1.The Kid From The Street

Life can be tough. But what if your life involved sleeping in the street, getting beaten by heavy rain, and having the cold slap you in the face during winter? What if you had to watch someone get killed in front of you like they were just a tiny fly? That was my reality.

I'm Marcus Taylor. At 22 years old, 6.5 feet tall, and with curly hair, I'm that person who grew up on the streets.

They told me my father and mother died in an accident on the highway from Chicago. I was just an infant, whom they strapped to the back seat of the car. Of course, I remembered nothing of what happened while I was growing up, so I had no reason to question their deaths.

My parents were poor before they died. I needed no one to tell me that. I had no inheritance left to me. And the closest family they could have taken me to rejected me. I mean, who rejects a baby? But that's the definition of the useless uncle that I have.

That was the reason the orphanage took me in, and then when I ran off, it was because of an idiot who always physically abused me from time to time. I found a new home in the church but had to run again because other kids were poking their hands at me for all of their property that went missing.

Do not get me wrong. I was no thief. I felt they blamed me because every other kid in the church knew in one way or another that I could not afford to buy my own piece of candy.

I blamed no one though. I understood that life isn't always as exciting as in fairy tales. It may sometimes be hard for a little child like me.

Andrew was the other kid I met on the street. He wasn't my friend, nor was he an acquaintance. I called him a "fending buddy" because I understood that you cannot have any friends on the street. The ones you called friends today might be the ones to give you up tomorrow because he has a cut from the large share.

It's been three years since I've been living on the street before I met Andrew. Every hour of the night, we slept under the long bridge. However, no one dared to sleep too deeply. We must survive by any means necessary.

This meant that if we detected that a lone car was passing the bridge, we ambushed it and took the valuables of the people in the car from them.

It got worse, and Andrew and I had to resort to more scrappy survival methods during the day.

Andrew was the attention diverter. He either found a means to create tension for the passerby or create entertainment for the passerby, and through that, I pickpocket.

Not that I was proud of it or that I wanted to do it at all, but if I didn't do that, how was I expected to feed? No one wanted to hire a homeless boy in a rag to even mop their floors for cash.

So since I tried over and over again and there was no one that hired me, I gave up on the idea that I might be hired because I knew they would never hire me.

May 15th, 2005, I became a young adult and this was was a day I cannot forget. The darkness had just changed to morning, and the cold injected me with multiple endurances.

I was there beside the recycling bin with blurry vision. Suddenly, Andrew rushed down to me. He appeared unsettled within himself, and I recognized his expression to be that of fear or something worse.

"What did you do?" I whispered, but he did not say a word other than to look behind him in such a hurry, and he turned to look at me again.

He pushed his hands forward for me to see, and from that, I got the gist.

Andrew had gotten us something to eat for the morning, and we needed to go away from the location or we would risk being caught by other boys who would snatch our food from us.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a gunshot. The smallest gang came to the street to teach a lesson to the guy who stole from them. They shot him and took his body away. However, that was a normal occurrence, and we did not let that distract us.

In each of Andrew’s hands was a black bag filled with fruits, vegetables, bread, and water. Though he seemed scared, he smiled at me and continued to look behind him as if someone were chasing him.

But that was okay. Every day on the street, we lived head over heels in the total understanding that someday, we might no longer be lucky.

I smiled back at him as my stomach made empty sounds, I collected a bag from him.

Andrew nodded. I understood what he meant. It was for us to quickly jump to our feet and run as fast as our legs could carry us to a safe hideout, where we would devour every damn goodie in the bag and have our empty stomachs fed.

But before we could jump to our feet, there was a sudden commotion everywhere. Each boy and teenager, little and grown, was running helter-skelter. Some jumped the fence just to escape the situation, and others were already rounded up.

This was another normal occurrence, but this kind always involved a great murder, and everyone was scared to the bone marrow.

Andrew and I were no different. We were among the others who were already rounded up by the big gang.

At this point, Andrew's breathing was heavier. It was easily apparent on his face that he was in a great panic, and his shorts were already soaked from pee.

Before trouble came for me, I already tried in my own way to evade it. I found a way to fling the bag in my hand away before we were caught.

"How dare you, sons of b*tches, steal from me?" The gang leader said as he jumped down from his rusty truck.

"Who is it, or do I help each one of you get to hell faster?" he asked, puffing out smoke from his mouth as he slowly paced around us all.