Savior

Chapter 1

I ran until my lungs felt like they were about to collapse. There was no time to stop and let my body catch up to the pressure I was putting it under. If I let them get any closer to me, I would either be dead, or I would have nothing left.

An alley appears in my line of vision, a mere thirty feet away from my current position.

You can make it.

I look back at the men, dressed in shabby clothes and running with their fists in the air, desperately attempting to reach me in order to rid me of any of my personal belongings.

Life on the street is the worst.

I finally make it to the alley, perched between a small convenience store and a shoe store. It'll have to do for now.

The men run at full force down the street, clearly not seeing me turn into the narrow strip of cement. Once they are all a far enough distance away, I break down, sobbing into my hands. My head lies of my knees, and my arms cover my head, muffling each pathetic sob that exits my lips.

It's quite stereotypical if you ask me, but after a few minutes of my hopeless blubbering, the sky unfolds, and fat raindrops force their way through the fabric of my torn up tee shirt.

"Fucking seriously?" I say to myself. There is literally nothing that will go my way, is there?

The thing is, I know I'm right. My parents abandoned me nearly a year ago. I'm unable to go to school at the age of seventeen because I don't have the time. And, to make matters worse, I was just thrown out of my apartment. One of my friends made me a deal, seeing as I'm a minor, that if I could keep up with rent, then I could stay. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep up with the rent because, even though I have three jobs, none of them pay enough for me to be able to sustain myself.

It seemed like hours went by. Just me crying by myself in the middle of an alley. The men were nowhere to be found, clearly giving up on me, but no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't get myself to calm down.

A little while later, things start to pick up at the store, and I assume people are beginning to get off of work. I wish I could relate.

It seems that all I can do is sit and cry, and just the thought of my future and the fact that I'll be stuck on the streets sends me into a frenzy. There is no way I can live like this.

Before it even registers that I'm crying, I begin to have a full blown anxiety attack, clutching at my chest in order to release some of the tension.

"Hey, are you okay?" A voice calls from the right of me; the side that faces the entrance of the alley.

I can't look up, can't even attempt to respond as the stranger repeats his or her question.

"It's okay," the person is closer now, almost so close that I can feel their breath fan out on the side of my face.

I gasp in surprise, jerking my upper body up and away from the person, who I have now identified as a male.

"It's not okay," I whisper, sucking in large breaths of air in an attempt to at least somewhat calm myself down.

The man comes up closer and wraps an arm around me in an attempt to comfort me, but this gesture has been used all too often when another homeless person wants to steal something from me, so I scurry away. He looks at me, confused, and I feel a bit dumb for my reaction, but I can't help it. It's like someone who has been abused - they typically flinch away when something triggers them to think they're in a situation where they may be hit or yelled at. In my situation, I feel like I could be robbed, so naturally, I move away.