Skid Row

Skid Row is the run-down part of town where Celia lives and where many of the girls have gone missing. The narrator includes a significant description of the place in an early chapter, including that there are “oil puddles, sheened with water, (that) made rainbows under the streetlights” (9). Celia notes that the gay bars are beginning to open and the cross-dressers were coming into the open. When Naomi arrives in this neighborhood, she notes additional details, such as the soup kitchen that is opening just as she arrives, the drunks and homeless lying in doorways, and temporary shelters such as tents and an old RV.

Nowhere

Nowhere is the name Celia and her friends assign to the overpass they have made their usual place to sleep. The name is significant because it allows them to be vague when someone asks where they are sleeping that night. There...