Supernatural Noir by Ellen Datlow

midriffs and thighs and smalls of backs were all tatted up. She went in for body art herself, but even if she’d let hers show and left the eyebrow stud in tonight, these chicks were her “sisters” only in theory.
    The tall one practically stuck her tight little ass in her face, shoving her off the curb. A red snake coiled out of the butt crack up the downy spine, fresh and still hurting. Almost without thinking, she made it hurt a little worse.
    One of them sneered, “Get the fuck out of our way, bitch.” They all screeched evil laughter and then they had a hilarious contest calling her things like “retard” and “runt.”
    She was losing sleep and risking life, limb, and STDs to make the world safer for asshole kids like these, who didn’t even have fully developed frontal lobes—and why? She knew why. Same reason she was in social-work school. To make a difference.
    She indulged in a moment of revenge fantasy. It’d be no effort at all to wriggle inside their vapid little minds and jack their thoughts, give them false memories or repress real ones, make them understand crap they couldn’t possibly understand like research statistics, or forget stuff they knew and needed like cell numbers of friends-with-bennies.
    But she wouldn’t let herself be mean just to be mean. Morality sucked. Not using all your talents also sucked. But doing mean stuff just because you could was part of what made the world such a hard place. That and stupidity.
    She couldn’t even journal about it for her Social-Work Skills class. That’d blow all her various covers, and anyway the stories were so outrageous people’d think she was totally psycho.
    She’d just do her job here and get back to the dorm in time to finish the Policy paper tonight, never mind that she’d be totally sleep deprived for the eight o’clock class that put her to sleep anyway. A normal starvation-wage work-study job would’ve been a lot simpler. Just once in a while she’d like to do something normal and simple.
    The gaggle of girls flapped and honked across the park. Although she’d learned in Human Growth and Development why part of her longed to be one of them, it still hurt that she wasn’t.
    She went and sat on a swing where it was darker. Her feet dangled. She pulled Pinkie out of her Hannah Montana backpack and snuggled him into her lap. Not five minutes later the chicken hawk made his move. Already she could tell she’d hardly earn her fee with this one.
    He crooned, “Not safe out here all by yourself, honey.”
    It had taken her a while to learn to tear up, but now it was second nature. Or third or fourth nature, whatever. When professors talked about “conscious use of self, the basic social-work tool,” she doubted fake decoy tears were what they had in mind.
    She clutched her pink bear and looked up at the man, automatically noting his squared-off hairline, black or navy-blue hoodie, bad breath, worse thoughts. Thing for girls and boys with no body hair. She whimpered, “I want my mommy. Can you help me find my mommy, mister?” The “mister” was either a genius hook or over the top.
    Genius. Something perked up in his fried brain. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
    Sweetly she lisped, “Little Shit.”
    He gave a surprised laugh, then got threatening. “Cut the crap. What’s your real name?” Perps thought they had power over a little kid once they had your name.
    Like she’d tell him. Like she even knew. “That is my real name, mister, honest. Little Shit.”
    “I ain’t callin’ you that.”
    “You can call me whatever you want to, mister.” How about Trouble? Ball-Buster? Bait?
    He gave the swing a hard shove that pretended—not very well—to be playful. “Pretty little thing like you,” he rasped. “Somebody might take advantage.”
    She shrieked and fell against him at an angle that would keep him from having contact with the dead giveaway of her boobs. He went for her crotch. These scum were so