1:53 AM

The dogs woke me up. They had been barking at something long enough to get my attention. Not the rapid, intense barking they made when a guy was breaking in house two houses away, but they're not happy. 

I look at the camera facing the street. A younger woman I've seen at the tent city is pushing a piled up shopping cart past the old club across the street. 

She looks like she may be about to set up camp there, so I decide to go out and see what's up. She's probably leaving tent city for a reason, but camping there is not going to work.

As I walk up, she busies herself with her stuff, doesn't look at me. Another homeless guy has already arrived, and I look at him questioningly. He replies with a mystified gesture. 

I just want to move my things in the same peace as anyone else is entitled to, she says. She already knows I'm about to say she can't stay where she's at, and lets me know she's moving on. I reply that I'm not looking to give anyone a hard time, just to make sure everything is okay. She seems slightly relieved that it's not going to turn into a confrontation. 

.

I ask where she's going. To the Red Roof Inn, which is an abandoned hotel a few miles away on the highway, a frequent homeless encampment. 

Why aren't you in the shelter, I ask. 

"The curfew is at six but that's when I reach my God." I've always done it like that, she adds, since my dad died and I was supposed to go to medical school in the Caribbean. 

This last isn't crazy talk; it's more like a declaration of identity, or a possible future that once existed. She adds that she has a bachelor's degree, but in a tentative way that makes me think it's probably not true.

I ask her why she's leaving tent city, and she tells me that the guys who are over there steal everyone's stuff, and they discount anything she says because she's a woman. 

Edit: I should add here that she also said the guys who steal everyone's stuff then pay people to do things like pick up trash with other people's stolen stuff. Also, someone working for the shelter came by and told me she had gotten the woman to the very day of enlisting in the Army, and she had disappeared.