Friday June 8. 6pm - 12am.

As the rain subsided, Mika, Hanna and I left Evergreen. The sky was still grey with storm clouds, and the air was warm and thick. Hopefully it would not rain again tonight.
First things first. We needed some money, if we wanted to eat at all tonight. We walked down College, and near Grange Park we found a small street with a slow, but steady flow of people. Hanna and Mika sat down on one side of the street together, and I, on the other. We put our hats humbly on the ground in front of us and prayed for people to feel sorry for us. All sorts of people in all sorts of shoes walked past. Some stared, some avoided eye contact altogether. Some offered me cab fare a bus token.
It was degrading to have no other means of meeting your needs than to rely on others' compassion, or pity; it didn't even matter what their motive was - you're in no position to deny anything on principle. I kept my eyes on the ground most of the time because I could not bring myself to look people in the face.
It was warming and a little disturbing to have some people stop and offer to help a stranger. I say disturbing because I'm sure it doesn't happen to everyone. Maybe people wanted to help me because I'm young, because I'm a girl, because I'm sane, or non-threatening. But I wonder, what would the world be like if everyone who needed help was offered it?
After panning for a little bit, we'd made around $9. (It sounds weird to say "made", as if we'd earned that money somehow.) We took off on a quest for food. We went on a venture through Chinatown, hoping to find some cheap food there, but that failed because I can't read Chinese. (Mika and Hanna are Finnish... They don't read Chinese either.)
Anyway, to make a long, frustrating search short, we ended up in a McDonald's somewhere on Yonge, with a double cheeseburger and water each. The leftover pieces of sandwich buns at the next table almost looked inviting, but I wasn't that desperate... yet?
After our small and sad supper, we walked back up to College. We were going to meet Deb, Steve, and Tanaya at midnight at College Park. I don't know what time it was, we didn't have a watch. It was probably not much later than ten though. I knew this because we had been at BCE place at 9:15 before going to the McDonalds where we ate.
We set down flattened cardboard boxes at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard. We had had the foresight to take them from outside a Tim Horton's that we passed. I put out the cup saved from McDonald's, and poured in some coins to inspire others to do likewise.
I was immensely tired by that time. We'd walked for hours, and had little to eat. I rested my head on the window behind me, barely having the energy to keep my eyes open to make sure no one tried to run away with what little money I had.
Then I met Tracy and Lucia. I think they're the ones that gave Hanna and myself a fiver each. They walked around the intersection and asked to join me. Tracy offered me a cigarette. Lucia was 19, Tracy was probably the same age. They live in Scarborough. They're a couple, and they met at martial arts. (Tracy is a guy, just to be clear.) Tracy wants to go to college to be an airplane mechanic. Lucia isn't sure what she wants to do. Her ideal job is to be an artist, but they don't make very much money. Their favourite thing about the city is all the random people one can meet.
Tracy and Lucia must have sat and talked with me for almost an hour. We chatted about all sorts of things. Tracy suggested his [certainly not unique] theory that Bill Gates unleashes new viruses on the Internet all the time so he can keep pumping out new versions of Norton Antivirus. We played a game where I named off drugs and he'd tell me if he'd done them before. They checked to make sure if I was "being safe".
I asked Tracy how much he smokes. The most ever, he said, was a pack a day, but he cuts back for sports. I told him smoking will kill him, and he should quit. After all, I said, he wants to go to college and has all sorts of big things ahead of him.
"We all have big things ahead of us," he assured me.
Even you, I silently heard in my head.
Would I have believed that even a homeless person has "big things" ahead of them? We were only trained about harm reduction. I was flabbergasted. You can't teach or train people to have that sort of optimism.
Tracy, Lucia and I even talked a bit about religion and faith. Tracy was raised a Catholic - he wore a bracelet on his wrist with a small mysterious black pouch.
"How do you know what's inside it?" I asked.
"You don't," he replied. "And that's kind of what faith is. Believing in something that you can't see." My immediate reaction was to try to analyze the theology behind that statement, but I stopped myself. I appreciated his warmth and honesty.
Around 11:15, they had to leave. (Tracy's mom was calling him on his pink cell phone.) Lucia wrote down her phone number and gave it to me, telling me to call her if I needed anything. We wished each other all well, and then they disappeared into the night.
At that very moment, I was the happiest I had been all day. For the first time since being homeless, I'd had friends. I wasn't just a charity case. I wasn't assumed to be some sort of runaway or failure. I was... normal.