Shell

She stood near the front of the school.  Well, it used to be a school.  It still looked like a school, actually still had "high school" carved into the front facade to designate it as a school.  But the windows were all removed & the edifice mostly hollowed out.  The whole campus (could you still call it a campus?) was surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence.  Under the pole where the school sign once store - it was long gone - stood a giant sign which read "Modern Townhomes" & had an artist's rendition of what the place would look like once the renovation was done.

She studied that sign.  She hadn't been a student at this school in her high school years.  She hadn't even known this school existed.  She grew up far away from this place.  She had hitched a ride somewhere on I-30 outside of Little Rock & the driver was going south, so he let her off by the side of the highway.  She climbed over a small fence, wandered past scrubby ground & several "no trespassing" signs, heading toward a shelter she had visited the last time she came through.

It was hot, but it was always hot, except when it was cold.  She had even felt hot in California, which was something no one ever claimed.  The shelter was a few blocks away, not a terribly far distance to walk, but the shell of the school beckoned to her, & she walked around the chain-link fence to look for a way to get in.  She had seen some garbage through one of the openings, & it suggested to her that someone had sneaked in & at the very least rested there.  The fact that there were a few Port-A-Potties around the site made it even more attractive.

At a convenience store outside Arkadelphia, the clerk refused to give her a key.  She got the truck driver to get it for her, & it's true, she looked like she was living rough.  She washed her face.  She was a little surprised the trucker was waiting for her.  Her even bought her a sandwich.  She felt comfortable enough to sleep most of the drive.

She found a section of the fence which she could slip through.  She looked around but there was nobody around.  In fact, it looked like work on the renovation had stopped at some point & hadn't resumed.  But who knows, the temperatures had been in the hundreds for weeks now, probably they had to quit work because of someone experiencing heat stroke.  It had happened once to her brother, she remembered.

The sign on the bank off the interstate said it was 103 degrees.  It might feel better in the cool concrete of the stripped school, away from the sun; she could get to the shelter around dinner time.  Anyway, it wasn't going to be any cooler there.

She wandered into the large empty space through what was probably a back door.  She had walked up a few steps & noticed they had removed parts of the second floor, probably for high ceilings or something.  It wasn't appreciably more pleasant inside but it was good to get out of the sun.  She instinctively said, "Hello?" & she was strangely pleased that there was a small echo.  The place smelled of dust & bricks & urine.  She wondered if maybe people came here to camp at night.

It was then she saw the body under what used to be a flight of stairs.  It was a man, very thin & haggard, wearing too many clothes as many homeless people & transients do.  He was supine, his body straight like he was sleeping on a too-small bed.  His mouth was open but his eyes were closed. She immediately thought that he was dead.

He wasn't, his breathing was shallow, & he twitched a little as he slept.  She knew she didn't want to disturb him.  If he were drunk, or worse, on drugs, it could be dangerous for her.  But she sensed he was in distress.  How old was he?  You couldn't tell.  People automatically thought she was much older than she actually was.  He could be forty, though he looked eighty.

She would ask someone at the shelter.  They could call an ambulance, if they thought it was serious.  She did her best to note his features, his clothing, his belongings, so she could describe him to whoever was in charge.

Sighing, she made her way back into the sun, looking around this area that once had had homes, families, enough people with children to fill a high school.  But really there was no one around, no one on the street, no cars.  She could understand why she might want to stop here, but who was going to want to live here?  She probably didn't understand enough about gentrification, although the thought did cross her mind that, should she find her way back this way again, the shelter might not be in the same place.

It might be condos.  Or a brew pub.  Or really anything but a shelter for people like her.