There's Misfit. And Cowboy. And Puke. They call him Puke because that's what he does after partying too hard.
Street names for street kids.The bespectacled Misfit could pass for a boy. Closely shorn hair, a cap and baggy clothes conceal any sign of femininity. It's safer this way. It wards off lewd men.
At night, the street kids squat in some vacant house or flop in an acquaintance's garage. Sometimes they sleep wherever they pass out. Sometimes Puke and his friends wake up in each other's vomit.
Night life on the street is harsh.
Homeless teenagers in Salt Lake City, though, do have a clean, safe haven during the day. The Homeless Youth Resource Center on State Street. It's not much. A warm shower. Secondhand clothes. Lunch.
But there's a chance the street kids, numbering an estimated 150 in the city, won't even have that place in the future.
"We're in danger of having to cut back hours here at the drop-in center and down the road looking at having to close completely," said Jeff St. Romain, president of Volunteers of America Utah. When fully staffed, the center offers counseling and high school equivalent classes for those who are interested.
VOA inherited the financially strapped program a few months ago from another organization that lacked the ability to manage it. The volunteer organization also took over a 10-bed (including two emergency beds) group home near Liberty Park for wandering young people.
Both are fairly well stocked with food and clothing. Like most shelters this time of year, it could use some winter items -- coats, blankets, sleeping bags. But what it really needs is cash. The annual budget for the home and the walk-in center is $366,000.
Funding has been piecemeal in the past. A grant here, a grant there. St. Romain is looking for some ongoing income "so that every six months we're not in a position to lay people off or scrounging to keep the doors open."
Erika Preston, who uses the shelter, knows what it's like to beg. It's the one thing she can think of to do were the resource center to go away.
"I have no idea. I really wouldn't know. Once in a great while I go and ask people for spare change. Other than that, I really don't know what I would do," she said.
Preston, 18, doesn't have a street name yet. She hit Utah just two months ago. "I had too many problems in Montana, so I up and left," she said. "I made a bunch of friends (here), so I stuck around."
She heard about the drop-in center from other kids on the street, which is where most find out about it. Preston now stops in daily to hang out, as do as many as 25 others at any given time during the day. The numbers pick up when the weather turns cold.
Preston hasn't given much thought to how she'll make it through winter. "I've got some blankets," she said. She also has a '70 Chevy Malibu. It could become her home for the holidays.
Most of the teenagers who find their way to the drop-in center are 15 to 19 years old. Those younger than 18 aren't eligible to stay in adult emergency shelters, St. Romain said. "There are not a lot of options for them."
A few eventually wind up with a bedroom in the group home.
Erin Miller hated her two months on the street.
"Basically dirty, hungry. I had to wash my hair and face in the bathrooms at Crossroads Mall. I was spare-changing (panhandling) all the time," said the 18-year-old Logan girl.
Miller stumbled across the resource center in a telephone book. She called the number and was told she could move into the old but comfortable house the next day. She is one of the lucky ones. The home constantly has a waiting list. Tenants who have jobs -- like Ruben Aguilar, who buses tables at a downtown restaurant -- pay 30 percent of their income for room and board.
While the drop-in center serves all comers, those in the group home are screened. They must live by specific rules such as an 11 p.m. curfew. They also share the household chores.
Seventeen-year-old John (VOA asked that his last name not be used) arrived on a bus from Kansas City two weeks ago expecting to live with his father who, in turn, is staying with his parents. The teenager was told there was no room and taken to Youth Services. The government agency found a space for him in the group home.
He doesn't resent his only family in Utah turning him away. "I basically burnt that bridge by myself so I have to earn that trust back to live with them," he said.
Meantime, he has a safe place to crash while he looks for a job as a house painter.
The group home, he said, is "a lot better than anywhere else."