Family
My life used to be a glass pitcher of white, pure, clean, delicious milk just bubbling over with goddamn wholesomeness. My entire life. My whole family was shiny and perfect, snipped right out of the stereotype catalogue: Mom, Dad, me, Chelsea, and our loyal dog, Glob...
I'm seventeen now, and that's all gone. Seventeen doesn't sound old. But it is. Trust me.
Pushing open the car door, I dug my feet into the ground and took off for the gate. I could hear my social worker yelling, but then a huge roaring filled my ears. At the parking lot entrance, the horror movie gate still stood open, waiting for me.
I had to get away—that was all I could think about. The gate grew and grew, and then I was through it and out in the street. Everything in me pulled together and began to run, fast as my heart was beating, faster.
I stare over my fire to the west, across the desert plain I crossed today, at the barely discernable black outline of the mountains where I camped last night. The tiny flickering campfire out on the plain is the only light. Every night for the past five days I have seen this fire as darkness falls. There is probably a man sitting by it looking up at the light of my fire. Who is he?
