Post by Taurus Tash on Aug 30, 2007 14:16:08 GMT -5
1
_______________________
Brooklyn at Christmas Eve was always biting cold. Snow fell from the sky that made its grey color seem like a transparent white. The gutter steamed with filth and the car horns honked at an ear-splitting volume.
I brought my shaky hands to my hot mouth and blew. Though, when I let my hands touch the air once again, they got colder than they were before. I felt as though the snow really was touching my skin, even through stolen gloves and a fleece-lined jacket.
I had been sitting at a road-side curb in the dead of winter for nearly three hours, watching the people walk past me. I let them drown in their own ignorance that I even existed. Their nice attire I eyed with over-written jealousy.
And all this to wait for Logan to return with stale sourdough that the shops in the SoHo put out for the rats. I rued the moment I agreed to trust Logan of all people to bring back food- he was both never on time and easily distracted, but at the same time, mysteriously reliable.
Once, I got caught stealing oranges from a bodega, and Logan appeared just in time to give the owner a fake receipt. Logan had a way with arriving as late as humanly possible.
Like now.
A shadowy figure towered over me and I scowled at him when I looked up. Logan knelt down to my height, an unfamiliar piece of food present in his gloved hand. It was cut into two pieces and it was definitely not stale sourdough.
“Y-You’re l-l-late.” I growled through chattering teeth.
Logan smiled playfully. “Fine, then I guess I’ll just have eat this non-thrown-out piece of heaven all by myself…”
As soon as I heard the words ‘non-thrown-out’, I snatched the strange morsel out of Logan’s hand and gulped it down, barely chewing it. I tasted the fresh meat and the flawless spices of the after-taste. I let them burn my taste buds like an uncontrollable fire. All the same, it was filling.
“What…was that?” I breathed in disbelief.
“That, o’ short one, would be a chilli dog.”
Logan drew some Newports out of his coat pocket and handed me one.
“Oh sure, you can afford cigarettes and real food now?” I laughed. “What are you up to?”
Logan took the cigarette out of my hand and shoved it in my mouth jokingly. He chuckled as he lit mine.
“I got them from a cowgirl down at Grand Central.”
I inhaled and exhaled through my mouth. “How’d you pull that one off?”
“It’s funny how many great things you can pick out of a girl’s coat pocket.”
I nearly swallowed the Newport I laughed so hard. “Why did she have a chilli dog in her pocket?”
“When you’re older, you’ll understand.” he joked.
Logan usually did that to me- talk down to me, even though we were only five years apart. I knew he was only doing that to screw around, but it was annoying all the same. Though, I had to admit, Logan didn’t baby me either.
When Logan was finished with his cigarette, he wasn’t surprised to see that I already put mine out minutes ago. Logan gave me an inconsistent nickname when he first taught me how to smoke, back when I was still fresh on the streets- it was ‘Speed Smoker’, after that old cartoon about some kind of NASCAR racer, only he had a bunch of gadgets to take out his enemies. I think it was called ‘Speed Runner’ or ‘Speed Racer’.
I’ve actually had many nicknames- Squirt, Small Stuff, Kid…
All of which involve my physical appearance and none of which hint towards my actual name. The only person who knows my birth name would be Logan. He was the only one that ever bothered to find it out; even back when I still went to school.
I at least I can remember the days I went to school, with A’s and occasional B’s in about every subject in my fifth grade class. Logan on the other hand couldn’t remember his repetitive eighth grade days. All he could remember were the big, red F’s stamped on his papers and the detention slips for pulling pranks. However, just because he failed the eighth grade twice didn’t mean he was proud of it.
“So where are we going this time?” I asked.
Logan stomped on the inch-long Newport to put the embers out. “The soup kitchen isn’t open ‘till five. Want to go to the book cart?”
The book cart was a half-off and used cart outside of a local bookstore. Logan and I periodically stole books and read them in the light of the metro bathroom.
“They deserve it,” Logan would say. “Who’s dumb enough to leave shit you have to pay for outside and unsupervised?”
Though he didn’t show it, I could tell that Logan really did care about learning and catching up on all of the stuff he missed in school. Trips to the book cart weren’t constant, but when Logan got into something, he got into it. Whether it be the works of Ernest Hemingway or a woman’s-
“Look!”
