Todd Strasser - No Place

The kid gave me a long, curious look, then said, “No, I care… because I’m not homeless.”

It was one of those days when no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get away from things I didn’t want to think about. I’d signed up for government and politics because Noah said the teacher, Ms. Mitchell, graded you mostly on class participation and multiple-choice quizzes. She didn’t like reading student papers, which was perfect because I didn’t like writing them.

Wearing a red tent dress and big hoop earrings, Ms. Mitchell waddled in and dropped into her chair. “All right, my little gremlins, today we start our unit on local government and politics,” she announced in her booming voice. “Pay attention because at the end of the unit each of you will give an oral report on a topic of local interest. So what’s going on around here? Do any of you ever look at the Median Buzz , or read that miserable excuse for a neighborhood newspaper? What are the issues?”

Ben Phillips raised his hand. “Dignityville?”

“All right, we’ll start there.” Ms. Mitchell gazed around. “I assume you’re all familiar with it?”

Meg sat across the room and I glanced at her just in time to catch her peeking at me out of the corner of her eye. Then she seemed to go rigid and stare straight ahead. We hadn’t spoken since that day a few weeks before when we’d nearly gotten thrown out of the library, and I felt a little bad about that. Of course, she didn’t know about the grief Talia had given me for laughing with another girl.

“Okay, for those of you who’ve been hiding under rocks, Mayor George and the town council decided a while back to create a tent city in Osborne Park to house the homeless,” Ms. Mitchell explained. “If you’ve been in town you can’t miss it. Does anyone know why they decided to do that?”

Susan Barrow raised her hand. “To save money.”

“How would a tent city save money?” Ms. Mitchell asked.

“Because they’d all be in one place?” Susan guessed.

“Right,” said Ms. Mitchell. “Just because people are homeless doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the same services as the rest of us, whether that’s sanitation, or medical care, or public transportation. And given the financial problems towns and cities are facing these days, I don’t think anyone can blame the mayor for trying this. Here’s my next question: What do you think of Dignityville? Is it right to round up all the homeless and put them in one place?”

Ms. Mitchell was big on critical thinking. And sometimes on just trying to get us to think, period. Since class participation was a big part of our grade, you could usually count on the GPA zombies like Ben Phillips and Susan Barrow to speak up. Now Ben raised his hand. “They can’t really force them to move there, can they?”

“No,” said Ms. Mitchell. “All the town can do is point out the benefits, like free meals, electricity, and washing facilities. But there’s another reason why the idea appears to be working. Does anyone know what it is?”

Susan raised her hand. “The homeless feel that banding together makes them more visible and harder to ignore.”

“Very good,” said Ms. Mitchell. “When they were scattered around town, they were easier to miss. Most of you probably didn’t know that there were half a dozen families living in the state forest out on High Bridge Road. Hardly anyone knew they were there. There were families living in cars and boats. I don’t think anyone realized how many there were. And why don’t they want to be ignored?”

Ben’s hand went up again.

“Let’s see if we can get someone else involved.” Ms. Mitchell scanned the room.

It was time to gaze out the window.

“Dan?”

An invisible weight pushed down on my shoulders. Do teachers get special training for picking the student who least wants to be called on?

“Why don’t the homeless want to be ignored, Dan?”

Kids turned to look at me. I even heard a few chair legs scrape. I thought about the ratty-haired kid and his crusade in the hall outside the cafeteria. “Because then nothing will ever change.”

Justin Smith’s hand went up, which was kind of interesting because he was a gearhead auto-tech troll, not a GPA zombie. “If they want things to change they should get off their butts and find jobs.”

That was the same thing Noah had said. And yet, you couldn’t find two more different kids.

Beth Perkins, an emo-punk type with dyed red streaks, turned to him. “Sure, Justin, they could work at McDonald’s. But suppose you went to college and maybe even got a master’s degree in business or engineering? Would you be happy flipping burgers?”

Justin tucked his chin down. “If that was the only job I could get.”

“And what if you had a family?” Beth asked. “And there was no way you could earn enough at McDonald’s to house and feed them?”

Justin shrugged. “I’d make sure they got a lot of Happy Meals.”

The class laughed. I glanced again at Meg and saw that she was smiling. Given that she and her family were homeless, it seemed kind of remarkable.

When the period ended, I made sure we left the room at the same time. Her eyes darted uncertainly at me when we started down the hall together.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?” she replied stiffly, not looking in my direction.

“Just because of what we were talking about in class.”

“You’re wondering why I didn’t say anything?” Her voice was ripe with defensiveness. “Like why I didn’t raise my hand and claim to be an authority on Dignityville?”

“No.”

“Then what? Why are you even talking to me? Why are we walking together?”

I thought I understood her guarded attitude. Sometimes something happens with someone, and you don’t think much about it. But what you don’t realize is that the other person has thought a lot about it. Maybe they’ve even gotten kind of worked up over it. I’m not saying that day in the library when we laughed meant more to her than it did to me. It did mean something to me. But maybe it just meant something different.

We passed an empty classroom. “Come in here for a second?”

Meg frowned. “Why?”

“Just do it.”

We went in. Meg crossed her arms, her eyebrows dipping. “What? You can’t be seen with me in the hallway? I’m a pariah now?”

I did the two-finger swipe. “Two points for vocabulary.”

She wasn’t amused. “So?”

“You’re not a pariah. I just have a girlfriend with spies everywhere.”

She blinked, as if astonished. “ That’s why you’ve been ignoring me?”

So I was right. She thought I’d been ignoring her. No wonder she sounded hurt and defensive. Look at it from her point of view: I’d started to get friendly, we’d really connected, and then I’d backed away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it seem that way. I… there’s actually been a bunch of times when I wanted to talk to you.”

“But you were afraid she’d find out?” Meg rolled her eyes. “Boy, Mr. Popular Stud, I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.”

Ouch! This girl didn’t pull any punches.

She quickly looked around the room. “Wait! What if she’s got all the classrooms bugged?”

“Very funny. No, I just… I don’t know. Tal and I are pretty happy together.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s so obvious,” Meg replied facetiously. “My best relationships have always been with people I was afraid were spying on me.”

That made me chuckle. “You’re pretty sarcastic.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t blow myself up like a puffer fish and show my spines when attacked.”