A girl sits on a bus, headed away from the city she used to call home. Away from the insults, the people laughing behind her back, away from those she is meant to call 'family', away from everything- all the memories.
She wants to get away, go somewhere that she can re-invent herself, where she doesn't have to cope with it all.
She rubs her scuffed Converse All Stars together, and picks at her nails, the blue polish chipped, and almost all worn off. Her scruffy looking jeans and army-style jacket keeps all the other passengers at bay, she doesn't have to worry about anyone sitting next to her.
Her hands nervously run over the book she has in her lap, Dostoevskys' "Crime and Punishment." The bus jolts and judders, she doesn't want to risk reading, in case she throws up. She hates getting travel-sick, something almost all her family is afflicted with.
Was. Was afflicted with.
She stares out the window, not really seeing the signs as they speed by her.
And this, my friends, was the fourth time Sara Sidle, 14 years of age, had run away from a foster family.
But Sara's life, well it hadn't always been like this...