Hope Haggerty

Only Time Will Tell

Jordan hid his head inside of his sleeping bag and lay on his tummy inside the large cardboard box that he had scrounged from an appliance store earlier that day. Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic. Ironically, it was a refrigerator box, which was laughable considering he felt like he was encased in ice. A light snow was coming down on the street outside of his makeshift shelter. It rarely snowed in Vancouver, likely by morning it would turn to rain. It was cold though, currently -3 according to his cell phone. It was hard to keep warm in this kind of weather, but he had splurged on a new sleeping bag and it was supposedly good to -40. He snorted to himself. not that he would see temperatures that low here at the coast. Yet, he admitted to himself he would need a tent if he were going to spend the winter on the streets. He flexed his thigh muscles as he pondered his predicament, hoping the friction would help him to warm up. He had placed his cardboard box down a narrow back alley way tonight, in between two dumpsters, a green one and a red one, and they offered him some protection from the biting wind though the smell wasn’t so great. He could see out of one end of the box, but unless you knew someone was there, you couldn’t see him.