Danny walked up the staircase to the third floor in the apartment building and stopped in front of the door with the names “McCollin & Santilian”. He pulled up a couple of keys from his pocket and could hear a dog barking on the other side of the door. With a small sigh he unlocked and gently opened the door. The big black dog barked happily and waved it’s tail eagerly.
   “Sirius, quiet!” Danny said with an assertive voice to it.
   Obediently Sirius sat down and was silent, still eagerly waving his tail and curiously looking at Danny. The dog was probably a mix of Golden Retriever and some kind of black German Shepherd, with wonderful fur. The right ear was pointed up and the left floppy. Sirius was his best friend, the one who never judged him when he felt down or for how he looked. This dog was one of the few things that he was truly happy that his mum had gotten him. Not that she was the worst mother out there, but she wasn’t the best either. When his dad had passed away she had taken him to a shelter and let him pick out a dog. That was Sirius, at the time a joyful one year old, left tied to a trash can.
   Danny sighed again and stepped inside the hall, the door closed behind him and the shoes got pushed in next to a pile of moving boxes. They had recently moved into this apartment, one slightly smaller and cheaper than the one they had before, so the hall was full with boxes marked by content. It was home, even if it would take some time before he would get used to the place. It wasn’t Mexico, where he had spent the past year. He continued through the hall with Sirius at his heels, walked past the kitchen and turned right. The door to Danny’s room was white and didn’t fit in, as if the original door had been swapped for this one. The white door was covered in many stickers, but what stood out the most was a big black text. “Mr. Santilian wants to be alone!” Talk about stubborn child. It was written with a permanent marker by an angry teenage boy. He was still a teenager, but right now he wasn’t angry.
   Danny went inside his room, where he sat down on the bed and dropped his bag on the floor. The bright walls were covered with posters of various bands, he had put them up only two weeks earlier. His eyes swept through the room. At one wall there was a bookshelf with some books, some good-to-have-things that one would never get to use, and some trinkets.
   He lied down on his back and Sirius jumped up to the bed to lay next to him. Right now he was happy that it was Friday night. Hopefully he should have enough time to get used to being back before school started. Back in New York for real.