Rescue (Cameron Dallas)

One

You know what I got for my birthday? Diddly squat. My sweet sixteen and I end up with nothing; no crazy party, no car, not even a measly cake.

What I got for my birthday, four punches from each member of my repulsive foster family and a 'Happy Birthday, bitch' from each of them as well.

That does it; I won't stand to be treated like shit anymore. I've been either a punching bag or invisible for the last three years, and I'm done with it. With the most emotionless face I can manage, I walk calmly to my bedroom and pack my school backpack with clothes, my journal, Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut and I kiss my mother's ring and place it in the front pocket.

My parents were killed in a car crash when I was a baby. Since they had no living relatives, I was put in the foster-care program. The ring was put in my very little, unsafe hands. My foster family from when I was very young held the ring in their keeping until I had to leave at age six because "the home environment has been deemed unfit for a young child". It was only because they were hoarders who had giant towers of plastic crap everywhere. The people were nice enough.

However, if I hadn't moved from the hoarder's place in Oklahoma to my wonderful foster grandparents in Selma, Alabama, then I never would have met Cammy, my awesomely awesome next-door neighbor and best friend. We had the same social worker, Mrs. Benge, because Cam was also a foster kid. Also, my foster grandparents spoiled me rotten like I was their own granddaughter.

As for Cammy and me, we were the best of friends, and more than friends later on, until my foster grandpa, Gerald, died of a heart attack. Since my foster grandma's, Barbara's, pension was not good enough to support the both of us, and Cam's house was jam-packed, I had to go to the group home in Mississippi at age 13.

The group home treated me terribly. It was like I wasn't a person to them. I felt like livestock. The food was terrible and nutrition-less, the mattresses were rock solid, and the headmaster ruled with an iron rod, literally. If you did anything out of line, you had to run up and down the Big Hill in the back while carrying the iron rod until Mrs. Ledder said to stop. On top of all of this torture, I had horrid nightmares about leaving Cam and Grandpa G. Every night, I would wake with a scream and drenched in sweat. Luckily, the whole country found out what was happening at the hellhole of an orphanage and shut it down. I was only there for a year, but it was one of the longest years of my life. When the place closed down, I had passed out because I led a hunger strike and hadn't eaten in two weeks. I was lucky enough to have someone save me; my first trip to the ER.

I then lived in four abusive foster homes around Mississippi and Louisiana over the course of two years; ER trips two, three and four. My current home in Tupelo, Mississippi, has been merely annoying if you compare it to the other ones. I must leave now, before it becomes more than annoying. Still have the night terrors.

I take my backpack and go out the door. I have just enough money for a Greyhound bus ticket out of this horrid town. I am returning to the only place I ever felt safe, Selma, Alabama.

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