Lost as a child's first thought

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The day they came to arrest her was not the worst day of Sam’s life, though it certainly wasn’t good. It was too stunning and confused to truly be that bad of a day. It had passed quickly in a blur and with the an element of surrealism that shielded her from reality.



The worse days came later. First there was the fighting between her parents and her, her and her brother, until eventually everyone just fought. Almost worse than the fighting was the quiet, the cold shoulders, the alienation and ostracism.


Then there was the day she left the first time. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t have a clue, she just knew she had to leave. And whatever was out there, had to be better than where she was at.


She’d stuffed some clothes into her backpack, put in some food and all the cash she could find and walked out. She figured she could do something. People lived, got jobs, sure she was young, but she could look older. She’d just turned 15, but she could look 18. She’d gone into the heart of Midtown. She wasn’t dumb, she figured the first thing she needed was a job. She started to look for luncheonettes that wanted waitresses.


By dusk that night, she had no job and no place to stay. The reality of being homeless, dispossessed, indignant suddenly had taken on new meaning. Of course she’d seen “those people.” They were different. Suddenly the realization that she was “those people.” Hit hard. Sitting down on a bench in Central Park she started to cry. A soft cry at first, the tears welling in her eyes spilling down her cheeks though she was trying to ignore them. Soon that failed and she was sobbing.