Teen Spirit

0.3 Prologue

It was a silent night when I found her. In fact, when I initially found her, I didn't realize what had happened, and can you really blame me? I was six, and walking into my house to see my mom passed out on the couch was a pretty standard thing.

So why would I, a six-year-old, check her breathing? Especially when I could have a small snack. Small because if she noticed any of her snacks gone, I knew that it would hurt me when she did wake up.

It's almost sad, I went about my life for nearly a half-hour until I realized something was wrong. I was hungry, and though I was a reasonably independent six-year-old, the stove was just outside of my skill set. What does that equate to? I wouldn't eat if she didn't wake up to feed me.

So I approached her slowly, still remembering the several times a fist went flying when I woke her up. "Mom?" I remember asking her softly, shaking her shoulders. She was cold, I remember thinking it was strange. "Mom?" I tried again. It was on the twentieth try that I ran next door crying, telling the unimpressed woman that my mother wouldn't wake up. She went from disinterested to concern in 3.5 seconds. It was shocking.

The woman told me to stay at her house, and that is where my memory fades.

Here is what I do know. My mom had been dead for three hours, she had overdosed on meth, they found the needle still in her arm. With no other living relative and my father missing in action, I became a ward of the state. A ward of New York.

You always hear these horror stories about foster homes, but in actuality, it is only that way about a fourth of the time. In my eight years in the system, I have had eight homes, two of those had been abusive, two had been neglectful, but the other four danced between people who raised me to some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

But maybe I just got lucky.

Besides, I still have four years to go, so who knows, however, what I do know is that I turned fourteen last week and I start high school in less than three weeks. High school will be better than middle school and elementary, it has to be.