Logan’s excited voice snapped me out of my day-dreamy state. He waved a bound, black journal in his hand, which was sandwiched in between a fantasy novel and a biography of Conrad Richter. He nearly tipped the cart over when he yanked it off.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, delighted.
“Uh…a diary?”
Logan ripped out the few pages that were used, while beaming. “Not anymore.”
I was bewildered. What did Logan want to do with a journal? The last thing I saw him write was a love poem to a Broadway actress, which was written on the back of a napkin. But he was turned down with a slap, literally. Our only conversation for that week on was me laughing and him trying to wring my neck.
“Who’s the poem going to be for this time, Logan?” I snorted. “The only woman you have a chance with is the Kate Monster puppet from Avenue Q.”
“Shut it, kid!” Logan said, waving the journal in front of my face. “This journal right here’s going to change your life. Just you wait!”
I wasn’t sure about what Logan meant by a blank book changing my life, but you had to give him points for effort.
“Oh, I’m waiting.” I said, my voice practically spilling sarcasm.
I was soon to find out that Logan would be right. That little journal would become something great.
*
“Mashed potatoes?” asked a somewhat familiar old woman.
I nodded, and she put the white slop on my tray. In truth, I hate mashed potatoes- but everyone knows that when someone offers you free food, you take as much as you can get, no matter if you don’t particularly like what’s being served. Especially in our soup kitchen, which only opened on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
When I sat down next to Logan on the cafeteria-style table, I saw that he was writing in the black journal.
“Where’d you get the pen?” I asked.
“The lady behind the counter gave- Hey! You’re not supposed to look!” he exclaimed, thrusting his journal on the other side of him.
I shoved some microwavable turkey in my mouth. “What is it anyway, a diary?”
“Get real, Squirt.”
I furrowed my brow. “Then why can’t I see it?”
“You’ll see.”
When Logan went back to writing in his ‘diary’, he hadn’t realized that he left his tray open to the public. And a fellow starving bastard wasn’t going to pass up a chance to snag some more food without the wait of a line.
“Better watch your plate.” I warned Logan.
He didn’t listen to me. He just kept writing in that stupid diary. I wondered why he was so absorbed in the book- usually at holiday soup kitchens, Logan was stuffing his face.
I whirled around and saw a news reporter doing another one of the ‘be grateful for what you got’ deals. They did one every year, only to be premiered on, at most, the local news.
One year, they interviewed a woman with three young children. She looked like she had been through Hell, with frizzy hair and a black eye. The kids hardly ever spoke at all. She had said that they sleep in alleyways every night, and that her children had forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed. Just the sight of it made my heart feel like it was touching the floor. When they were done interviewing her, I told her where the closest women and children shelter was, and to hurry before the line gets too long or if they close down for the night.
She then asked me, “Don’t you have someone to take care of you?”
I looked over at Logan, who was stuffing his face and paying no attention to whether I was right next to him or not.
I laughed and I said to her, “Well, yes and no.”
She then kissed my forehead and left to get in line for the shelter, the youngest child bouncing on her hip as she ran.
The news reporter went on and on about how we live in the streets and eat garbage before he stopped again.
Trevor Seagull’s eyes flickered towards me when he caught me staring at him. He then looked around the kitchen and noticed that I was the youngest one out of all of the people here. I knew Trevor Seagull well, even though I’ve never actually met him- he always picks out the one who looks the most helpless to interview. And today it was me.
Trevor Seagull and his cameraman came toward me and I turned my head not to make eye contact in hopes that they would lose me in the crowd. They didn’t.
“Kid, hey, kid!”
Trevor Seagull was hovering over me. His prominent cheekbones and toothy grin I eyed with disgust.
“Is it alright if we interview you for the broadcast?”
I nodded reluctantly. Whenever Trevor Seagull goes after a chance for a good interview, he’ll chase them to the ends of the Earth before he finally gets what he wants.
The cameraman set up and gave silent commands before the broadcast started again.
“We now return to ‘Homeless on Thanksgiving’. I’m Trevor Seagull.”
