My name is Jennifer, and I live with my mother and sister in Orlando. My father left when I was just a baby, and my mother and I moved around more times than children with parents in the military. I have lived in 2 countries, 48 states, and over three hundred cities. But what is surprising is that I am only 15 years old. My mother use to tell me that it was to keep us young, and that moving was great for the soul. As I grew up, I decided that we moved because my mother would screw up in the city or job that she found by chance, and needed a change. It didn't keep either of us young and it defiantly didn't help my soul.

My mother, Nicole Turner, was your typical hippie mom or so I thought. She would get money by any means possible, which she would always share with me. I was never abused, physically or mentally, but I did learn not to depend on her. I can't count the number of times I had parent/teacher meetings and she opted to go to a party or to a club instead. The next day we would up and move. I love her, she's my momma, but I knew that when my little sister came, I would be her mom. I would make sure that she had the nurture of a mother that I never had, even though I was not her mom.

Like me, Beth never knew her father, and much to my surprise mom didn't even know her father. Apparently he was a rich married man, who offered my mother two thousand dollars to disappear. That was the best time of my life. She threw money everywhere, and I got an allowance. Twenty dollars a week, and I saved it. I wanted something good, like dolls or toys. In the end all the money I saved went back to my mother, when she spent all of hers. Beth is my best friend, she is seven years younger than me, but she and I could relate like no one else. Probably because we came from the same mom, cut from the same cloth as an old man once told me.

Every time I asked my mom about my father, I would get the same answer, "Baby, the only people who matter in life are those that are still around." I hated the answer, but I never want to be confrontational. So my life consisted of my momma, my sister, and waiting until the next move, but my life was about to change.