DISCLAIMER: Me No mak-ey. The only thing I invented was a dumbwaiter I installed on the living room stairs.

Fate.
It's the only thing that humans have as an excuse for their failures in life.

I guess the whole thing started with the arm...

I still remember its long, tattered sleeve, and the fingers that barely stuck out of the end of it. They were grayish, large, and green dirt was visible from under the fingernails.

It was a stranger with a long coat and a hooded sweater over his face, obscuring it from view. He looked like one of those ugly fuckers from that movie "The Village".

"Hey, lil' girl…" said a voice from the hooded 'thing' that grasped my arm tightly. His breath was so nasty it even blinded me for a few seconds.

-Cough-

"How's about making a hundred bucks?" hissed the Hood in an overdramatic alleyway accent.

"Well," I thought for a moment, then surprised him with an incredibly stupid answer;
" I could get more money than that by selling counterfeit boobs... Besides, there's a police guy over there." I said dimly, pointing to a police officer just across the road.

"He's not a REAL police officer, silly girl. He's on lookout incase a real cop comes along." The hood's hold was making my arm start throbbing in pain.

Well there goes that plan

"What do you want!" I demanded, frustrated, trying to tug my arm off his grasp.

"You're the lucky little kid who's gonna do me a favor."

Oh my God...

"P-please don't rape me." I said, almost in tears. "I have an older cousin! With real breasts! She's Swedish, too!"

The Hood laughed.

"As much as I'd like to meet your Swedish cousin, I ain't gowna rape a freaka-lookin kid like you."

My fear was replaced by hurt and anger.

"So I'm not good enough to be raped?" An unusually large, sad tear slid down my cheek, "You think I'm ugly."

The Hood stuttered, "No no. You're not that ugly."

While the Hood lowered his head to hide his expression of discomfort, I tried to grab the gun that I could see portruding from the sleeve of his wrist .

As if the Hood had heard my thoughts, he pulled out the gun first and gently planted it on the side of my head. His other hand was clenching my hair and practically pulling it from my skull.

"Here's a gun for ya." He chuckled and a foul odor came from the hood, hiding his face from me.

"So do you wanna make a hundred dollars... or wake up dead in this alley with lead in your brain?"

"How can you wake up dead-" he pulled at my hair, harder this time.

"SHUT UP!" He removed the gun from my right temple. "Don't run away!" he threatened when he put the gun back into the coat.

The Hood took another object out of his coat. It was a small, plastic zip-lock bag, containing white powder….

I began to understand; "Man, that's-"

"-Cocaine." interrupted the hooded criminal.

He slapped the nauseating plastic bag onto my shivering hand. I inhaled the cold, stale winter air and let out a shuddering sigh, trying to hide my extreme fear.

"Now what I want you to do for me, lil' girl is to go across the street to the cop you just saw.-ACT CASUAL-and pretend you're talking to him. Then give him this bag. You got it, lil' girl?"

That's when I suddenly realized-

"Hey, your voice is kind of familiar." I was interrupted by a hard shove.

"DO YOU WANT A HUNDRED DOLLARS OR NOT?"

I was stuck.

It was 2:25 in the morning and no one sane is out in the streets at midnight. Unfortunately I was a foreigner from an insignificant blotch of land on the Red Sea, and had just arrived into this Houston place 6 hours ago.

There was also the fact that I suffer from a VERY bad short-term memory problem. I turn a corner on the sidewalk and I can't remember where I came from! Eventually some neighbor recognizes me and plops me onto my doorstep, telling my parents not to let their 'mentally disabled' child wander off in the streets again.

I was stuck.

But, I really did want a hundred dollars, and I was just some incredibly stupid foreign kid with nothing in her pocket but a dollar and some chewing gum.

What to do, what to do?

Did I mention I was stuck?

CHOICE 1: run away and get shot by an anonymous bum in a hood who apparently suffers from gingivitis.

CHOICE 2: Give yucky plastic bag to a loser whose life is already messed up and earn a hundred dollars…..

Hmmmm...

I look left, then right, then left again.

I cross the street.

The "cop" looks at me and smirks.

"Hi" I say.

I hand the small plastic bag to the "cop"/drug person.

My plan was to go back across the street and collect my $100.

But instead, someone grabs my arm again:

The cop.

"Lil' girl, you've gotten yourself into big trouble." He shows me his badge, and I began to cry. Loudly.

He was a real cop!

Just before the cop dunks my head into his police car, I glance across the street.

The hooded stranger pulls off his dark disguise and I see his face. My heart stops beating, and I feel it never would start again.

For there, with a guilty façade smudged across his face, was my brother.

My brother, the Hood.

The same brother who welcomed me in the airport with a smile and a hug, saying. "Welcome to America!"

The same brother who told me he was glad to see me for the first time since I was barely eight. That he was SORRY FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO BE THERE IN MY PARENTS' FUNERAL.

The brother that was supposed to be my new parent.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the cop glimpse at by brother and...he nods to him.

They had planned this….both of them.

BUT WHY?

That is how I ended up at Camp Greenlake without any idea of what had happened, without a clue, without a family, and without a hundred dollars.