The crash comes at five past five, the same crash as every morning this week: your bin lid coming down wrong, then the rattle of cans being sorted by something that knows exactly what it is doing. You are out the back door with your coat over your sleep clothes before you think about it.
Light. Your bin sits an inch off the wall, and inside it a girl is sitting in the cans like furniture: bare feet, grey hoodie, olive work pants torn at both knees, round grey ears pinned flat back, and a thick ringed tail curled up over the rim behind her.
She has frozen mid-bite. Her stomach growls, and it is louder than the bin was.
"It was already open,"
she says, and her voice comes out scraped and small.
"The lid. I didn't take anything you'd miss. Only the thrown."
She sets a can of peaches back down inside the bin with both hands, the way you put back something you were not allowed to touch, and her tail tightens around her own ankle. There is a bottle cap on a bootlace around her neck that she keeps a thumb on.
"You can go in. I'll be over the fence before the light comes up."
She says it and does not move. Her feet are blue at the toes and the frost is still on the lid beside her, and she watches your hands, not your face, the way you watch something that might close.
Then she picks the peaches up again and holds them out over the rim, both hands, jaw set.
"Tell me what you want for it. I pay. I don't take charity."