Create a similar story with title, keep the lesbian details and eliminate the sensual activities in the story. 
By the time Michelle went home, it was almost midnight. She had to take the train followed by two buses in order to get to where she lived—one of the storage rooms of an apartment building. She and Riley used to live in the basement of that building where there was no window, no fridge, no stove so that they had to eat out every day, even though that place seemed so much better than where Michelle lived currently. She sat down among the equipment and stacks of boxes on an old tarp she found after she moved in, and unpacked her stuff: a calculator with some basic functions by which she did all the "accounting" so that she could decide what to have for lunch the next day in order to save up and buy those medicines for Riley; a pencil case with a pencil and an eraser in it; a colouring book she found in the dumpster outside a grocery store someday; a pack of colour pencil she borrowed from her school, and then a stuffed animal. Michelle called this Golden Retriever-shaped stuffed animal Holiday, and somehow it lost one of its ears, therefore sometimes at night, Michelle can only whisper things into the only ear of Holiday that remained to make him fall asleep.
She was in a good mood that night because the next day would be the last day of the month, and this meant that tomorrow would be the last day of her working in that condo building. Her job was to clean the floors of each room inside the building, and she got paid okay. Even though the money was not good enough for her to rent a better place than where she currently lived, it was good enough for her to pay Riley's insurance, pay for the extra special medicine and treatment that Riley needed, and afford daily meals for herself and even save up some money for later. She always appreciated the fact that she didn't have to pay for transition though, given that she had to travel such a long distance from her place to school and from school to where she worked and finally back to her place, it was the best thing ever to get be a student and get a free bus pass sponsored by some funding for students like her.
She coloured the book for a while, humming a little bit and then lay down on her back on the tarp. Nobody disturbed her that night, so she slept soundly and woke up earlier than usual the next morning. She was the first to come to class the next day, even though she usually came in earlier than the rest of the class. Hardly anybody in class talked to her, and she was as quiet as usual. She sat at the back of the classroom, never truly paid attention to her surroundings. She could not see clearly what had been written on the board. Sometimes if she was really tired from the work of the previous day, she would probably just sleep through the whole day in the classroom so that she would have enough energy to get herself through the next six hours of work from evening till night. And then on some of those days when she got to go back home early, she will work on her homework assignments. She barely passed most of her courses like French, Algebra, and Science, except for Writing. Her Writing teacher, Mr. Wolff, seemed to like her work enough to give her an A.
After school, she took the train to the upper part of the town where all the rich people lived. In a convenience store in the train station, she ordered some fries and a side salad. Usually, she would order the fries only, with no gravy or cheese curds or vegetables, but that day was different. She would get her paycheck directly from her manager and then she would be able to buy the last dosage of Riley's medicine, and then according to Riley's doctor, Riley would be able to go home, healthy and whole.
She happily finished off her meal, the strawberries in her salad were chopped in halves and arranged nicely in between the lettuce leaves. It was one of her favourite fruits among all. As she was tasting them she could feel that summer was coming, and all the good memories she had came back to her: fishing, feeding the ducks, dipping her toes in the river with Riley, and she was laughing.
She kept working until eight in the evening, even though her belly did not feel very comfortable ever since she got off the train. She thought maybe it was because she had too much for lunch. Then at around nine when she was about to finish the last unit of that day, which was the penthouse at the top of the building, the situation got worse. She finished off the wiping and then she sat down on the floor next to the luxurious looking sofa in the living room. She never dared to touch anything in any room that she had cleaned, as though she would accidentally press some buttons and something would jump and knock her down. But that day she decided that maybe she could sit on that sofa a little to take a 5-minute break.
She touched the surface of that sofa with one finger tentatively, and it felt like heaven to her. She moved her body closer and then she took off her jacket. Just a little while, she told herself, you would not get a chance to even get close to one of these after you leave this room. She buried her face deep in the softness of that material, caressed it with her palms like she did to the 'fur' of Holiday's, and she sighed. She wished she would be able to get a sofa like this for Riley so that Riley would not complain about her back pain after a long day of work.
She never knew how she fell asleep, and even more, she never knew how she didn't wake up even when the owner of the penthouse went in. She sometimes hated the fact that, as her classmates put it, she could sleep like death.
