My side

Chapter 19 The homeless

   I sit in Sam's kitchen. The walls are a pale green color, like pea soup.  We're drinking milk out of jelly jars. It's about  noon.
  "Are you hungry?" She asks me. I shake my head no.
  "Well I am." She says, tossing her braids over her shoulder and standing up. She walks over to the hot plate on her kitchen counter and flicks on the 'on' switch.
   I look at the clock. It hangs on the wall above the fridge. Yellow plastic rim, slanted, thin numbers. The thick minute hand lies on the 10, the hour hand near the 12. 5 hours and 10 minutes before my mom gets home.
   Sam opens a can of tuna. She dumps it into a cereal bowl. She gets the mayonnaise from the fridge. Chops celery. Mixes it with a soup spoon. She spoons the tuna onto a slice of wonder-bread then tops it with a slice of craft cheese and another piece of bread. Puts the sandwich on the hot plate.
   I lay my head on the table. It's always the same. Whenever I'm here. Milk and tuna sandwiches and awkward conversations at the kitchen counter.
   I've never had any friends close to my age. No one to invite to sleepovers or eat lunch with or share homework answers with. Not that I've ever minded. I was different, and no one wants to get involved with someone who's different. No one wants the weird looks in the hallways, the whispered conversations people think no one notices. That's ok. I wouldn't want to get involved with them either.
    There was always just Sam. Right next door. It's been like this ever since i can remember. Not friends. Not even close. But she was right there. There was no way to avoid her.
   And so I came over every once in awhile. Sat in the kitchen for an hour, 2 maybe. Walked down to the park. Tuna sandwiches. Awkward conversations.
   I knew she didn't like me. It's not like I liked her either. But she never told me to stop coming. She never told me to go away. And so I came. Simultaneously. Every few weeks.
   She's wearing cloth denims. Rolled up at the bottom so you can see her white shoes and socks. A white sweater with a  collar. Her hair in braided pig tails.
    I'm wearing my new pair of jeans. The black t-shirt. My Chuck Taylor's. I'm very bored.
   I look again at the clock. It's noon. 5 hours.
   "I could put in a tape." She says, putting her sandwich on a plate and switching the portable cooker off.
  I shrug. "Ok, c'mon." She walks into the living room.
   Her house is almost identical to mine.  A rental apartment. 7 rooms. Front door opens up to one long hallway, a narrow staircase on the right.
  The first door off the hallway on the right is the kitchen. The next door a living room, and the far door a bedroom. 
  On the left there's just one room, a bathroom midway down the hall.
  Upstairs there are just two rooms. A bedroom and a closet, which barely counts as another room because it's so tiny. All the rooms are tiny.
   We walk into the cramped living room. Sam puts her plate and glass of milk on the coffee table, then walks over to the tv.
   She pulls out a box with all their tapes in it.
  "Let's see..." She says, shifting through the tapes.
"The Terminator. Star Wars. Back to the Future. ET. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ghostbusters. The Breakfast Club. Sixteen Candles. Rocky."
She continues to shift through the tapes, pulling them out and reading them aloud. When she gets to the end of the box, she looks at me questioningly. Even though she knows what we'll watch.
We watch Back to the Future. Then Ferris Bueller. We watch the same ones every time I'm here.
We're in the middle of The Goonies, when I stand up.
"I should go." I say, looking down at Sam. That's another thing. We never sit on the couch, always on the floor.
"Oh. Alright." She says. "Bye Kay." I just nod and leave.
   It's getting dark outside. It's almost 5, my mom should be home soon.
   I stand on the sidewalk. Trying to think of any way to postpone going home.
  Then I remember the little red haired boy at the homeless shelter.
"So you're homeless?"
"I'm sorry."
Homeless. I remember thinking that he was wrong, that he was the one who was homeless. I have a house. He didn't. But did that mean I had a home? What is a home? A place where you feel loved, safe, protected? That boy felt safe at the shelter. I never felt safe at my house, which was small, dark and dusty. I never felt safe or loved around my mother.
No, I correct myself. I wasn't postponing going home. I was postponing going back to my house.
I stand on the sidewalk. What's that saying? Home is where the heart is? Yea, I think so. Was I really homeless? My home wasn't my house, but did that really mean I didn't have one?
I know where I need to go. I need to go home. I start down the sidewalk, but not towards my house.
The other way, towards Angel Street.