No Place Like Home ✔

Ten

Another week had passed - and again, my guilt was beginning to do the same. This was a constant game - a repetitive cycle - I had come to realize. One day I would find myself being engulfed by a blanket of guilt, and the next I'd be priding myself on how well I was doing at pretending to be misfortunate. 

The report Adam was supposed to turn it was keeping him busy, and therefore he failed to show up five days in a row. If I'm being honest, I had grown quite fond of him. I even found myself talking to thin air thinking he was there beside me, only to smack myself on the side of the head later for being such an absentminded fool. 

I guess you could say I missed him - it wouldn't be a drastic assumption to make because I definitely did. I missed having someone to vent to. I missed being in his company. I missed having someone just sit beside me and talk to me about things that didn't matter. I missed hearing his philosophical rants. I missed him. 

However, I often attempted to keep myself busy so I wouldn't think about him. Why, you ask? Because every time I envisioned his face in my mind, I remembered the book he had bought for me with his own money. The book I ended up selling without even sparing it a second thought. 

What would he do if he found out? How would he feel? - two questions I did not yearn to know the answer to. 

On the sixth day, however, he did show up. But he didn't sit beside me. He passed by me without sparing me a glance. I assumed he was just busy or wasn't in the mood to engage in a conversation with me.

The seventh day, he sat beside me and apologized for not having done so the day before. His reasoning was that he had been in a rush and had to get somewhere that day - he never said where to. This time, again, he had brought something along with him. 

It was the same book. Not the book I had sold though. He had bought another one for me. 

"You're quite persistent on making me read this, aren't you?" was all I had said as he handed me the book with a cheeky grin. 

"I am. You'll understand why after you're done reading it. It's such a great book," he began. "Gosh, I could go on and on for days about why I love this book so much. I had a whole collection back in my hometown but when I moved to college, I couldn't take them with me."

"Why not?"

"My parents wouldn't let me," he shrugged. "They said I shouldn't let myself get distracted by books that weren't related to the subjects I'd be learning in college. I don't think they realized that I could just buy another set or read them online."

"I remember having a set of Percy Jackson books," I admitted. "But I lost all of the books in a fire."

"A fire?" he repeated, his eyebrows raised. 

I was lying yet again. 

"Yes," I nodded. "My house ended up catching fire. The damage done was irreversible."

"Is that why you're homeless now?" he inquired, trying to be as gentle as possible when he said the word 'homeless'.

"Yeah," I lied once more. 

"I thought you said it was because your parents left you with no money and you couldn't pay rent? And so your landlady kicked you out?" 

"I moved houses after she kicked me out. The house I moved to was cheap, and there was an accident in the kitchen and it ended up catching fire. Couldn't find a place to live in after that," I said, coming up with another lie on the spot. Improvisation. 

"That sounds horrible," he said with a barely noticeable pout. "You've been through so much at your age. Nobody deserves this."

There was another thing I had realized whilst sitting on this street in particular and begging. It was that the well put-together ones had it easier. Right across from me sat a diseased man. A disease that wasn't communicable. He seemed to be somewhere around his early sixties. 

The people passing us by on the street seemed to have promised themselves that they wouldn't even bat an eye at said old man. Instead, they spilled out their savings into the cup I had beside me. This was another thing that made me feel guilty. I wasn't truly homeless, however that man was. I was here drawing the attention away from him. 

But as it turns out, not all sense of morality had escaped from the corners of my mind. When nighttime fell upon us and the streets were empty except for the two of us, I spilled out the entirety of what I had earned into the little hat he had beside him. I was even there to witness how overjoyed he was once he had noticed it. 

It felt good. Doing something good for someone made me feel good - and it made me wonder why I couldn't be doing good all the time? Why was I still living such a big lie even after all these signs were compelling me to stop and turn back so I could change myself for the better?

Was it really too late to change my mind now? Perhaps it was. 

Or perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps I was just attempting to convincing myself that it was too late so as to prevent myself from feeling guilty. So as to finally let it sink in how horrible of a human being I was. So as to come to terms with the fact that I had been living a lie and nobody would ever confide in me after my lies would unravel and play out in front of them like a scene from a play written by Shakespeare himself. 

"Tell me what you think about the book after you read it," Adam said out of nowhere. 

I looked at him and nodded, "I will."