I shook my head and looked back out the window. I thought he might get up and find another seat at that point, since I said I didn’t tell anyone, but he didn’t. The bus made a few stops, and the fact that he was still sitting by me gave me a little courage, so I made my voice a whisper. “Why don’t you live at home with your parents?”

He stared at me for a few seconds, like he was trying to decide if he wanted to trust me or not. Then he said, “Because they don’t want me to.”

That’s when he got up. I thought I’d made him mad, but then I realized he got up because we were at our stop. I grabbed my stuff and followed him off the bus. He didn’t try to hide where he was heading today like he usually does. Normally, he walks down the street and goes around the block so I don’t see him cut through my backyard. But today he started to walk toward my yard with me.

When we got to where I would normally turn to go inside and he would keep walking, we both stopped. He kicked at the dirt with his foot and looked behind me at my house.

“What time do your parents get home?”

“Around five,” I said. It was 3:45.

He nodded and looked like he was about to say something else, but he didn’t. He just nodded again and started walking toward that house with no food or electricity or water.

Now, Ellen, I know what I did next was stupid, so you don’t have to tell me. I called out his name, and when he stopped and turned around I said, “If you hurry, you can take a shower before they get home.”

My heart was beating so fast, because I knew how much trouble I could get into if my parents came home and found a homeless guy in our shower. I’d probably very well die. But I just couldn’t watch him walk back to his house without offering him something.

He looked down at the ground again, and I felt his embarrassment in my own stomach. He didn’t even nod. He just followed me inside my house and never said a word.

The whole time he was in the shower, I was panicking. I kept looking out the window and checking for either of my parents’ cars, even though I knew it would be a good hour before they got home. I was nervous one of the neighbors might have seen him come inside, but they didn’t really know me well enough to think having a visitor would be abnormal.

I had given Atlas a change of clothes, and knew he not only needed to be out of the house when my parents got home, but he needed to be far away from our house. I’m sure my father would recognize his own clothes on some random teenager in the neighborhood.