"You know that boy will never be adopted. We'll be stuck with him until he's seventeen. I just don't know what we'll do with him." He had cried for an hour after overhearing those words, curled up in the closet where he found himself so often. Most boys found themselves in the closet because of causing mischief, talking back or being generally disruptive. The little albino, however, usually found himself in the tiny dark room for two reasons. Either he had once again forgotten that speaking the blatantly obvious was sometimes taken as insulting ('That lady has an ugly old dead bird on her hat!") or an influential couple had come to adopt someone. Apparently some people found his white skin and wide pink eyes unnerving so he was often hidden away. He didn't know why. He had never harmed anyone before. But he had always hoped that one day a family would come looking for a boy just like him. That had been his hope, that is, until he had heard Mrs. Tweedy talking too the scary skeleton lady.

It was that day that he had decided to leave Mrs. Tweedy's Asylum for Unwanted Children. If he couldn't get a family there than he would have to find one on his own. The idea scared him a bit. As long as he could remember he had lived in the old brick building with roughly two hundred other kids. And going anywhere on his own...well, he had never done that before. But he really really wanted a family and he wasn't going to get one here.

He kept telling himself that as he finally mustered up the nerve to peek his head out the window. He let out a small uncertain whimper. Certainly it was far higher than just two stories. In the dark it looked as if he were on top of the bell tower down by the bay. Somewhere in town a clock chimed midnight. He dropped the length of rope he had discovered in the supply closet out of the window and watched it trail down to the sidewalk below. He turned to look one last time at the room he had slept in for eight of his nine years. There were about thirty beds with roughly a hundred kids piled on top of them, most were either snoring or drooling.

"Goodbye everyone!" He announced rather loudly to the room in general. "I'm off to find a family!"

He was instantly bombarded with shouts of: "Shut up!", "Are you balmy?" "It's midnight!" and "Jump already!". These were accompanied by various projectiles, most of them quite accurately aimed at his head. He managed to dodge a couple of shoes, a yo-yo and a two-year-old but a pillow caught him square in the face flipping him backwards and out of the window. He screamed grabbing wildly at the rope as he tumbled head over heals down the side of the building, praying that his young life wasn't going to end as an unsightly blotch on the pavement. Fortunately he managed to catch the rope on his way down. Unfortunately the thought of tying it to something had never occurred to him. So the screaming and plummeting continued until he bounced off an awning and landed painfully on the walk just below.

A light came on in one of the lower windows. "You boys stop that ruckus or I'll take away your eating privileges!" Shrieked a voice that was somewhere between a dying monkey and a breaking train.

The little Albino didn't stop to see if he had broken anything. He leapt to his feet and scurried out of the asylum gates into the streets beyond.

The city was scary at night. The flickering streetlamps cast dark creeping shadows in the cobbled alleys, shadows that grew into big scary things the longer he looked. He hugged himself as he wandered through the dark streets, jumping at every noise. Maybe he should have run away during the day.

"Meow."

He nearly jumped out of his skin as something touched his leg. A relieved sigh escaped him as he saw the gray tabby cat at his feet. "Hi there." He kneeled down to pet it and smiled as it began to purr, the fears of a moment ago seemed to vanish now that he wasn't alone. "Do you know where I can sleep?"

The cat glanced up at him, rubbed against his leg again and trotted off down an alleyway and disappeared into a doorway.

"Wait for me!" He called, hurrying after. The door was shut and this confused him for a moment until the cat peeked its head out of a hole in the doorjamb and gave him a curious 'mew'. "Oh, that's how you got in there." The hole was pretty small and he wasn't quite sure he would fit. But the cat had done it. He got onto his stomach and with a great deal of grunting and a bit of encouragement from the cat he managed to wiggle through.

"It's dark in here. I wish I could see in the dark like you." And it was dark. The only thing he could make out were vague shapes. Stacks of crates maybe. There was no way he could explore the room as he could scarcely see beyond his nose. He crawled a little ways from the door, leaned against the wall and shivered. What was he going to do now?

Something soft and warm climbed onto his lap and began to purr. A tired smile slipped across his face as he slipped into an exhausted sleep. He would find a family tomorrow.