Prologue

"Work without love is slavery." – Mother Teresa

Those were the words I lived off of. My other friends believed in, "Death is better than slavery." – Harriet Ann Jacobs. That was a lie to me. If that was true, they would have died by then. I wouldn't let them though. Not ever! I worked with tons of other slaves but, the only ones I was really friends with were Noelle, Ed, and Reginald. When we first met up, we all knew we wouldn't survive anything. Our owners kept us away most of the time, but we got to meet up on Sundays at the church, sometimes work together. The work we went through was really brutal, especially for our young ages. Noelle and I taking the youngest age of 12, Reginald 14, and Ed who is still as short as me, also being the oldest at a whopping 15 years old! So yeah, that's nice. It's like having two older brothers and a same age sister.

The first one out of them who I really met first was Reginald. We were being sold and after I was sold to a greedy owner, he was up next. They were more brutal to him than to me. Probably due to his uncaring and cold personality. They pushed him to the ground and started beating him when he tried to fight back. I watched in horror and wanted to look away, but my owner made me watch by shoving my head up to the beaten male. Lots of people wanted him due to his strength and will to go on. We were younger that time but, it's been a few years now. He's learned his ways from his daily beatings. Or so I hope.

When I met Noelle, it was only last year. I was going to church and I saw another slave being beaten by other slaves. I wanted to step up, but a kid with blond hair stepped up for me and got the others away. Noelle thanked him once she was able to get up. I never knew that boy was Ed till later when we got introduced. She thought we already knew each other and I got Ed to help her. So, we became friends from a misunderstanding.

The story I'm about to tell you happened many years ago. This is the true story about our lives in tragedy.