Gina was wild, and you can’t cage a wild animal for long. She was with us about eight months. I remember it was winter again. Money was tight, and food was scarce. Gina liked the wild life. My mom didn’t allow the type of life, for a teenage girl, that she was used to. So Gina called someone else she knew, and made arrangements to leave us.
I remember the night she left. It was the last time I ever saw her. We’d shared a room for so many months, and it was so empty after she left. I missed her terribly. I remember her putting her stuff into the back of a white car. I’ll never forget watching her shut the lid down, and turning to me with a smile and saying, “Well, this is it, I guess.” I replied “Yeah... you take care of yourself. Don’t drink and smoke too much.” We laughed and hugged. She said, “Speak for yourself!” Then we cried. She’d been my best friend for the better part of two years and I knew, something inside me knew, that I would never see her again.
I didn’t get many letters this time. Just one from the place she went to from ours. Then about two years later, I got a letter from her, and she was in Missouri. She’d had a baby, by a married man. “ But he loves me,” she wrote. I felt very sad, and wondered if she’d ever really fi