, this wasn't the visual I needed. But she of course was the one I'm here for. When the doors opened she fell out but remained standing somehow. And giggled a little. Nothing was funny about picking up a friend at the train station at 1 o'clock in the morning because they didn't know what sober meant and they didn't have a home to go to anyway.

She hugs me tightly and I can smell the weed, the stink of it in her hair. And there's another scent belonging to something I'm sure is just as 'legally challenged'. I pick up her bag and casually peek inside. There's odd ends of fabric, which she explains she sells for food, and a plastic bag of beads and wire which I recognize as her jewelry tools. She often trades jewelry for a bed at night. There are badly bruised apples wrapped in an oversized sweater, a pipe, a purple lighter, and something that looks like the cap of a syringe. I know the drugs are on her person, usually in her socks, so I don't bother trying to find them in the bag. I lead her over to the car and try to listen as she babbles on about the amazing people she met on the train. I vaguely hear that I don't need to worry about keeping her for more than a night. She's made some friends, she assures me they are 'amazing', and she'll meet up with them in the city tomorrow. All she needs is a safe place for tonight but the details of the dangerous alternative are fuzzy.

The car ride to my house is quiet, I don't need to tell her to tip-toe over the squeaky stair because my parents are sleeping. I don't need to tell her, because we've done this before. The late night phone call, the pathetically small train station, the bag of goods for survival on the barter system. And she'll finally get a real shower and real food, but that doesn't matter.

In the morning she'll wrap it all up again and ask me for a ride back to the station because there's places to go. And I'll provide bottles of water and we'll fight over how many protein bars she should take with her. I'll front the money for the ticket on the condition that she calls again whenever she needs a hand. And she keeps that promise, again and again.