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Runaways. They are the refugees from a million private wars being waged across America -- a ragtag army of the abused and the ignored drifting aimlessly like flotsam out of sundered families. Each year as many as 1.3 million teenagers flee home, according to the National Network of Runaway and Youth Services. While the statistics are guesswork, social workers on the front lines perceive a worsening problem. "We're finding that the numbers are going up and the kids are getting younger," says Sister Mary Rose McGeady, president of New York City-based Covenant House. "In Houston the average age is 15. When I was there a year ago, the average age was close to 17." Covenant House workers from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Anchorage, Alaska, have made similar observations. Last year there were 1,459,717 phone calls to Covenant House's hot line (1-800-999-9999), up 15% from 1992.
Runaways. Some are missing, their earnest young portraits splashed across flyers distributed by desperate parents. Many aren't missed at all. Most youths simply exchange one hell for another. Says Roger Hernandez, outreach coordinator for the Larkin Street Youth Center in San Francisco: "You can literally watch them age, week by week." And die. Living on the streets and on society's margins, runaways are the most vulnerable to the pestilences that kill America's teens: alcoholism, drugs, AIDS, homicide. About 20% of new cases of AIDS are among young adults in their 20s. Given the virus' latency period, that means most were infected in their teens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month released a report saying the annual homicide rate for men ages 15 to 19 jumped 154% from 1985 to 1991.
And still the children run. Seattle, San Francisco and New York City are among the top destinations. But Hollywood is ground zero. Experts estimate that 10,000 homeless youths are on the streets on any given night in Los Angeles County, maybe 3,000 of them in Hollywood alone. They are lured by the persistent myth that Hollywood is where the rainbow touches down; they remain because it does offer a few shelters and services to the thousands of homeless youths seeking miracles there. For the nation's runaways, Hollywood is like a ) huge electric bug zapper that can't be unplugged, attracting and then destroying thousands and thousands of children.
One Saturday night in an abandoned building in Hollywood, Aaron tried to kill himself again. He drank cheap vodka and then, after smashing the bottle, used a shard to hack away at his wrists. Maybe he was too drunk; maybe he didn't really want to die. But the effort failed, just like the six other attempts he says he has made. In fact, no one even paid him any attention. "I can't even kill myself," he says. "I walk into traffic, and the cars miss me."
Known by his street name, Beavis, the 16-year-old escaped from a youth center in El Monte, California, in June with a 15-year-old girl who calls herself Rainbow. A former ninth-grader at Antelope Valley High School who was just learning to play electric bass guitar, he was put into the center by his mother, he says, because she and he didn't get along -- at all. Though he misses his three-year-old brother, Beavis vows never to return home. "It's too awful there," he says. Instead he'll live on the streets until he's 18. "Then I'll get a job." Doing what? "Something that pays good so I can settle down."