Paper Shields

Chapter 2

A home is like a pair of shoes. Some homes are worn and fitted, others new and awkward. Some are bright and some are faded, maybe they even have holes in them. There are favorite pairs and ones your mom makes you wear to your estranged second cousin's wedding. Squeaky soles, boots, sneakers, sandals, and stilettos. Some people don't even like shoes. And some will never find a pair that fits right.

If we were being literal about home, I'd have compared my house to clunky running shoes everyone seemed to have stuffed somewhere in their closet, but never willingly wore. All the houses on my street looked the same, and had the architectural depth of a plastic Walmart bag. The walls were beige vinyl siding, and the grass was patchy and parched. The insides weren't much better, still devoid of any remarkable features, and the chairs still squeaked when we sat around for supper. Everything was quiet though, when I walked in, and I figured my parents were at work.

My mother was a government worker, pushing papers, and my father was a technician for the local radio. There wasn't much to tell, I guess. They met through a friend. They were wonderful people. I didn't appreciate them. Nothing was new.

I kicked off my shoes at the door, and left them lined on the rug. I figured the shoe metaphor was a little bit forced, and that maybe shoes were just shoes and a house was four walls and a roof. Maybe I ought to find a hobby other than assigning spiritual meaning to inanimate objects.

The stairs leading up to my room were short, and the time it took me to collapse on my bed was even shorter. It was nearing the end of summer, exams looming in the near future, so everything was stuffy and warm, and I was disgusting in my jeans and dark shirt. But I didn't care.

I was still convincing myself how little I cared, and wallowing in the intense desire to not do my homework when my phone buzzed from my back pocket. It was my mom.

'Your gf is missing again.'

I smiled lightly at her continuous misuse of the abbreviation, but my stomach twisted at the though of my grandfather gone again.

Due to his degrading mental state and the onset of what was to be diagnosed as Alzheimer's, he had needed an intervention. His daughter had read up on all the urban horror stories she could find, and decided it was best to put him in the care of professionals, fearing things that were logically impossible. She had a tendency to get irrationally emotional when it came to loved ones.

Although he was less than happy with the arrangement, all sides settled and he was moved to St Clary's, the local center.

The town was relatively small, and for the patients (but mostly for the money) the institution merged their senior center with the mental hospital, and they shared a stark white brick building that stuck out behind the McDonald's like a sore thumb.

Unfortunately for the nurses and my poor mother, the old man had always fancied himself as an adventurer, and he increasingly started wandering away from the premises. The first time it had happened, he had only trusted me with this secret location of his, since we had always been close. He made me promise to never tell a soul, and so every time he made a daring escape, the responsibility for his retrieval fell on me.

My thumbs flew across the keyboard as I typed out my reply, already skipping down the steps.

'ive got it'

Although it might seem strange, the little excursions to see my grandfather had always been a shameful source of thrill. It still wracked my body with worry every time, but I loved spending time with the mad man,  and opportunities as good as these rarely presented themselves. He was usually sitting out behind the old garage he used to work in, sipping an orange soda in a glass bottle on his filthy plastic lawn chair. I had my own designated spot on an old car seat propped against the single spindly tree that grew out of the ground.