Manifest by Artist Arthur

opens the door. Light, in a golden haze, pours from the house to the dark outside. He doesn’t smile but looks over Sasha’s shoulder at me then nods. “Come on in.”
    I walk behind Sasha, keeping my mouth shut and trying really hard not to look around his house. It feels warm in here. I mean I can instantly feel extra heat. Outside it’s about sixty-five degrees. In here feels much hotter. And it smells like old people. Like those mothballs they keep in all the closets and in their drawers. It’s not really a stinky smell but it gets in your nose and burns after a while. I remember it from the old folks’ home, so it’s already bothering me.
    Jake’s leading the way, walking us past what I think is the dining room. His house is set up like one long hallway and different rooms are on either side. It’s kind of hard to keep my head straight ahead and act like I’m not looking around, because I am. That probably means I’m nosy but I’m not real worried about that right now. Unfortunately,my eyes keep wandering so I’m not getting a real good look into every room, just quick glances. Then I see the wheelchair in one room and I completely stop.
    I’ve never seen a wheelchair in person before. Well, except for when I was twelve and went to the nursing home to visit my grandfather. It was creepy in there with all those old people wanting to touch you with their crinkly hands. All the extra voices I was hearing didn’t help either. I know now that those voices belonged to dead people. People who had probably died in that nursing home. I wonder if that meant I could only hear the dead in the spot where they died. No, that can’t be true, I hear Ricky any and everywhere.
    “Come on, Krystal,” I hear Sasha say with irritation clear in her voice.
    Oh, great, I’ve been caught standing here staring like some sort of flake.
    The room Jake’s sitting in has two mattresses on a bed frame in one corner, an old desk and chair in the other and two chairs that look like they might have come from the kitchen right next to the desk. On the desk is a computer, which shocks me because it’s the newest-looking thing in this room. I mean, all the furniture and stuff is pretty old, like the kind you see in those shops that only sell old stuff for lots of money. But the computer is the bomb!
    It’s an iMac with a twenty-four-inch screen. I just know it has everything on it because why else would you buy it if you weren’t going to load it up?
    “Here, you can sit right here,” Jake says.
    Sasha has already taken a seat on his bed so he can only be talking to me. I notice he’s changed his pants. Earlier he had on jeans but now he’s wearing sweatpants. His hair is still a mess, falling all in his eyes so he looks more like an animal than a boy. But I’m not real worried about how he looks. I just want to get this little powwow over with so I can go home.
    Home to what? Janet and Gerald, both looking at me like I’ve just grown another head? No, correction, Janet looking at me like I’ve grown another head and Gerald looking at me like he could stomp me right into the ground. That can’t be normal, for a grown-up to hate a kid that much. But I guess if the kid’s not yours you could hate them until hell froze over and nobody would care.
    Anyway, I don’t want to think about the odd couple right now. I follow Jake’s direction and sit in one of the chairs. Again, I’m trying not to look around at the chipping dull beige paint on his walls or the dresser that doesn’t have any knobs on it.
    I’m really not prejudiced against people who don’t have what I have or anything like that. I’m just curious about Jake’s life. He seems so quiet and so normal. It’s weird that his house isn’t all pretty and filled with new stuff, but he seems perfectly happy with who he is and where he’s from. While me, on the other hand, can’t stand to be in the house Janet works so hard to create and walks around with enough