A girl was picking up trash by the lake. Again. It was the same girl every time, trying to look like a little angel. Collecting bottles to turn in for pennies. She was probably named homecoming queen. She probably had hundreds of service hours. She probably got to go to school, unlike me.

Homeless me. I was so tired of sleeping on park benches in rainy London. The one pair of clothes I salvaged from the mess caused by my family's eviction were dirty and torn.

How I had gotten to London, I wasn't sure. We lived in Coventry. After I got separated from my mom and dad and brothers, I had walked for days, aimlessly, until all of a sudden, I was in London.

I had started out spending my days looking for my family, but I had soon given up. Wherever they were, it wasn't London. I had started begging, but the police didn't like that. An elderly woman told me to go to an orphanage. I refused. I couldn't pretend to be an orphan. I wasn't one.

So I spent my days at the park, overshadowed by the girl picking up trash at the lake.


.....

It was three weeks after the trash girl started coming that she talked to me. She came up to me and said,

"Hi. I'm Kansas." I snorted at the name.

"Well, U.S.A. girl, I'm Jolie." She frowned at that.

"Us homeless girls have to look out for each other." I frowned,

"You're homeless?" She nodded,

"Why do you think I'm always collecting bottles?" I shrugged.

"Service hours?" She laughed,

"People tell me to go to the orphanage, but I didn't want to go alone."

"So?" I asked. She stared me in the eyes,

"Let's go together."

"I'm not an orphan!" I said.

"You need a place to live," she said. I sighed.

"Okay."

And so we lived at an orphanage. Kansas and I became best friends. But I never stopped thinking of her as the trash girl.

THE END