The Chosen — 2025-11-12 (Patreon)

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Chapter 28: MET A BOY by Shay Ryder

As I start my Wednesday, I sit—as is my habit—to think about what I did yesterday and what needs to happen today, tomorrow, and beyond. I compare the hours spent and what was done to what those hours could have accomplished if used differently. Today, I have no answer.

Yesterday, I met a boy. A man, I guess. A guy named Devon. He’s 22 and seems kind.

He came to Habitat Housing to get help. His house burned down. He lost his IDs and most everything he owned. He’s been on the streets for a few weeks.

Aside from the fire and his age, he might have been just another client the agency helps. But something felt different.

As he sat with me telling his story, something happened. I felt myself relaxing, responding to him with words I hadn’t rehearsed a 1000 times over the years, words that I hadn’t written into a notebook to study and master.

I didn’t need “That must have been hard… Do you want to say more about that?” or any other tried and tested phrasing to communicate with him.

For me to drift away from my comfortable conversational repertoire usually takes ages. Not with Devon.

I have no explanation.

I connected him with Izzy Duffy so she could activate her social worker network and help recover his IDs. Eric Marten stepped up beyond his job as head of my security team and suggested we see if Tom Jenkins would rent him an apartment and let him pay later when he recovered.

So by the afternoon, I was standing in the common area of Crossroads apartments showing him around. Emma Knox was lounging on a sofa. Noah Vale was making microwave popcorn.

Even as I showed Devon around, I felt my thoughts drawn into that sense of community, both longing for it and terrified of it. Izzy has told me how they all have become friends.

When we left, I told Eric I wished I had a group of friends like that.

He said, “My grandpa used to say wish in one hand and lick the other and see which one gets wet first.”

I’m letting that sink in.

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Chapter 29: MET A GUY by Kent Marlon

I started my Wednesday doing some bookkeeping and making phone calls from my room at Crossroads. When I finally headed for my truck there was a guy standing by the window in the common area looking out.

Last night over pizza down the block, Izzy had told me there was a new guy in the micro-apartments named Devon. Since she said so little, I figured it was connected to her work at Stop-Gap Housing and she was respecting the confidentiality of whatever he had told her, sharing only what she would have known from living with Addison, the apartment manager.

“He seems like a nice guy,” she had added.

I figured the guy at the window was him, so I went up and introduced myself.

“Kent Marlon? You’re the guy that runs projects for Habitat Housing?”

“Yeah… how did you know?”“I was at their office when a plumber guy asked if you’d be running things out in Long Island.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

Devon nodded. “I take it you do a lot of work for them?”

“Yeah, couple weekends a month. And I do little electrical jobs for them… a couple times a week.”

Devon explained he’d been at the office trying to figure out how to recover his IDs lost in a fire. He explained meeting Shay who took him to Izzy who got things going.

He sort of trailed off, so I asked about Shay’s guard. “Which of the Hanks was with Shay yesterday?”

“Eric… I don’t get the ‘Hank’ thing…”

“It’s sort of code for her security team. Around strangers to Shay, they are all Hank Johnson.”Devon laughed. “I guess I also don’t get why a social worker has a security team.

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I figured it wouldn’t hurt to tell him. He could Google it, if he wanted to.

“Shay’s family is wealthy enough that keeping her secure is just a good idea.”

“Wow… Must be pretty rich, then…”

I nodded. “Like David Ryder wealthy.”

Devon sort of blinked and nodded. “Oh, wow… What’s the family business?”

I smiled. “International shipping—as in David Ryder, Blue Water Express…”“Oh, you mean literally David Ryder… Oh, wow…”“Yeah…”

“She seemed like just a regular girl, to me… except for Hank and the Tahoe…”I smiled. “She’d like to know you thought that. She always feels like people think she’s weird.”Devon shook his head. “Must be they freak out knowing how wealthy she is. And I take it that she works for Habitat Housing because it’s a great program and she likes to do good things?”“That’s exactly right.”

“And you? Electrician… Why do you volunteer all your time? You seem locked in with them…”I shrugged. “My folks were blue collar, hard working. If the roof had blown off, there wouldn’t have been much they could have done about it. We ate a lot of macaroni and cheese out of the blue box, if you know what I mean.”Devon nodded. “Absolutely… My mom was a career worker at Speedway. Stepdad worked at Target.”

“Yeah… Well the folks we help are on the verge of losing it all. This place in Long Island… bathroom slow leak for who knows how long… floors totally rotted. The whole place is about to be condemned for not having proper sanitation. Habitat Housing is saving the day.”

“That’s awesome…”

We talked about other Habitat Housing projects and it came up that he needed a job. That got us back to his missing IDs and what Izzy was doing.

He told me about doing day labor and getting paid cash. “I was going to go back today, but… I talked myself out of it.”“You gotta watch that,” I said. “Some of those guys take advantage of the labor. Might make them work days and days and then only pay half of what they promised… Like, ‘Yeah, buddy, if you want today’s pay, you gotta come back tomorrow.’ And they’ll drag it out.”Devon seemed to understand. “Guess I got in with a good crew…”Then, I said, “Look, I can’t hire you without the IDs. You could invoice me like you were a business, but then you’d have to deal with… business laws and all that…”“I understand,” Devon said. “I didn’t expect you’d give me a job or anything like that…”“How about this?” I said. “You hang out with me today and I’ll buy you lunch? We can keep a log on the time you spend working… round it to $20 an hour… and I’ll gift that much of your rent to Addison?”

Devon caught onto the idea. “Okay… that works… and it only sounds a little like income tax evasion.”

“Okay… bad news… Our first stop is volunteer work. Kid broke the prongs off of a lamp cord in one of the Stop-Gap Housing units. But we’ll be on the clock after that…”“Sounds great,” Devon said.

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