0 January Secret Agent #33

TITLE: Cathedral Park
GENRE: Young Adult Fiction Horror

I enter Cathedral Park from Edison Street, pull back my hoodie and let the mist frizz my hair. No one I care about will see it, anyway. Alone, at the top of a hill I watch the Willamette River churn beneath the St. Johns Bridge. It's another gloomy Sunday afternoon and the park is almost deserted, which suits me fine. I need to get out, and a damp, empty park is better than a damp, empty apartment.

The apartment is new, but smells like a storage unit. It’s filled with rented furniture and has the ambiance of a rehab facility. Not that I’ve ever been in one.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. It’s the only place my mom could afford after the divorce, and I’m just glad we have a place to live. She had never worked before last month and to be honest, when we left Lake Oswego with a leased car and the smallest U-Haul it could drag, I thought there was a fair chance we were going to end up on the street.

Which is ironic, because just three months ago I was pretty pissed off because we spent Christmas at home instead of taking our usual family trip to Cabo. I'm not proud about that.

I wipe the rain off my face and take the sidewalk that runs down the middle of the park like a backbone.