When I was fourteen, I finally built up enough courage to ask a classmate to be my first girlfriend, her name was Laura. Laura had the most beautiful brown curly hair and her eyes were so dark yet full of so much life. After only a few months of dating, I walked over to her house. Before her house came into view I could smell the smoke. As I walked closer I broke out into a dead run. I could now see what was left of the horrific scene. Her house, or what was left of it was completely black and there was ruble everywhere. I was too late, the rescue crews were gone and I received no answers that day. Eventually, the police told us two men broke into her house and set fire to it. Sadly, Laura must have found them in the house because she was tied up and was unable to make it out of the fire. I lost a lot of me that year.
The next year my mother had another man come live with us for a time. One chilly night my mom took my siblings and me out to a nice dinner, it was nice to have dinner with just us. However, when we came home we found our apartment completely empty. The downstairs neighbor reported seeing our house guest and a few other men moving all of our belongings into a truck and driving off, so much for trust. Within the same year, I was walking down the street by the Hudson River. I remember the air smelling foul and a big man with a grease stained face and curly black hair in disarray pulling a gun on me asking me for my backpack. Fortunately for me, my brother came out of nowhere and hit the big man with a thick wooden stick. The man fell to his knees and the gun slid just out of reach giving my brother and me enough time to run. We ran breathlessly into a close by abandoned tar factory where we hid in a giant steel funnel just above a rusty old conveyor belt. Luckily the big grease stained man lost track of us. He then started yelling and firing his gun wildly in all directions. My brother and I stayed hidden for three hours before hanging upside down in the funnel, revealing one eye at a time for a quick radial look around.