Chapter Fourteen: Creekside Clubhouse

The Hangout That Could’ve Collapsed and the One That Already Had

Behind our upstairs apartment sat a shared garage — one of those big, busted structures that tried to serve too many people and failed all of them equally. The tenants in the surrounding four buildings had storage spaces in there. Not us. We got the leftovers. The broken bits. The maybe-don’t-go-in-there side.

We didn’t even get a garage. We got a walk-in door. A single door leading to… not much. A makeshift wall had been tossed up to divide it, and there was a door hanging on by stubbornness alone. But that wasn’t our spot.

Our spot was the other side.

To the left of the “real” entrance was a mangled garage door — smashed in, warped, dented to hell. You couldn’t open it unless you had a sledgehammer and some rage to spare. But from the back, down by the creek, there was another way in.

We climbed through the busted floorboards. Literally. The structure was falling into the creek, but we called it secure because, well, it hadn’t fallen yet. And we’d had massive rainstorms and snow loads that should’ve taken it out. But it held. That was good enough for us.

From inside our hangout, you could actually see the creek through the gaps in the floor. On a good day, the water would rise just high enough to go fishing from inside the building. No exaggeration. We didn’t even have to step outside. Just drop a line through the floor and wait.

But we didn’t trick it out like a real clubhouse. No posters. No sleeping bags. Nothing that marked it as “ours.” Because we knew better. Someone checked on that space sometimes — maybe an owner, maybe a ghost of legal liability — and we didn’t want to give them a reason to shut it down.

It was our refuge.

A place to hide from bullies.

To escape the heat.

To be left alone.

But here’s the kicker.

The best part about our hideout wasn’t inside it.

It was next door.