Out in the Wind

Chapter 24

When you have no idea where you are going it makes it difficult to put on foot in front of the other. Every road that you take feels like the wrong one. Every single turn you take feels like it will lead to certain doom. You have no idea where to find actual shelter and your only hope is to make it through the night and stay awake so that in the daylight you can go to the park and pretend that you fell asleep feeding the ducks at the pond where happy couples and children are walking around you while you are sleeping.

That was the plan. That is the plan going through my mind as I walk down the street, counting the amount of streetlamps that are not working anymore. So far I have counted four in total in this street alone, which is not good at all. Certain places in the street are hulled in complete darkness, the perfect opportunity for someone who would want to rob or mug me to hide. Still the park seems to sound like the safest place to spend the night. It seems less scary in a way with all its bushes and trees to hide in. Maybe if I get rope tomorrow I can be like Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games and climb a tree, tie myself to a branch and sleep in there.

I have made sure I have enough fresh water, but this will be the very first time since we have become homeless that I will be going to sleep hungry, nothing to eat in sight and no money to buy it with. The only things on my quest that I took with me was my backpack with Teddy, a few pairs of clean clothes, three books which consist of my dad's birthday book from Mr. Graham, Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and the last book my dad ever brought me. I was hoping to read it tonight, but thanks to the city's lamp problem there's no light actually inside the park at all.

I walk past two men sleeping in the entrance of the park and I can't help but wonder why they sleep out in the open. Would it not be better to be hidden than here in plain sight with the chilly frost of the winter setting in blowing over them, but maybe they do indeed know something that I don't.

Feeling the fear in my heart I make my way over to the bench at the far sight of the damn where a lamp is illuminating the entire scene before I take out the blanket I stole from my mom and pushed roughly into the top of my backpack and wrap it around me before taking out the last book my dad got me.

"History is all you left me," I whisper the title and then I look at the author's name. I haven't given this book much thought at all after my dad died. I didn't try to read it. I just kept it with me. Now I am looking at the author and I recognize the name.

"It's the same author as the book I saw in the bookshop. The orange book," I say to nobody in particular and mouth the author's name, Adam Silvera silently.

Without thinking twice, in the little bit of light the lamp is giving me on the bench I sit and begin to read about Griff who lost the person who meant the world to him. I learn about his small little ticks because of his OCD and I can't help but relating to him. By the time I get to page twenty-five I am crying so hard that I am shaking, wishing that I could be anywhere but here, and anywhere but in the book that I am reading, but at the same time it feels nice to know that there is an author, or just a character out there in an alternate universe that at least knows how I might be feeling at the moment. Someone going through just as much sadness and trauma as what I am.

"You're in my spot," a voice says behind me and the fright is so much that I jump up from the bench and drop my book on the ground, which I both grab and get ready to run before I turn around to see who was speaking.

"Sorry?" I say, my voice trembling, my breathing elevated like I have run a marathon.

"I said you're in my spot. There's rules in the park you know," the man says allowing me time to look him up and down. He has a long, very dirty beard that falls down all the way to his stomach and covering most of his face which alone makes it hard to guess his age. The leather jacket around his shoulders has seen better days, but the most peculiar part about his must be the pointy beanie he is wearing and the pointy shows, making him look like a wizard from a Rowling novel.