Alone

Realization

She goes by Abigail Murphy and she is 5'2. Her baby face and full cheeks might give away her age but she's actually 14. Her grimy fingers and hands are just a hint of what the rest of her body looks like under her baggy purple sweater and thin bare tights. She doesn't bother to do her hair so it's always disheveled. Her cold stone eyes and melancholy face show that she is mostly unhappy and her grubby feet filled with filth that she has gathered over the years. Though she has no shoes, she is always walking to each place she wants to visit. As she passes a window of a shoe store, she screams at the sight of herself, feeling sick to her stomach.

Living on the streets of Grenehoro, North Carolina is no easy task. Abigail faces unruly men whose sense of moral has long since disappeared. Broken shards of glass from beer bottles impale her unprotected feet , left by drunkards who also roam the street always drinking and ultimately throwing up everything but their memories. Groaning in pain, she reaches into her pale,dusty fringe shoulder bag in search of her first aid kit that she had stolen from the neighborhood pharmacy while balancing on her left foot.

Grimacing at the sight of the glistening fragment of glass embedded in the sole of her right foot, she holds an alcohol pad in her left hand while steadying her right hand to remove the glass. She squeezes her eyes tight and slowly moves her hand to hover above her wound, letting her fingers trace over the glass. In a split second, she grabs the glass, yanks it out, and lays the alcohol pad on it, stifling back the flow of tears.

For consolation she takes out a box from her bag, big enough to fit a crow, opens it and reveals a baby kitten, lapping up a puddle of water that formed in the corner of the box. "Hey there Celine." Abigail whispers to the kitten. As if she understood the kitten "meowed" in response. Satisfied, Abigail started to clean her wound and wrapped a bandage around it to protect it from getting an infection. Digging into her bag, Abigail pulls out a tired, dirty, pink journal with her named embroidered in intricate cursive font. She opens the journal to a fading yellow page where a stubby pencil laid. Picking up the pencil, she starts her journal entry:

Well, today seems like it will not turn out to be a very good day. I just cut the sole of my foot with a broken piece of glass left by those damn drunks. I cleaned it up and I'm on my way to my spot. I'll write later. Love, Abigail.

She tucked her journal away along with Celine into her bag. Hoisting it over her shoulder she makes her way to Eledge Street limping with every step. Right before she was going to turn the corner to arrive at her spot at the closed cafe on Eledge Street and Lune Lane, she heard the heart-wrenching sound of a sputtering engine that could only be made by a rusty engine. That noise and engine that belonged to no other vehicle than the bus to St. Joseph's Girls Orphanage. From previous encounters with the policeman that drives that vehicle, Abigail knew better than to just walk like a normal child when she knew she wasn't.
Instead she ran like the dickens to a nearby alley with a narrow opening that seemed to be tailored for her thin body. She hid in the comforting darkness till she heard the last "sputtt-ttttts" of the engine. Waiting a few more minutes she waited, and finally she slumped down onto the ground. Tears flowed down her face as she realised something she had feared was true.

She had no home.

She has no family.

She is all alone.