Old Neighborhood
By: Patrick Oratmangun, 3 IPS SMA
When the day stroke quarter passed three I was walking alone with my school backpack, filled with clothes in the 71st Avenue subway station, waiting to be picked up by the G-Train which would drop me onto the 63rd Drive station. I picked up the sense of the usual smell of urine in the filthy station, making me want to vomit. Luckily I had brought my handkerchief, so I’d tied it up around my lower face, covering my mouth. Going down the steps I’d found the usual homeless person asleep, he was an old man, his face was covered with debris and dirt, and he smelled like a dead rat. The subway train arrived; I couldn’t bare the squeaky sound that the train had made when it stopped. I entered the train. The door closed slowly also making the squeaky sound. A few minutes had passed since leaving the station, I finally arrived. Outside the station I met my friend, Peter Liu, he was Asian, he was a little bit taller than me and yet skinnier, and I’d known him since the first day I went to the same school.
I’d planned to stay over at his house for the weekend. He lived ten minutes away from the station, we just had to walk. I used to live in the same neighborhood, but then my family and I moved to another house. Before going to Peter’s house we stopped by Queens Center to buy one pack of ‘Pokemon’ cards. Queens Center is a gigantic curved in structure mall. Coming out of the mall, the sun shone directly toward us and the mall itself, and it tried to blind us. Turning away made me look surprised when the mall wave-like structure glowed in a fiery orange color, which had successfully made into a center of attention. We walked down 63rd Drive; we passed our school, P.S. 139 Q. The building probably dated back from the early 1900’s yet when we looked from the back it seemed to be very modern. We arrived at Alderton Street just as the sun faded away. At the corner of the street stood a little two leveled house, which was Peter’s house. We entered the house, and we ran straight to his room and gently place my clothes on top of the bed that belonged to me for a couple of days.
The next day after I took a shower, we both had our breakfast and went to Job’s house to play with him. Job was from Ecuador, he was an oversized kid who was shorter than me. I remembered his house as I remembered my old house because I used to live two houses away from his and all the houses in that street looked identical. Three hours had passed since we played with the ‘Hotwheels’ toy cars. We invited Job for a lunch with us. We went to a Chinese restaurant called Rego Wok. I’d gone to this restaurant a couple of times after I’d finished a day at school. I basically had the same food of sweet and sour chicken and a small bowl of rice. This combination stayed in your mouth savoring it for the next few hours. Half an hour had passed; we planned to go to P.S. 174 Q playground and played a game of Basketball. I used to go to this school a lot of times when I’d still lived in my old house. I got to tell you that I preferred this school rather than mine due to the fact that it had a much bigger playground.
The next morning, I was awoken by the same sound that had waked me up the day before, the sound that a rooster would make. This was my last day spending the weekends with Peter and his family. After I took a shower I packed my bag and tried not to leave anything behind. I set off just after noon. I passed my school, Rego Wok, Rite Aid, and the stationary store that I’d gone to every time I needed a new pencil. I arrived at 63rd Drive steps that led me to an underground railway station. This felt like as if I’m going home after a hard day at school. The G-train came three minutes later, I entered the train knowing that inside its body stood many civilians ready to be sent to its desired place. The door didn’t make the squeak. The train would send me back to the place where I had started my journey two days ago. I finally arrived and went straight to a three leveled flat probably built from the 50’s, that happened to be my house, and find my family doing their daily routine inside the house.