Page 10 of Inevitable

It was a much-needed break from reality and the constant worrying that had become Ezra’s default setting. The ten-minute reprieve from his life ended the moment he turned to his street and saw an unexpected obstacle on the front steps.

“What the fuck?” he muttered as he quickened his steps and hurried toward the house. The weird structure turned out to be two boxes and a duffel that was stuffed so full that it looked like a huge, greenish Christmas ham. Snow covered the boxes, the cardboard was already soggy. The bottom of the duffel had soaked through with the snow that had melted on the steps.

He pushed his key into the lock, but the thing had been switched sometime in the past ten hours he’d been away from this place. Banging his fist against the door did nothing. Nobody came. The house remained dark. Finally, his eyes landed on the piece of paper that had been taped on the inside of the small window by the front door.

Eviction notice… currently owe $3500 in past due rent… demand for payment…

Ezra could only take in snippets of the letter. His brain seemed to be unable to decide if he should check his belongings to see if anything was missing, or if he should read the damn notice more thoroughly to see if there might be any hint in there that it was all just some kind of a sick joke.

This was not good.

Not good at all.

“Fuck,” Ezra finally muttered as he dragged his fingers through his hair.

“Shit,” he added. Cursing was good. Cursing distracted. Cursing held panic at bay.

He dropped down on the bottom step, not caring about the snow, and rummaged through his backpack, trying to locate his phone. His books and papers, which were usually meticulously organized, ended up dumped on the wet concrete in Ezra’s increasingly desperate attempts to get his hands on his battered phone. Finally, his fingers touched the spiderwebbed screen.

The battery life of that thing was about three five-minute calls, but Ezra had charged it that morning and hadn’t used it at all after that, so he was hoping that he would get this one minuscule break and get to make his phone call. Even people who were arrested got that, so maybe, just maybe, somebody out there would take into account that Ezra hadn’t really harmed anybody. That had to count for something.

He dialed Jordan’s number. He was the one who’d rented Ezra the room. Or a bed in a room he had to share with two other people, to be more accurate. It had been the cheapest offer in all of Boston.

The other two guys that he had shared the small basement room with had been pretty decent. Both were college students. Both equally as dirt-poor as he was. Both just as uninterested in becoming friends. They coexisted together in their sleep, and that was just fine with Ezra. Now he wished he’d made more of an effort, since he didn’t have anybody else’s phone number, and Jordan was not picking up.

He tried—unsuccessfully—five more times. On his sixth attempt, the call was unceremoniously disconnected.

He closed his eyes and lowered his head. Bit the inside of his cheek and counted to twenty in his head. That was the extent of the freak-out he was allowing himself to have. Twenty seconds of panic before he was going to get himself together and figure out what the hell he was going to do next.

After the allotted panic-time was over, he opened his eyes and did a mental inventory. It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself kicked to the curb, and right then, he was thankful for his acquired ability to stand back, assess everything logically, and move on.

“Right,” he finally said to himself as he stood up and went to the boxes. He opened both of them and went through the contents. Whoever had packed them had done a shitty job because most of those things were not his.

He made two piles, one for his clothes and another for crap that belonged to somebody else. It was highly doubtful anybody would come back here looking for their chipped mug and neon pink jockstrap.

Nevertheless, Ezra put everything that didn’t belong to him in one of the boxes and nudged it closer to the door, so it was at least somewhat protected from the elements. He stuffed the two pairs of jeans and a couple of T-shirts in the duffel. Added his old hoodie and a pair of sneakers. A couple of pairs of underwear followed. There was also a plate. He didn’t remember if it was his. He took it anyway.

Thank God he had so few belongings. He always made a point of carrying his laptop and his books with him, so that could count as that day’s success story. Somebody had taken his only pair of dress pants, but it wasn’t like Ezra had ample opportunity to wear them. He’d bought them from a thrift store for a job interview a long time ago and hadn’t worn them since.

Some asshole had deemed his Simon & Garfunkel T-shirt worthy of stealing, and that kind of pissed Ezra off because he’d actually liked that shirt. It reminded him of Mr. Harper, his old guidance counselor. He’d been the only person in Ezra’s life who’d figured that Ezra could actually do something with himself.

Mr. Harper had listened to Simon & Garfunkel religiously, so the T-shirt had been an homage to the man who’d looked at Ezra and seen something other than “another one of those Morgan boys” who was destined to screw up his life one way or another.

He was really in no situation to grieve for shirts. He had much bigger problems to face.

Eventually, all of his things had been stuffed into the duffel. He tried Jordan’s phone once more, but it had been turned off. Sometime in the next few days, he was going to have to try and find the guy and see if he could get at least some of his money back. Planting his fist in Jordan’s face seemed equally tempting.

He’d paid his rent for December, and now he was not going to be fucking able to live in his room in December. All the money Ezra had given Jordan had obviously been used for something other than actually paying said rent.

Fuck his life! He’d known what Jordan did was illegal. It was one of those rent-to-rent schemes.

He hadn’t cared. It was cheap, and there was a roof over his head. Now he had no money and no roof.

He lingered on the steps. What for, he couldn’t say. It wasn’t as if somebody was going to come and save him. Nobody ever did. He’d learned a long time ago that you could only rely on yourself.

His fingers were freezing, the soles of his feet burning from the cold. He couldn’t feel his toes anymore.

It was almost midnight. Paying for a hotel room was a fantasy. And he was not going to end up in a shelter—the last few experiences he’d had with them had not been pleasant. That particular night didn’t seem like a good moment to go and see if, by some chance, his luck had changed. He heaved the duffel onto his shoulder and walked away from the house.