The day was very warm, as it usually is in September, and so he was wearing just a t-shirt and jeans and by quarter to eight as the last of the sun dropped beyond the Hudson highlands he started to get cold. He rubbed his hands along his forearms and looked around, wondering if he could create a place out of the wind, relatively soft, but still with a view of both water and the possible approach of danger.

He'd been running through his options since six in the morning when a house-jarring fight had left him bolting for the door with only a Pop-Tart in his hands. He hadn't found any that seemed workable. No one was going to let a nine-year-old stay at their house without wanting to call the parents. He'd learned that the hard way. He had very little money, just maybe two bucks he always kept just in case, and some of that had already gone into the juice and cupcakes that had been dinner. He had not wanted to steal today. He thought of walking north to the abandoned old train station, that would be warm and dry, but it seemed both far, and for some reason in this night, scary. He wondered about sneaking into the church, his usual refuge, but after this week he wasn't sure he could trust anyone or any place.

The park by the Sound was just where his feet had taken him, there’d been no plan, and now he'd found himself in the corner of a graffiti-scarred gazebo. In October there'd be leaves to bury himself in but now he found nothing. Around nine he finally forced himself up. He shivered violently, more from exhaustion than temperature, and slipped between two huge rocks and wedged himself up against a tree trunk.

On the water the lights of the last returning boats blinked through tall shoreline grass. He tried to imagine that somewhere out on the streets adults were calling his name.

Ira Socol