When she was shoved to the floor and kicked on the thigh, she jerked awake immediately, half confused and half frightened. It was her manager who kicked her, and the owner of the house, a blond woman in her late thirties was staring at her with her gray eyes, looking tense and angry.
Under the harsh gaze of the woman, she stood up and fumbled to find her jacket.
"Do you know how much I spent on this sofa and how much it takes to clean it?" The woman asked both the manager and Michelle as if both of them should be blamed, "Given that now she had thrown herself on it? She's going to bring me head lice!"
"I am sorry…" Michelle stammered, still feeling a little bit trapped in the whole situation, "I didn't mean to…"
"I don't know what's wrong with her, but she certainly has no idea! I doubt she even cleans herself." The manager spitted viciously. He was a man in his fifties, lanky and shadowy with his mustache, almost bold and he was always in his uniform, "Filthy little wretch!"
"That's not true!" Michelle claimed, "I shower every day in the gym."
It was okay to have no money, Riley always said, but you had to be clean.
"I'll file a complaint to your company to get the compensation to clean the sofa." The woman said nonchalantly to the manager then turned to Michelle, "Now get out of my place."
"And that money will come directly from your paycheck for this month," the manager said to Michelle, "plus you don't have to come to work tomorrow. You're fired."
This could not be true, Michelle thought, I must have been stuck in some sort of nightmares. Usually when she was having bad dreams like that Riley would wake her up with a gentle shake and said, "there, there, it's okay, it's nothing but a dream." And then she would have the courage to fall back to sleep.
"No," Michelle exclaimed, she could feel tears start to swell up in her eyes and she couldn't help it. Crying was a sign of weakness, Riley always said, but in fact Michelle had never ever felt so weak in her life, never so helpless, in fact she thought she was going to faint at any moment. All the soreness when she bent over to mop the floors and clean the carpets, all those pains in her arms and back when she tried to handle the heavy lifting, all those wounds and redness on her hands, all of a sudden they all came back to her and she said, "Please, madam, please, you couldn't do that. My sister is in the hospital and she really needs the money. And even if she came out I need to get her a better place to stay! She really needs a bed to rest and recover! So, madam, please, please, don't do this, the paycheck is the only thing we have and please don't take that! Please madam, I would do anything…"
She thought her voice sounded stupid and she could hear her accent showing, but before she could finish she was interrupted by the woman, "why is your sister in the hospital?"
"The doctor said she has…" she tried hard to think of the word "pneumonia" but she didn't remember, so she said, "the doctor said she has some lung disease."
She heard the woman snort and said, "Of course your sister is sick. You shameless little liar."
Michelle opened her eyes wide. She just couldn't believe that she just heard this. She looked at the woman blankly. Her belly was still hurting ominously. "I am not lying, please," she said with a hoarse and broken voice, "She was very sick a couple of weeks ago, the doctor said she couldn't even survive…"
She continued to sob, and her audience went silent.
"Fine," the woman finally said, "I won't complain to your boss, but you have to be punished for what you have done."
She asked Michelle to kneel by the large table in the kitchen. And then someone began to stroke Michele hard on her back with a belt. Michelle thought that it was the manager. At first, because of the pain and the shock it brought Michelle screamed a little bit, but then the woman said that she was going to receive more strokes if she dared to "utter another syllable".
Michelle didn't know how she did manage to survive without passing out before the woman finally said, "That's enough. I hope that this will be able to teach you a lesson."
"Nothing in this world is free, and you should always go look at yourself in the mirror." The manager said coldly.
Still sobbing and shaking, Michelle stood up and said to the manager, "May I have my paycheck now, sir?"
"Give her the cheque then." The woman said, "then leave my place. I don't ever want to see you again."
"Would you stop crying!" the manager cursed, "Retarded little freak!" He impatiently took out his checkbook and then wrote a number.
Michelle quickly scanned the cheque, making sure that the manager has put everything in a correct format so that the check itself is valid, even though the amount on that cheque was somewhat less than what she had expected. Then she quickly picked up her jacket from the floor and ran out of the condo without saying a word.
She continued running down the streets, not sure which way to go. Never had she come here before, nor did she care. On one of the big screens, she spotted the time. It was 11: 21 pm. The subways and trains were still running, but buses to the suburbs didn't have any schedule after 11 at night so she cannot reach home.
