Chapter 2

That was close, Valerie thought as she walked to her locker. Most of the other kids were gone by now. Off to sports practice or home. Valerie put her books into her backpack. She had a lot of homework to do.

She walked to the city library where it was nice and quiet and began to slog away on her math homework. She really detested the Pythagorean Theorum.

She at last finished at about 5:00, which was perfect timing. She went back to school and waited for the practices to be over. When she saw kids streaming out of the gym she snuck in and. She went to her locker and put her finished homework away. It was dark and cold and Valerie was famished. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch.

When at last the last student had left and the coaches had locked up, Valerie began rummaging through the garbage. She fished out every last can and bottle, flattened them and stuck them in her backpack.

"Good hull," she said to herself. She stuck her gum in the doorjamb and went to the nearest store. Her treasure of discarded bottles and cans was worth a whole $1.50.

She returned to the school and bought a bag of potato chips and fruit snacks from the vending machine. "Good dinner," Valerie thought to herself as she made her way to the teacher's lounge. She tried the door, finding it unlocked. That meant the custodian hadn't been in to clean yet.

She sat on the couch, doing the rest of her homework. When the distant sound of a vacuum warned her the custodian was coming, she quickly shoved her books in her bag, hit the light switch and hid behind the couch.

After the cursory vacuum around the floor, Valerie knew she was safe for the night. She rinsed her hair in the sink, using hand soap as shampoo, then gave herself a sponge bath with paper towels.

"Ahhh….," she sighed as she stretched out on the couch and fell asleep.

The idea of sleeping at the school had occurred to her a few days before. She was sleeping in an abandoned church basement, scared of the rats and drug dealers in the area. Who knew when they would come back. Valerie had been curled up in a corner, shivering and hungry when school hit her. Nobody used the school all night. It had bathrooms, heat and lights.

She went to school and found the doors locked. Desperate and freezing, she used one of her hair pins to try to pick the lock and to her amazement it worked. She remembered seeing a couch in the teachers' lounge and managed to pick the lock on that door also. Curled up on the couch, she'd fell into the deepest sleep in months.

Valerie always slept with the blinds open so the sun would awaken her. The last thing she wanted was to be caught. That would lead to questions she didn't want to answer and places she didn't want to go.

In the morning, she brushed her teeth and removed all traces she'd even been there. Then she would find some remote corner of the school to hide in until it was safe to come in and eat breakfast. She received free breakfasts and lunch so her belly was reasonably full during the day.

Valerie had a routine to this. She had two outfits she kept in her locker so she could wear something different every day. She knew who to sit with at lunch because they never finished all of their meal and she could eat it or squirrel it away for later. As for staying clean, on gym days she had to shower and on the other days she took a sponge bath in the sink. She lived in fear of stinking but nobody had ever said anything.

Valerie's body had different ideas. Potato chips filled her up but they weren't very nutritious. On days she had gym, she was always ravenous. She had even stolen food from a store one day she was so hungry. Her body began to rebel. She came down with a horrible cough and was as pale as paper.

She sat listlessly in chemistry one day, about two weeks after she started living in the school. She tried to make herself care about the noble gases but couldn't quite muster any interest. Her head was throbbing and all she wanted to do was sleep. Her stomach growled loudly. She kept checking the clock, calculating how long it would be before she could start scavenging for bottles. If she hadn't been so preoccupied, she would have noticed the looks of mounting concern Ms. Spellman kept throwing her way.

When the bell rang, Ms. Spellman gestured for her to remain. Valerie felt her heart beating and her resistance crumbling. Give me the strength not to tell her, she thought. Her back began to throb.

"Valerie," Ms. Spellman began, "can you explain this?" She showed her the test the class had taken the previous day. Instead of her usual A, a D stared back at her. Valerie stared at it in disbelief and sighed. It was hard to be worried about chemistry when you were sick, starving and exhausted.

"I'm sorry. I guess I just didn't study for it like I should have."

Her teacher took a hard look at the child in front of her. Valerie had lost weight, there was no denying that. Instead of the healthy skinny she had previously been, she now looked gaunt. Her dark eyes were too big for her face, her skin pale as paper. Her clothes hung off of her; clothes Ms. Spellman could tell had not been washed in a while. Valerie had always had an air of fragility about her but now it was more like desperation.

Valerie coughed, a deep hacking cough that concerned her teacher even more. It sounded almost like pneumonia.

"Valerie, honey, I'm worried about you. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

Valerie bit her lip and looked in the beautiful green eyes of her favorite teacher. "No, ma'am. Everything is fine."