Sure enough, there on a corner of the intersection stands a woman in a flowery dress holding up a cardboard sign. The sign says “Hungry! Please help!” Beside her sits a little brown dog with white paws and a white patch on its head. The dog looks straight at me and wags its stubby tail. The woman looks desperate, but the dog looks as happy as can be. I wish I could be like that little dog.

Dylan tugs on my hand. “Did you guess?”

I tear my eyes away from the woman and dog. “Yeah,” I say, hurrying to catch up with Daddy. “A dog.”

We keep playing as we follow Daddy through the city. I spy something big and green and overflowing with garbage. Dylan spies something silver and square with four small wheels: an abandoned shopping cart. Someone sleeps next to it right on the sidewalk. I pull Dylan closer and hurry past.

“Daddy, I’m hungry,” Dylan complains.

“We’re almost there, buddy,” Daddy says. Again.

Behind me, I hear Mama sigh.

Finally, Daddy stops. He looks down at the paper, then up at the sign. “This must be it,” he says in a voice so low I can barely hear him.

I look up at the sign. My heart drops fast, like at the very top of a roller coaster.

Mama comes up and stands beside me. She takes my empty hand. We both stand there looking up at the sign like it’s in some kind of foreign language.

“What does it say?” Dylan asks.

I look over at Mama. This can’t be right, can it?

Reading my thoughts, she looks away and blinks fast.

I take a gulp of air. “It says Sixth West Emergency Shelter.”

Dylan frowns and shifts his toy shark in his arms. “What’s a ’mergency shelter?”

I want to say it’s a place where people go who don’t have a home, but I don’t.

Mama runs her hand over Dylan’s curly hair sticking up all kind of ways. “It’s like a hotel, honey.” She looks at me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”

But how can it? Every place we’ve been since we lost our home four months ago, every possibility that didn’t work out, has made our world feel smaller. I never realized until it was gone how something as normal as hope lights up your world.

6

Good Folks, Bad Folks

Baby stands at their corner with Jewel,

watching the traffic go one way

and then the other,

stop and go,

then stop again.

Where are they going? he wonders.

He remembers riding in cars, on a bus.

Outside

in the wide-open world

is better.

Inside some cars

a thump, thump, thump

makes the inside of Baby’s ears beat like a drum.

Inside some cars

children press their faces,

sticky fingers, hands, and noses,

against the car windows.

They point, stare, and wave.