Still being shocked, she walked quickly as if some monsters were going after her.
After walking for about five blocks, she slowed her pace down and started noticing her surroundings. This was the busiest part of the town by day, and by this time every store on the street was closed. She stood by one of the chocolatiers and looked through the window. She had never seen so many chocolates in her life before, and she started to feel dizzy. It was a feeling of extreme hunger, and strangely with such hunger she kind of had the urge to throw up. Agonized, she turned away and walked towards the clothing store next to it; as she got closer to the shop window, she could see her own reflection.
"you should always go look at yourself."
She stared, not even sure what she was looking at. Those dresses glowed mysteriously in the lights at the edges of the window, and she could see the reflection of a scrawny thirteen-year-old girl, a little bit more than 5-feet tall, her pale face with freckles, her dark hair stuck out at the back and too long at the front, one of her eyes had a very poor eyesight so that she had to squint a little bit when looking at things. Her jacket was sewed and washed too many times so that it was not in shape anymore, and one of its pockets was torn. Her jeans were ripped on the inside so that it rubbed on her skin and bruised it. She sighed.
Still in life never had Michelle feel so worthless of herself. If people at school laughed at her accent, then she would just speak less to an extent that sometimes she thought she couldn't remember how to speak anymore. If her classmates called her names, she would just stay quiet and pretend she didn't hear those words. If the teachers thought she was a little bit slow since she couldn't spell things correctly in French class, then she would just try to work on her homework after she went back from work and catch up so that she could at least pass the test. Riley would always try her best to make sure she brought Michelle some good food in the lunch box and do laundry every week so that both of them would look clean. And when Michelle was working she always tried her best to make sure her work was of good quality, because Riley had always told her that one should always put the full effort into his or her work, or else he or she rather not even start doing it.
Still after all these efforts to make herself look better than the actual situation made her, she was a "filthy little wretch", a little beggar who might risk transmitting some disease if she dared to take a nap on the sofa of a well-off, world-famous film director's, even when she didn't feel well and had worn herself out.
"You're a fallen star, Chelle." Riley always said that before she tucked her into bed when she was little, "and I picked you up and took you home. How bright and beautiful you were and I am so lucky to have you."
"And I am so lucky to have you too." she would reply to her, sheepishly, "I am so glad that it was you who picked me up. And you are beautiful too. You're the most beautiful one."
She was sweating when she ran out of the director's condo, now she started to feel cold. Her tummy continued to hurt, but now it was nothing compared to what was hurting on her back. She sat on the doorstep of a building, hoping that a little rest would make her feel better, but it hardly did any help.
The night continued to cool, and Michelle thought she needed to find a place to lie down. Usually, the train station was a heated place where she could go spend the night, but Michelle was completely lost of direction and could not find the way back to the train station.
Only then did she realize that the bag that she usually travelled with was not with her—she must have left it somewhere else, along with her water bottle, her writing assignment, the colour pencils borrowed from the school library, the colouring book and Holiday.
The thoughts of losing Holiday made her panic, but she was too tired and painful to think of any details about where she had put the bag. She continued to walk on the streets, and after ten minutes or so, she couldn't even believe what she saw—there was a pharmacy that was still open, at the corner of the street. She went close and looked at the inside. Maybe she could find something that can soothe her pain there, she thought, something that was not too expensive and could work well. Maybe some cream that would cool down the stinging, burning sensation on her back, she thought.
She pushed the door open and went in. She decided that she was not going to consult anyone. She remembered the first time she went to pick up some medicine for Riley, and she asked the pharmacist whether it was covered by the insurance. The girl replied that it was not so that Michelle had to pay full price for it. "Are you sure?" Michelle asked. "Yes, I am pretty sure." The girl replied impatiently, rolling her eyes as she sensed Michelle's reluctance.
Therefore, Michelle decided to hide her misery and kept on looking since she could not take any forms of abuse that night anymore. Maybe because she was too desperate, without any instructions she hardly knew anything that would help except for the Band-aid, so she grabbed one box and went to the checkout.
She reached for her pocket. What she found was a ten-dollar bill and that cheque, which had already been scrunched by her sweat. She put the Band-aid down and someone helped her checkout took it.
