I nod because nodding is what she wants, what she needs from me, but I don't let myself believe it. I've heard this speech before, this exactsame speech about good people and good fits and fresh starts and new beginnings. It never means what they think it means. It just means another house, another set of rules to learn, another family that will eventually decide they don't want me after all.
But I pack my garbage bag like I always do and I get in Mrs. Dodson's car and I let her drive me to a house in a neighborhood nicer than any I've lived in before, a two-story place with a big yard and a porch swing and flower boxes in the windows filled with actual living plants. It looks like the kind of house where happy families live, the kind you see in commercials and TV shows, the kind that doesn't seem real.
The woman who answers is short and round with gray-streaked hair pulled back in a loose bun and a smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes and makes her whole face light up. She introduces herself as Rosalyn Reyes and she hugs me before I can step back, this warm, soft hug that catches me so off guard I don't know how to react. I just stand there frozen, my arms at my sides, unable to remember the last time someone hugged me like they meant it.
"Welcome home, Ivan," she says. "We've been waiting for you."
Home.
The word feels strange. I don't know what home means anymore. I'm not sure I ever did.
But I follow her inside anyway, clutching my garbage bag with one hand and feeling the outline of Jay's note in my pocket with the other, and I tell myself that this is just another placement, just another stop on the journey that will eventually lead me back to him.
I tell myself not to get attached, not to expect anything, not to let my guard down.
Chapter 10: Jay
The transitional housing falls apart the way everything in my life falls apart—slowly at first, then all at once, like a building collapsing in slow motion.
The program has endless rules, and the rules keep getting harder to follow as time goes on. You have to be in school or job training, but the job training programs have waiting lists that are months long and I can't afford to stop working while I wait for my name to come up.
You have to meet with a counselor every week to discuss your "progress" and your "goals," but my counselor keeps canceling appointments at the last minute and then marking me down as a no-show, like it's my fault she doesn't do her job.
You have to pay a portion of the rent, a "program fee" that's supposed to teach us responsibility, and the portion keeps going up while my hours at Carl's garage stays exactly the same because he can't afford to pay me more.
I try to make it work. I really try. I pick up extra shifts whenever Carl will give them to me, skip meals to save money so I can make rent, take the bus, cut every corner I can think of. But it's never enough.
There's always another fee, another requirement, another hoop to jump through, another way the system finds to bleed me dry. And the whole time I'm supposed to be building a future, planning for independence, I'm really just running in place, exhausting myself trying not to drown.
The end comes three months after my nineteenth birthday. I come home from a double shift at the garage, my hands covered in grease and my body aching with exhaustion, to find a notice taped to my door—I'm being terminated from the program for "failure to comply with program requirements."
I have two weeks to vacate the apartment. No appeal, no second chances, no safety net to catch me when I fall.
I'm homeless.
I stand in the hallway reading that notice over and over, my eyes tracking across the same words again and again, and I don't feel anything at all. That's the thing about losing everything repeatedly—after a while, you run out of shock. You run out of grief. You run out of the capacity to be surprised when the world kicks you in the teeth again. You just go numb, because numb is the only way to keep moving, the only way to survive.
I sleep where I can after that. Shelters when there's room, which isn't often because there are more homeless people than beds and I'm young and able-bodied so I get bumped to the bottom of the priority list. Bus station benches until security kicks me out and threatens to call the cops if I come back. A spot behind the dumpster at Carl's garage where the metal overhang keeps the rain off and I can at least stay dry.
I use the bathroom at the gas station down the street, washing my face and hands in the sink while trying to ignore the looks the employees give me. I shower at the YMCA when I can scrape together the fee for a day pass, standing under the hot water until it runs cold and someone bangs on the door telling me to hurry up.
It's not sustainable, I know that. But nothing in my life has ever been sustainable. I just need to survive long enough to figure out the next step, whatever that might be.
Carl figures out what's happening before I tell him. I come to work one morning with my toothbrush in my pocket and my eyes hollow from another night of not sleeping, of lying on concrete and listening to the sounds of the city and wondering if this is rock bottom or if there's further still to fall.
He takes one look at me and doesn't say anything, doesn't ask questions, just hands me a cup of coffee and tells me there's a cot in the back room if I need it, says it casual like he's offering me a spare chair.
My eyes tear up at the kindness of it, at this small mercy in a world that's shown me so little.
I sleep in the back room of the garage for two months. It's not legal, and Carl could lose his business license if anyone found out, could face fines and inspections and all kinds of trouble. But he never mentions the risk, never complains, never makes me feel like a burden.
He just lets me stay, lets me use the shop bathroom, lets me keep my things in a corner where they won't be in the way. In return, I work harder than I've ever worked in my life. I come in early and stay late. I learn everything he's willing to teach me—engines, transmissions, electrical systems, bodywork, diagnostics. I become useful in a way that feels almost like being valued, almost like being wanted.
But Carl is getting older, his hands shaking more than they used to, his back giving him trouble that he won't admit to. And the garage is struggling financially, barely breaking even most months. I can see the writing on the wall even before he says anything.
He starts talking about retirement, about selling the business, about moving to Florida to be near his daughter and his grandkids. I know what that means for me. It means starting over again, finding another job, another place to sleep, another temporary solution to a permanent problem.
I start looking for work before Carl even puts the garage on the market. I apply to every shop in town, every dealership, every place that might need someone who knows their way around an engine and isn't afraid of hard work. Most of them don't call back. The ones that do take one look at my lack of formal credentials and my sketchy work history—gaps and part-time jobs and no references except Carl—and decide I'm not worth the risk. Too unreliable. Too much of a question mark.
