Midnight

The driving had become instinctual, and I had one of those startling moments where I realized that I hadn't been paying attention for the past few minutes or so. I could have chalked it up to my mind stillr eeling from the most recently gathered information for Ms. Ng, but I wasn't thinking that cohesively--it was like I was wandering through a forest in the dark, and whether i was walking in one direction or a circle was irrelevant: I was making no progress, every gap in the trees looked like every other gap in the trees. I was shocked to see the intersection of Mission and 26th street manifest itself outside my window--the last thing I'd remembered seeing was hte empty lot used for pumpkin patches and christmas treest at 7th ave. and Kirkham, at least two or three miles away.
Whichever part of my brain had been driving--for it certainly hadn't been my conscious--had luckily known the way to Skippon's house; I can only imagine how I would have felt had I accidentally driven to some other end of the city... Hunter's Point, or worse, Fisherman's wharf. The Mission at night wasn't exactly Fort Knox... but then again, was only worrisome if you let your mind get away from you; there were plenty of people on the street, though, granted, a good portion of those people were seedy-looking guys, providing the quintessential definition of loitering. Skippon lived a block or two off of Mission, on a less-commercial street. There were several trees growing out of the concrete hole in the sidwalk in front of the building, and I probably would have never been able to figure out which house it was had Skipp not been standing outside in the street, just sort of hanging out. I slowed down alongside her.
"Hey, Skipp."
"Gen! I saved a parking spot for you."
"Oh, thanks. How long have you been standing here?"
"Just five minutes. One of my roommates left, and I thought I'd hold on the spot."
This seemed strange, but I didn't say anything. Instead, I expertly double-parked, something which didn't go unnoticed by my journalism teacher.
"Nice parking."
"Thanks."
A peeling painted gate separated the stoop from the sidewalk, and looked as if it could make loud, screeching noises if it wanted. It banged closed behind me and Skipp opened the door to the flat on the far right. "Come on in."
It wasn't until I had shed my jacket in her front room that I realized that I was in a teacher's house, and how not normal it was. Not the house, the being there, although the house had it's own je ne sais quoi to it as well. All the furniture looked used, except for one of two totally overloaded bookshelves. A dinner-sized table, with one of those speckled tabletops from the '50s, stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by similarly-aged diner chairs with sparkly red cushions. Two chairs on the brink of being ratty sat in the bay window, gently angled towards eachother, and a couch which looked like it should have been remarkably comfortable, but indeed, was not, was against the hallway wall. I guess I had spent considerable time convincing myself as an 11-year-old that teachers had relatively normal lives, not that different from my own; Skippon's house so far ran totally contradictory to that.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Her voice was receding down the hall, and before I knew it, I felt stranded in her living room, not having been given permission to go anywhere else. "Some coffee, or something?"
"No, I'm fine." I sat on one of the sparkly chair cushions, and waited for her to come back.