He stood in front of me as if to build suspense that I was actually there.
“I have with me a little boy who lives on his own,”
In reality, I didn’t technically live on my own, and I was not a ‘little boy’.
“With no food,”
Uh, hello! Soup kitchen!
“And no real home. We would like you to meet that little boy.” he said as he brought the microphone up to my mouth.
“What’s your name, son?”
With gritted teeth, I answered with one word. “Kyle.”
“How old are you, Kyle?”
The sad thing was, I had to think about that. I thought back to the time when I had a home. I was in fifth grade, and that was two years ago.
“Twelve.”
Trevor Seagull didn’t smile at all. Perhaps he felt bad for me. “Twelve, huh? How long have you been living on the streets?”
“Two years.”
Then he asked me a question that I was not prepared for.
“If your family could be watching this right now, what would you say to them?”
I looked into the seriousness of his eyes, and then to Logan, who was laughing his ass off at the table. Shit.
A gigantic lump rose in my throat before I said, “I don’t know.”
That was the truth and nothing but the truth. I haven’t seen my family in so long. I could barely remember their faces.
Trevor Seagull bit his lip. I knew that he was hoping for something more interesting or exciting than what I had provided for him.
“Well, Kyle, it was great meeting you.”
He shook my hand, and after that, I ran away. Far away from that stupid camera.
I ran to the table where Logan sat, and he was still laughing.
“It wasn’t funny, a$$hole.”
I was thoroughly pissed off. I could have punched that guy right on camera I was so mad.
“Sorry to rain on your parade, Trevor,” I thought. “But I told the truth.”
Logan laughed again. He wasn’t taking me seriously either. Then again, Logan never takes anything seriously…
“You’re right, Kyle! It was hilarious! You should’ve kicked that guy in the balls!”
Logan’s words lifted my mood a little bit. He thought Trevor Seagull was a douche too.
“I should’ve. But I’m a good kid unlike some people.”
Logan shook his head and laughed again. “So a good kid steals and smokes?”
I playfully punched him in the arm. “Oh, please, you shouldn’t be talking Mr. I-grope-nuns!”
That shut him up.
_______________________
Brooklyn at Christmas Eve was always biting cold. Snow fell from the sky that made its grey color seem like a transparent white. The gutter steamed with filth and the car horns honked at an ear-splitting volume.
I brought my shaky hands to my hot mouth and blew. Though, when I let my hands touch the air once again, they got colder than they were before. I felt as though the snow really was touching my skin, even through stolen gloves and a fleece-lined jacket.
I had been sitting at a road-side curb in the dead of winter for nearly three hours, watching the people walk past me. I let them drown in their own ignorance that I even existed. Their nice attire I eyed with over-written jealousy.
And all this to wait for Logan to return with stale sourdough that the shops in the SoHo put out for the rats. I rued the moment I agreed to trust Logan of all people to bring back food- he was both never on time and easily distracted, but at the same time, mysteriously reliable.
Once, I got caught stealing oranges from a bodega, and Logan appeared just in time to give the owner a fake receipt. Logan had a way with arriving as late as humanly possible.
Like now.
A shadowy figure towered over me and I scowled at him when I looked up. Logan knelt down to my height, an unfamiliar piece of food present in his gloved hand. It was cut into two pieces and it was definitely not stale sourdough.
“Y-You’re l-l-late.” I growled through chattering teeth.
Logan smiled playfully. “Fine, then I guess I’ll just have eat this non-thrown-out piece of heaven all by myself…”
As soon as I heard the words ‘non-thrown-out’, I snatched the strange morsel out of Logan’s hand and gulped it down, barely chewing it. I tasted the fresh meat and the flawless spices of the after-taste. I let them burn my taste buds like an uncontrollable fire. All the same, it was filling.
“What…was that?” I breathed in disbelief.
“That, o’ short one, would be a chilli dog.”
Logan drew some Newports out of his coat pocket and handed me one.
“Oh sure, you can afford cigarettes and real food now?” I laughed. “What are you up to?”
Logan took the cigarette out of my hand and shoved it in my mouth jokingly. He chuckled as he lit mine.
“I got them from a cowgirl down at Grand Central.”