"Did you find everything okay?" the woman asked.
Michelle lifted her head to look at her, and she found out that the woman was actually smiling at her.
It was that smile that made Michelle give in. Later when Michelle went back to her place and lay down she was still thinking of it.
"No, not really..." Michelle said with a voice so quiet and broken that the woman can barely hear. Once again tonight she felt her tears swollen up, she tried to bite them back but it was in vain.
"Aww, sweetie, then why don't you come over and tell me what happened?" the woman said, beckoning towards the chair next to the chair by the consulting desk. "by the way, I am Jackie."
"I am Michelle."
"Nice to meet you, Michelle."
She handed Michelle her handkerchief, Michelle hesitated so she urged her, "Come on, swipe your nose like a good little girl."
She then handed her a lollipop. "This one is for you." She said.
Michelle took the lollipop. "Really? It's for me?" she looked at Jackie and Jackie nodded.
She thanked Jackie and knew that she looked pathetic, but she immediately unwrapped the plastic wrap and put the candy in her mouth. She tasted the sweetness for a while, and then self-consciously she looked at Jackie. Even though not that the woman cared. She told Michelle that she picked these from the candy shop in person for young patients because the brand was her favourite when she was little and sometimes she still enjoyed it as a grown-up. Michelle suddenly thought of the fact that Riley won't let her have too many candies since that would ruin her teeth. She looked at Jackie's, and they look as healthy as what she saw on a toothpaste commercial.
"So how can I help you?" Jackie asked, still sounded gentle in an endearing way.
"My tummy was hurting all day..." Michelle said.
"Come here and let me take a look at you," Jackie told her, "you could give me your health card number later."
"Actually, I don't have a health card..." Michelle said, embarrassed. We couldn't afford insurance for another person in this household. It was not going to work anyway, thanks for the lollipop.
Jackie stood there for a second, "Come on in anyway, let me take a look at your tummy."
Michelle followed her into one of the rooms inside the clinic at the back of the pharmacy.
"I am supposed to close the store by midnight." Jackie said, "you're my last patient of the day."
Michelle sat on the edge of the medical bed.
"Why don't you lie down?" Jackie said, "I'll be right back."
Michelle bet that her back must have been full of cuts and bruises. She lay down anyway, on her back. Her hoody was making the situation worst. She wished she could take it off.
When Jackie was pressing her hands on different parts of Michelle's abdomen, Michelle bit her bottom lip so that she wouldn't be screaming out loud because of the pain from back. "does it hurt when I do this?" Jackie asked, pressing her fingers towards Michelle's abdomen where the liver was located. Michelle shook her head.
"Could you tell me which area it hurts then?"
With some hesitation, Michelle stuck out a finger and point at the lower part of the abdomen.
"I see." Jackie said, "Now could you please sit up?"
Michelle did as she told, bewildered.
"Did you see any blood when you go to the washroom today?"
Michelle started to worry when she heard the word "blood". "No," she replied, full of confusion and apprehension in her voice.
"Have you ever heard about the word 'menstrual' before?"
Michelle shook her head.
"How old are you?"
"I will be fourteen next month." Michelle answered.
Then Jackie patiently explained the word to her. What the word meant. What would happen if she 'menstruated', and what she would be supposed to do if she started bleeding tomorrow. And she even provided her something that she could use if that day had come.
Riley never talked about this before, Michelle thought.
It was time to leave. Michelle thanked Jackie for everything, and she wished she could stay longer. But nothing was free anyway, except for this time.
Still after many thoughts Michelle finally asked, "Jackie, may I ask you one more question?"
"Sure."
"How would you…how would you help him recover if a dog was beaten severely?" she wasn't sure how she could put it so that Jackie would understand the question.
"It all depends then. I'll have to look at the dog first." Jackie was about to turn off the light of the room when she saw something in Michelle's eyes and then, she walked to her.
She quickly turned Michelle around, with her back facing her. After a while, Michelle heard her voice, and it sounded like Jackie herself was about to break down.
"You poor little thing," Jackie said, "Nobody deserves to be treated like that, no matter what he or she has done."
And even if she said something like that, Michelle still found her voice so enjoyable and surreal, even though she herself never liked sympathy much.