Somehow, the 13-year-old narrator of Hindsight manages to make a friend, a boy named Scarecrow. They meet at the shelter.
“Let’s go get pancakes,” she tells him.
His eyes widened. “You have money?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just a little,” I lied.
As night falls, Scarecrow takes the narrator to his “squat” — “over a small fence” and then through “a large, empty apartment complex” to the parking garage and “a storage closet . . . on the wall.”
“Do you like me?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I answered. I was in uncharted territory and sinking fast.
He tried to kiss me, but I started to cry.
So instead, he held me in his arms, and asked me what had happened. He somehow knew.
This story is almost unbearably sad, but the narrator’s friendship with Scarecrow has an innocence. Scarecrow takes the narrator on a tour of Hollywood: his favorite breakfast place, Tommy’s (“They make breakfast all hours of the day. Pancake special: $1.99”) and Mann Chinese Theatre. It’s a very sweet interlude.
Unfortunately, they return to the shelter for breakfast the next day and someone reports them. Scarecrow’s 19 and the narrator’s only 13. They’re both arrested and the narrator is taken to a facility in a police car.
UGH. She’s put into an orange jumpsuit and told, “You’re a 601.” She’s put in a cell and the guards are tall, beefy women.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