I inhaled and exhaled through my mouth. “How’d you pull that one off?”
“It’s funny how many great things you can pick out of a girl’s coat pocket.”
I nearly swallowed the Newport I laughed so hard. “Why did she have a chilli dog in her pocket?”
“When you’re older, you’ll understand.” he joked.
Logan usually did that to me- talk down to me, even though we were only five years apart. I knew he was only doing that to screw around, but it was annoying all the same. Though, I had to admit, Logan didn’t baby me either.
When Logan was finished with his cigarette, he wasn’t surprised to see that I already put mine out minutes ago. Logan gave me an inconsistent nickname when he first taught me how to smoke, back when I was still fresh on the streets- it was ‘Speed Smoker’, after that old cartoon about some kind of NASCAR racer, only he had a bunch of gadgets to take out his enemies. I think it was called ‘Speed Runner’ or ‘Speed Racer’.
I’ve actually had many nicknames- Squirt, Small Stuff, Kid…
All of which involve my physical appearance and none of which hint towards my actual name. The only person who knows my birth name would be Logan. He was the only one that ever bothered to find it out; even back when I still went to school.
I at least I can remember the days I went to school, with A’s and occasional B’s in about every subject in my fifth grade class. Logan on the other hand couldn’t remember his repetitive eighth grade days. All he could remember were the big, red F’s stamped on his papers and the detention slips for pulling pranks. However, just because he failed the eighth grade twice didn’t mean he was proud of it.
“So where are we going this time?” I asked.
Logan stomped on the inch-long Newport to put the embers out. “The soup kitchen isn’t open ‘till five. Want to go to the book cart?”
The book cart was a half-off and used cart outside of a local bookstore. Logan and I periodically stole books and read them in the light of the metro bathroom.
“They deserve it,” Logan would say. “Who’s dumb enough to leave shit you have to pay for outside and unsupervised?”
Though he didn’t show it, I could tell that Logan really did care about learning and catching up on all of the stuff he missed in school. Trips to the book cart weren’t constant, but when Logan got into something, he got into it. Whether it be the works of Ernest Hemingway or a woman’s-
“Look!”
Logan’s excited voice snapped me out of my day-dreamy state. He waved a bound, black journal in his hand, which was sandwiched in between a fantasy novel and a biography of Conrad Richter. He nearly tipped the cart over when he yanked it off.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, delighted.
“Uh…a diary?”
Logan ripped out the few pages that were used, while beaming. “Not anymore.”
I was bewildered. What did Logan want to do with a journal? The last thing I saw him write was a love poem to a Broadway actress, which was written on the back of a napkin. But he was turned down with a slap, literally. Our only conversation for that week on was me laughing and him trying to wring my neck.
“Who’s the poem going to be for this time, Logan?” I snorted. “The only woman you have a chance with is the Kate Monster puppet from Avenue Q.”
“Shut it, kid!” Logan said, waving the journal in front of my face. “This journal right here’s going to change your life. Just you wait!”
I wasn’t sure about what Logan meant by a blank book changing my life, but you had to give him points for effort.
“Oh, I’m waiting.” I said, my voice practically spilling sarcasm.
I was soon to find out that Logan would be right. That little journal would become something great.
*
“Mashed potatoes?” asked a somewhat familiar old woman.
I nodded, and she put the white slop on my tray. In truth, I hate mashed potatoes- but everyone knows that when someone offers you free food, you take as much as you can get, no matter if you don’t particularly like what’s being served. Especially in our soup kitchen, which only opened on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
When I sat down next to Logan on the cafeteria-style table, I saw that he was writing in the black journal.
“Where’d you get the pen?” I asked.
“The lady behind the counter gave- Hey! You’re not supposed to look!” he exclaimed, thrusting his journal on the other side of him.
I shoved some microwavable turkey in my mouth. “What is it anyway, a diary?”
“Get real, Squirt.”
I furrowed my brow. “Then why can’t I see it?”
“You’ll see.”
When Logan went back to writing in his ‘diary’, he hadn’t realized that he left his tray open to the public. And a fellow starving bastard wasn’t going to pass up a chance to snag some more food without the wait of a line.
