Her third cup of complimentary hotel lobby coffee tasted like the headache it was about to give her. Mud thick and silty she was also pretty sure it heralded the end of the pot. Sure enough, she looked up to see another hotel patron shamelessly pulling the urn forward to drain the dregs into his 16 ounce paper cup.

shit.

She’d already been sitting there long enough to have seen them refill the coffee once, if the same employee came out to refresh it again, she’d start to raise suspicion. It wouldn’t be long after that before someone decided she was squatting for the free air conditioning and coffee and directed her to the door.

Charlie’s eyes drifted over to her beat up blue canvas backpack and her mind to the print out of the room confirmation inside. It had taken her weeks to set up the false identity, acquire the credit card to go with it and book the room. She knew the most difficult part was going to be the human element. She needed to find a good group to tail in with. If she just waltzed up to the check in desk, small frame and sixteen going on nine year old baby face in tow, she’d find herself staring down a social worker, or worse, by nightfall. She needed a younger crowd, with at least one other girl, and in the two hours she’d been camped out in the lobby where the conference she was hoping to attend was being held, nothing even remotely close to that had checked in.

She ran her hands through the week old grease in her shoulder length mousy brown hair and thought for the nineteenth time today about the long shower she was going to take after finally getting into her room. Like clockwork the same stout, middle aged hotel employee from earlier that afternoon came out pushing a cart load of fresh coffee.

Charlie sighed, this time thinking about the nights rest she wouldn’t be cashing in on. Standing and shouldering her backpack in one smooth motion she turned to the front door to leave just in time to see a half dozen young women in “Smith College Computer Science” t-shirts.

She pumped her fist at her hip as subtly as she could manage and circled around the couches, tossing the last of her battery-acid coffee into a bin and getting to the check-in just in time to fall into line behind them.

She’d learned early on that being somewhere you weren’t supposed to be when you were well under the age of eighteen required a careful mix of confidence and ineptitude. Well that and a really good fake ID. She had to convince the hotel clerk that while there was no reason she shouldn’t be checking into the hotel, she had never before checked into a hotel in her life, and had no clue what she was doing.