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.
Then I find Mick.
His shop is called Mick's Cycles and it's on the other side of town, tucked into a strip mall between a pawn shop and a laundromat, the kind of neighborhood where people don't ask too many questions.
I almost don't go in because it looks run-down and half-abandoned, the paint peeling and the sign faded, but I'm running out of options and I figure it can't hurt to ask.
I push open the door and the smell hits me first—oil and metal and gasoline, the smell of machines waiting to be fixed.
It smells like Carl's garage. It smells like the only place I've ever felt competent, like I had value.
Mick is behind the counter, a barrel-chested guy in his fifties with a gray beard and arms covered in faded tattoos. He looks up when I come in, gives me a once-over that feels like it sees right through me, sees all the desperation and fear I'm trying to hide, and grunts.
"Help you?" he asks gruffly.
"I'm looking for work," I say, trying to sound confident, trying not to sound as desperate as I feel. "I've got experience with engines. Cars mostly, but I learn fast. I'm good with my hands."
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can tell he's sizing me up—the worn-out clothes that don't quite fit, the dark circles under my eyes from too many sleepless nights, the hunger that I can't quite hide no matter how hard I try to stand up straight and look capable. I expect him to say no.
"You got references?" he asks.
"One. Guy named Carl Hutchins, runs a garage across town on Maple Street. He's selling the place, that's why I'm looking for something new."
Mick nods slowly, like this information means something to him. "I know Carl. Good mechanic. Honest. Taught you, did he?"
"Yes sir. Everything I know about engines, I learned from him."
"Motorcycles are different than cars," Mick says, watching my face.
"I know. But the principles are the same. Combustion, compression, electrical systems. And like I said, I learn fast. Give me a chance and I'll prove it."
He stares at me some more. I stand there and let him look, because I've got nothing to hide and nothing to lose. Finally, he grunts again and jerks his head toward the back of the shop.
"Got a Harley Sportster back there, won't start. Fuel system's clogged, probably. You got one hour to figure it out. Tools are on the wall. Don't break nothing or you're out on your ass."
It takes me forty-five minutes. The fuel line was kinked and the carburetor was completely gunked up with old gas that had turned to varnish, and once I clean everything out meticulously and put it back together, checking every connection twice, the engine turns over on the first try.
I wheel the bike out to the front of the shop and Mick listens to it run, his face unreadable, and then he nods once.
"Ten bucks an hour to start. Cash, end of each week. You show up on time, you don't steal nothing, you don't give me any trouble, we'll get along fine. We'll see how it goes."
It's not much. It's barely anything, barely enough to survive on.
But it's a job, and a job means money, and money means I can stop sleeping behind dumpsters and start sleeping somewhere with walls and a door that locks, somewhere I can keep my few possessions without worrying about them being stolen.
I find the Vista Inn two weeks later. It's a motel on the edge of town, the kind of place that rents by the week to people who can't afford first and last month's rent on an apartment, who can't pass a credit check, who live on the margins of society.
People like me.
The room is small—just a bed with a sagging mattress, a dresser with drawers that stick, a bathroom with a door that doesn't close right and a shower that only has hot water half the time, a mini-fridge I buy at a pawn shop for thirty dollars.
The walls are thin enough that I can hear my neighbors fighting and fucking and watching TV at all hours of the night.
The ceiling has a water stain shaped like a dog's head, and I spend hours staring at it, finding patterns in the discoloration.
It's not home. I don't know what home means anymore. I'm not sure I ever knew. But it's mine, it's a roof over my head, and that's something. That's more than I had. I'm grateful for it.