Houston (ON HOLD)

Emma

I can see their eyes glinting in the dim light, like an animal's. They're hunched over and I can hear the stranger breathing from where I stand. They're short and very skinny, almost dangerously so. I see the shadow person tilt their head at us.

"Emma," Blake says with a low voice. "Don't do anything."

The person seems to stir at Blake's words. I hear a strange shuffling and scratching sound as he begins to move forward and comes more into the light.

I can see now that it's a man in front of us, his eyes sunken in and hollow. What hair he has left is matted and sticks up wildly around his head like a frizzy halo. His clothes are barely staying on his body, nearly dripping off of him like shedding velvet from a deer's antlers. He trembles violently and stares at me with more curiosity than malice.

Immediately, I feel sympathy for him. His hands show paper thin skin and the bones underneath like he's a living skeleton. It seems like if a breeze came up, he'd topple over in front of me. When he steps forward once more, my eyes travel down to his horribly mangled and unprotected foot. Nausea rises in my stomach as I try to imagine what would have happened to make a human foot look so horribly disfigured. That must've been what had made the unsettling scraping sound I'd heard as he walked.

"Hello," I say quietly. My voice sounds amplified in the silence between us.

I begin to step out from behind Blake and he grabs onto my arm and roughly pulls me back, giving me an are you insane? sort of look.

"He needs help," I whisper to my brother.

"Don't go near him," Blake demands in reply with his eyes flashing.

"I want to help him. Relax, Blake." I pull my arm out of his grip and turn back to the man. Blake shakes his head like he can't believe what I'm doing.

Thinking back on it, I've never heard about or seen anyone helping those like this man. I'd seen homeless people around Portland before huddled under the remnants of an overpass or grouped around a fire, but no one has ever mentioned them where I live. People act as though they don't exist right outside our farms. When I was younger, I remember seeing a girl lying dead in an alleyway as I'd walked to school. She'd looked much like this man, only her skin was nearly white with the beginnings of frostbite. She'd died alone and freezing during the night, and no one had cared. No one had even spoken of her, though everyone likely had seen her. The next day, she was gone, a ghost. I don't want to stand idly by any longer when this man in front of me so clearly needs help as he still stares at me with his owl eyes.

"Are you hungry?" I ask, realizing that it's a stupid question as soon as the words leave my mouth.

I reach into my bag slung across my shoulder and bring out an oatmeal bar I'd packed this morning. I hold out the bar to the man and step closer to him.

His eyes flick from my face to the bar in my hand and then back again. A moment passes before he snatches the bar out of my hand and I have to force myself not to flinch. He eats the bar with such ferocity that I wince, wondering at the extent of his hunger. How many more exist like him? How many more suffer?

Once the man has eaten the whole bar and licked the wrapper, he looks at his empty hands solemnly, like he wishes he would magically will another to appear in his palms.

"I wish I had more," I say. "But that was all I had. I'm sorry."

He man looks up and me and slowly nods. When he speaks for the first time, his voice sounds like gravel on pavement. "Thank...thank you."

"Okay, Emma," Blake says from behind me. "It's getting late. We should go."

I turn toward him. "I told you it wouldn't be that bad."