“Better watch your plate.” I warned Logan.
He didn’t listen to me. He just kept writing in that stupid diary. I wondered why he was so absorbed in the book- usually at holiday soup kitchens, Logan was stuffing his face.
I whirled around and saw a news reporter doing another one of the ‘be grateful for what you got’ deals. They did one every year, only to be premiered on, at most, the local news.
One year, they interviewed a woman with three young children. She looked like she had been through Hell, with frizzy hair and a black eye. The kids hardly ever spoke at all. She had said that they sleep in alleyways every night, and that her children had forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed. Just the sight of it made my heart feel like it was touching the floor. When they were done interviewing her, I told her where the closest women and children shelter was, and to hurry before the line gets too long or if they close down for the night.
She then asked me, “Don’t you have someone to take care of you?”
I looked over at Logan, who was stuffing his face and paying no attention to whether I was right next to him or not.
I laughed and I said to her, “Well, yes and no.”
She then kissed my forehead and left to get in line for the shelter, the youngest child bouncing on her hip as she ran.
The news reporter went on and on about how we live in the streets and eat garbage before he stopped again.
Trevor Seagull’s eyes flickered towards me when he caught me staring at him. He then looked around the kitchen and noticed that I was the youngest one out of all of the people here. I knew Trevor Seagull well, even though I’ve never actually met him- he always picks out the one who looks the most helpless to interview. And today it was me.
Trevor Seagull and his cameraman came toward me and I turned my head not to make eye contact in hopes that they would lose me in the crowd. They didn’t.
“Kid, hey, kid!”
Trevor Seagull was hovering over me. His prominent cheekbones and toothy grin I eyed with disgust.
“Is it alright if we interview you for the broadcast?”
I nodded reluctantly. Whenever Trevor Seagull goes after a chance for a good interview, he’ll chase them to the ends of the Earth before he finally gets what he wants.
The cameraman set up and gave silent commands before the broadcast started again.
“We now return to ‘Homeless on Thanksgiving’. I’m Trevor Seagull.”
He stood in front of me as if to build suspense that I was actually there.
“I have with me a little boy who lives on his own,”
In reality, I didn’t technically live on my own, and I was not a ‘little boy’.
“With no food,”
Uh, hello! Soup kitchen!
“And no real home. We would like you to meet that little boy.” he said as he brought the microphone up to my mouth.
“What’s your name, son?”
With gritted teeth, I answered with one word. “Kyle.”
“How old are you, Kyle?”
The sad thing was, I had to think about that. I thought back to the time when I had a home. I was in fifth grade, and that was two years ago.
“Twelve.”
Trevor Seagull didn’t smile at all. Perhaps he felt bad for me. “Twelve, huh? How long have you been living on the streets?”
“Two years.”
Then he asked me a question that I was not prepared for.
“If your family could be watching this right now, what would you say to them?”
I looked into the seriousness of his eyes, and then to Logan, who was laughing his ass off at the table. Shit.
A gigantic lump rose in my throat before I said, “I don’t know.”
That was the truth and nothing but the truth. I haven’t seen my family in so long. I could barely remember their faces.
Trevor Seagull bit his lip. I knew that he was hoping for something more interesting or exciting than what I had provided for him.
“Well, Kyle, it was great meeting you.”
He shook my hand, and after that, I ran away. Far away from that stupid camera.
I ran to the table where Logan sat, and he was still laughing.
“It wasn’t funny, a$$hole.”
I was thoroughly pissed off. I could have punched that guy right on camera I was so mad.
“Sorry to rain on your parade, Trevor,” I thought. “But I told the truth.”
Logan laughed again. He wasn’t taking me seriously either. Then again, Logan never takes anything seriously…
“You’re right, Kyle! It was hilarious! You should’ve kicked that guy in the balls!”
Logan’s words lifted my mood a little bit. He thought Trevor Seagull was a douche too.
“I should’ve. But I’m a good kid unlike some people.”
Logan shook his head and laughed again. “So a good kid steals and smokes?”
I playfully punched him in the arm. “Oh, please, you shouldn’t be talking Mr. I-grope-nuns!”
That shut him up.
