Hello everyone! Thanks to everyone who reviewed! This is the second chapter. Enjoy!

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The front door opened and closed, and there was the sound of people walking into the house as Becky put Emily's plate in the sink. Everyone rose to their feet, for reasons that cannot be explained, and waited.

Moments later, a flood of people burst into the kitchen, and all was chaos. Becky and Danny were trying to get everyone to be quiet. The minute they saw Emily, the talking stopped, and they all turned to get a good look at her.

"Hi...everyone." Emily said, giving them a halfhearted wave. She didn't particularly like people staring at her, and they were doing it now.

"Everyone" consisted of Jesse, Joey, DJ, Michelle, Nicky, and Alex. They were all gaping at Emily, who gave them a sideways smile.

"Dad, who is this?" DJ asked, moving forward to stand next to her father.

"Everybody...this is Emily. Emily- I think you may have to tell your story again."

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Emily got everyone seated at the table and then found herself a chair at the head of the table.

"Okay, so first of all...Becky is my aunt. My mother was her sister...Cara...and Becky was supposed to take care of me if anything happened to my mother."

Jesse turned to Becky. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

Becky shrugged. "It never came up."

"So...I was living with my mother, doing just fine, and then...she died. She suddenly got sick and just...died. I was eight years old."

"Unfortunately, I didn't have any other relatives to take care of me. And no one bothered to notify Becky that my mother had died. So I was left in the house, all alone, for about a week. I would go to school every day, and my mother's car was still in the driveway, so no one ever knew. Then when the bank took our house...I left the house the day before they came. I had nowhere to go, so I just put myself out on the streets."

"Why didn't you tell someone?" Joey asked.

"There was no one to tell. My friends wouldn't have been able to help me...I never got a chance to talk to my teachers...I didn't know my neighbors. So I just...left."

"I wandered the streets for two days. My mother had left me some money, but I was not allowed to get it until I turned eighteen. So I just had what I had saved from my allowance. It wasn't much."

"One day, a woman came up to me on the street. I later found out she was a social worker. She asked me some questions and then took me to an orphanage."

"An orphanage? Why aren't you still there?" DJ questioned.

"Let me continue and maybe I'll tell you. Anyway, this orphanage was really bad. The owner was always drinking and he would...hit us...and he did other things...to the girls." Emily looked miserable, bringing back this memory.

"I made friends there, though. Lots of friends. So one night, I grabbed my three closest friends and we ran. No one ever noticed we were gone, and so we were able to make lives for ourselves."

"Our home was the streets, the gutters. We would steal food out of stores and we would do the same when we needed clothes. We rarely wore shoes. We didn't bathe, although sometimes we went swimming and got ourselves cleaned up. And we created a family."

"We would meet kids on the streets, kids that had lost their homes just like us. Soon, we added six people to our little group of four."

"Why?" Becky asked.

"When you're out on the streets, there's safety in numbers. You can't survive out there all on your own. You need someone to watch your back, and they need you for the same reason. People are less likely to pay attention to you if you're in a group like that."

"We ranged in age from seven to eighteen years old. The oldest was an eighteen-year-old girl. She had money from her parents, but she wasn't spending it well."

"What was she spending it on?" Jesse asked.

"Drugs. Alcohol. Cigarettes. She did spend it on two things for us. One of those things was a photo of all of us. We persuaded a photographer to take it and give us all a copy."

Emily set her backpack on the table, opened a pocket, and withdrew a photograph, setting it on the table. The picture seemed to be at least two years old. It showed about ten children and teenagers sitting and standing in front of an apartment building. They recognized one of the children as a younger Emily. She put the picture back in her backpack.

"Then the second thing was a tattoo, so if we ever got a nice foster home or even got adopted, we could always have proof that we once lived on the streets."

Emily thrust her hand forward so everyone could see the black skull and crossbones etched on the back of her left hand.

"Cool!" Nicky and Alex said together, moving forward for a closer look.

"We called our group several different things. The Outcasts, the Gutter Crawlers, the Street Rats. We got the inspiration for our group names from what other people called us."

"I've been looking for Becky for about a month, ever since I turned twelve. My group broke apart and I was walking around with two of the members when I remembered that I had a relative that might be able to take care of me. So the three of us have been looking through phone books and searching all over California. Eventually, we found the right place."

"And here I am."

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Well, there's the second chapter! If you did the math, you would have figured out that Emily lived on the street for four years. That's a long time...

I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter!