Dear Diary,

This may be the last entry I get to write. This is the last sheet of paper I could find. I won’t be able to buy anymore for quite a while… mother got hurt really bad today; her apron caught a fire and burnt her up. I’m not sure if we will be able to pay for her to go to the doc to get fixed up. Other than that today’s been pretty good. I went out to look for a job; I couldn’t find one but the lady at the market told me of some places that should have some positions open. I’ll go look at those tomorrow. I keep thinking back a few years ago, before pap left us. I remember him giving me Karen. She was wrapped in a box with a red bow and he told me “Now hunny, don’t ever lose this. One day it’ll be worth a fortune and you’ll have every cent.” Even now I take her out of the box and brush her hair. Silly, I know; but for some reason it makes me calmer. Can you believe someone actually wanted to buy her from me? He offered five dollars for this little doll… but I just couldn’t do it. I could never sell her. Why did pap have to leave us? Why did he have to go and get himself killed? It’s not fair… Since he left everything’s been a mess. Brother went off to live with his wife and mother is hurt. Now it’s just me and Karen here… heard mother talking about the government taking the house. If we don’t get the money then we may be out on the street… we’ve already had to move twice… the people we’re with now are nice but they won’t be if we can’t pay the rent. They came twice yesterday asking for it but I just told them mother was out shopping. I’m running out of room now… guess I should’ve wrote smaller. I remember back when I had all the paper I could ever want to write on… now all I got is this little sheet of crumpled paper to write on. Maybe one day I’ll find a nice man and have all the paper to write on I could ever want. Yea; stacks and stacks of paper. I wish we could just go back to the way things used to be and forget this every happened.