Flashback: Levi & Callie Meet (September, 2014)
Callie would say that he had lived all over this city, and it was sort of true. There had been a time, in the past four years or so, that he would simply make rounds through the city. Hopping trains and buses, skipping about from shelter to shelter. Once upon a time, he could stay at runaway centers and woman-and-children shelters, and do his rounds there. Those weren’t lovely, but they were relatively safe. They were warm at night.
Then he turned 18. At first, he could still squeak by. But eventually they started doing ID checks, and one by one, he had to cross those places off his lists until there were no more. He, for a while, had switched over to the typical, adult shelters... But there were so many issues there. There was never enough space. Things got stolen, fights broke out, gangs and drug-pushers lurked there. One time, the person he was sleeping next to got into a fight in the middle of the night and ended up getting stabbed.
So he stopped sleeping at those places. He started sleeping on park benches instead, or behind dumpsters. And so his territory shrank smaller and smaller until he just moved about a few blocks every day. There wasn’t a lot to do to fill his days, quite frankly. Everything tended to be terribly routine. Get up, washing as best he possibly could in public restrooms, scrounging up whatever breakfast he possibly could. And then the rest of the day was simply spent walking around the same few blocks, doing whatever he could to get money or food. Asking, begging, picking up change, doing odd jobs, picking up change and rooting through trash cans. All day, until it was time to find a place to sleep for the night.
The only thing that was a break from the mindless routine was meeting with his dealer. That, and the subsequent, temporary, artificial joy that came with it. What else did he have to live for by now? He had to have something. He had to have something.
Well, usually that was all.
Callie had found, over the years, that after you’ve been homeless for enough time, people stop acknowledging you as a fellow human. You become part of the landscape. Even when you speak directly to them, you are frequently ignored. People who listen usually listen for a moment before making an excuse and walking away.
Usually, he was ignored, anyway.
Just about everything that Callie owned, he had owned and been using since he was sixteen. His holey sneakers, the dirty and frayed clothes on his body, and, yes, the grungy yellow backpack that held his entire life inside. At the moment, this mostly consisted of some packaged food, such as granola bars and beef jerky, his wallet, a few changes of equally grubby and old clothes, a few hygiene items, a pocket knife, and several water bottles in varying degrees of fullness... And quite a degree of knick-knacks he had collected over the years. Pretty rocks, fake flowers, marbles, chuck-e-cheese tokens... Small things that gave him some degree of humanity to hang onto and hoard.
Or, well. Those things had been in his aging backpack. But, hey... Sometimes you’re just walking through the park one moment with all your things just where they’re meant to be on your person, and then the next moment, the threadbare fabric of your bag has finally given away and just about everything you own is all over the ground. Calamus flushed bright red, immediately squatting down to begin collecting his things with shaking hands. Most people just stepped over and past him while Callie mumbled out an apology. That is... until someone came by who couldn’t just step over him.
@mlawleviprice
