At the age if 2, my mom and dad got divorced. My dad moved away and my mom became a drug addict. It wasn’t bad until I as about 10. I was a 4th grader at some beaten down elementary school in Detroit. I was probably one of the best performing students in the whole school. But one day I got pulled out of class to get notified and taken to the hospital where my mother was at. She was at work under the influence of some drug I was to little to know or understand. She was in a accident that had killed her a hour after arriving to the hospital. I was a only child so I knew I would most likely get taken into foster care.

  A little over 2 years have passed, I am now 12 years old living with the mentality of someone older. I get woken up by the sound of one of the other foster kids running up the stairs. I quickly wake up knowing he was going to run into the room. He was always known as the dick around here. He runs in and jumps onto my bed and slaps me 3 or 4 times to make sure im awake.
“Get off me fata**!” I yell at him.
He was definitely overweight and for being 17, he had the mind of a 10 year old. I was getting tired of having to wake up to this everyday, a busy, loud and dirty house. A place I could never call home, just a place where I stay at.

I met this kid that lived down the block from me, his name was Felix, a short 15 year old with a low taper haircut. He had a muscular body for being his age. I starting talking to him regularly and hanging out. I found out that he hated living in the foster house as so did I. He told me that he knows a friend named Dexter who is a high ranking officer in a major gang. He plans on running away from his foster family to join the gang and asks me if I want to join him

After about another week of debating and thinking, I came to the decision of leaving this hellhole. The next day was the day we planned on leaving. I packed my backpack wish as much clothes as I could hold and told my foster mom I was going out to go play football. As I was getting to Felix’s house I see him walking out the door and immediately says lets go. We walk for about 10 minutes until we reach train leaving a day earlier than I expected. The train takes us to  part of town even more ghetto than were we were living. We get to the projects were the gang’s territory and building are. As soon as one of the many guards see us they immediately come over to see what business we have being here. We told him what we were here for  but of course, to our luck, Felix’s friend and leader of the gang were out of the city on some business with the gang and that we couldn’t stay here. It was getting too dark to return and by now the beatings we’d take if we went back “home” wouldn’t be worth it.

We were now officially homeless, running away from our foster lives.