She scoots over to me, and I open my arms for her as she cuddles in close. We watch TV for a while before she dozes off. When she falls asleep, I carefully slide my arm out from beneath her and cover her with a blanket before locking the door behind me and leaving.
There’s a still in the night air very consistent with an impending snowfall. My truck warms up quickly as I drive down into the valley. The ghetto. The trashy part of town. The other side of the tracks. Whatever you want to call it—as long as it’s derogatory, it’s true. This part of town is a cesspool of crime and drugs; sometimes, I wonder how I even survived. I circle the block of my childhood home before I stop and park across the street from it.
At the corner are some young kids—too young to be out this late. Kind of like me at that age. On the opposite corner is a house that burned down when their meth lab exploded when I was twelve. Nobody ever fixed it up, and it’s remained vacant for over a decade. Sometimes, I would hide there when I was little; even though the smell was wretched, it was safer than being home. …show more content…
Half of the bricks are falling out, and the front of the house that used to be grass is nothing but overgrown weeds. Only one room has a light on, and a sheet with holes in it covers its window.
Her shadow passes across the window, and I sit up straighter. I haven’t seen my mother in years. Upon my release from juvie at eighteen, she locked me out of the house with nothing. Literally nothing more than the clothes on my back. I had no money, no shelter, no
There’s a still in the night air very consistent with an impending snowfall. My truck warms up quickly as I drive down into the valley. The ghetto. The trashy part of town. The other side of the tracks. Whatever you want to call it—as long as it’s derogatory, it’s true. This part of town is a cesspool of crime and drugs; sometimes, I wonder how I even survived. I circle the block of my childhood home before I stop and park across the street from it.
At the corner are some young kids—too young to be out this late. Kind of like me at that age. On the opposite corner is a house that burned down when their meth lab exploded when I was twelve. Nobody ever fixed it up, and it’s remained vacant for over a decade. Sometimes, I would hide there when I was little; even though the smell was wretched, it was safer than being home. …show more content…
Half of the bricks are falling out, and the front of the house that used to be grass is nothing but overgrown weeds. Only one room has a light on, and a sheet with holes in it covers its window.
Her shadow passes across the window, and I sit up straighter. I haven’t seen my mother in years. Upon my release from juvie at eighteen, she locked me out of the house with nothing. Literally nothing more than the clothes on my back. I had no money, no shelter, no