[in progress]

A white unmarked car pulls up to their porch at 8:55 am. Juniper is fast asleep in their bedroom upstairs, but something in their body senses this arrival. Tensile, they stretch and open their eyes. Blackout shades roll tersely over their windows, the beige felt tracking a badlands through their otherwise colorful room. The breaks of the car sigh a little.

Blurry-eyed, Juniper sits up, awakening more fully from a dream of flying, of reckless and saucy aerial feats that cause everyone to fall in love with them. The secret of the dream had been to only attempt flight when they were far from any sort of ledge. This strikes Juniper as wisdom -- the idea not to attempt greatness unless one is safe from danger -- and their hazel eyes cross a little as Juniper's hands rub in small ovals. Idly Juniper think of their partner Jacob's eyes, glad to be spared of an astigmatism.

As the car's engine idles and then cuts out Juniper's squirrel, Mullein, stirs in her terrarium. Juniper found Mullein and her brother on the sidewalk six months ago at the base of a large cedar tree in outside of their favorite book store in Seattle. The city is famous for its large conifers, and this tree was no exception. Juniper had carefully scooped up the babies she'd found crumpled in the tree's shadow and carried them home, cradled in a scarf. Juniper fed them on kitten formula until the sixth week, when Brother didn't make it and Mullein was ready to transition to solid food.

The first night home it seemed like Mullein was going to lose her pulse at any moment, but Brother curled his small and hairless body around her, a gesture that ended up carrying them both through the night. Now when it is time to sleep Juniper has to keep Mullein in a 20-gallon fish tank with a wire top, but sometimes in the middle of the night Juniper will rise and curl their right wrist and arm around Mullein's reddish back, mimicking the hold that once saved her life. Juniper hopes that their witness to this extraordinary moment of sibling support -- so unheard of in Juniper's experience -- will allow them enough insight into Mullein's needs to nurture the young squirrel to powerful adulthood.

Juniper has trained Mullein not to chew or rattle the lid of her terrarium, but this morning she is unusually noisy. The sound of Mullein scrabbling around in her cage almost masks the persistent but quiet knocking coming from the front porch. Hearing this, a light runs up Juniper's spine like a sparkler, and they walk softly and unsteadily to the window to lift the shade.

This is when Juniper sees the car.
Oh god, they think. Oh no. No. No no no nono.

Their mind crackles out in a silence of static, and in an elegant arcing lunge they grab Mullein in one hand and an armful of clothes in the other. Finding a small orange daypack with flimsy waist straps, Juniper stuffs the clothes and Mullein into the inside pouch, pulling the drawstring shut and buckling the bag's cloth lid. Pulling on shoes without untying the laces, Juniper catches a glimpse of themself in a red-framed mirror, of the curved arch of their back and their brown hair spinning wildly around their face like a swing carousel.

Shit.This is not going to work. I'll look way too much like a girl to them. This is who they'll expect me to be. I can't let myself become a women to them--or to me. Much less to me.

There is time for this. Almost mechanically, Juniper gathers half of their hair in a fist above their left ear and stands in front of the red-framed mirror. Reaching with their other hand for the pair of scissors they always keep accessible but hidden, Juniper works the blades through their clenched hank of hair, a five-year-old trying to shear a Barbie doll. Hair comes tumbling down around their shoulders in thick curtains, pooling on the ground and hanging off the elbows of their sweater like [the dangling filaments of] a destroyed spiderweb. This is how Juniper feels -- how they would feel if they were not panicking. Like a destroyed spider. Like a beaver whose dam has been blown up.

Juniper reaches under their extended left hand to cut off the other side of their hair. They stuff these wads into their pack, realizing that too much left behind might look suspicious.
Besides, Mullein will appreciate the nesting material.

After quietly shutting the door to their bedroom, Juniper shimmies out the eastern window of their apartment. Juniper's house is a maze of hallways, an old square Victorian converted into apartments during the 1960s, and the side windows on Juniper's floor lead to a balcony with a drainpipe that is sturdy and close enough to the ledge for climbing. Juniper often watches moonrises and summer meteor showers from the roof, whose access the pipe permits. They climb the drainpipe fast, muscle memory pulling their body along despite their panic. But their hands do slip a little, the palms are wet with sweat.

When Juniper reaches the roof, their hands are covered in a tacky mixture of rust, saline, and blood. The pipe has cut a small trench between their forefinger and thumb, and it is bleeding steadily. The brown ooze camouflages the scabs and calluses that line Juniper's fingers.

Fuck. Juniper stamps the ground. Fuck this.

They can't remember the date of their last tetanus shot, and for a moment the blood swims before their eyes.

It's ok though. I'm sure Flint will have some tincture or salve for this. Stay focused.

The world comes into focus and Juniper immediately drops to their belly. Shit. That was too close. If the men at the door see them up here then all Juniper's packing and preparing will have been nothing more than time wasted. The tarpaper snags at their tights as they shimmy along the roof's surface, leaving runs. Behind the house there is an abandoned lot. Asian pear trees that lean over from the neighbor's yard have left their seeds for enough years that the yard has become an orchard. Juniper glimpses the trees' dark shiny tops and for a moment remembers the first night they brought Jacob there to gather the windfall fruits. The two came back later to rattle the trees dry, with a bike helmet and two oversize t-shirts.

The trees will catch them. Juniper watched their housemate Mirah successfully leap from the roof to the orchard on the fourth of July. She was drunk, and taller than Juniper, but it seems safe as anything else right now. The orchard will provide cover, and lets out onto an alley that Juniper will take, they hope, to safety.