by Jane Lenon

Created on: July 19, 2008   Last Updated: July 20, 2008

" 'NOOO! 'cried out the tall, blonde, handsome boy sitting in a chair at the school office. 'It can't be possible. She was only 38. The doctors said that she only had a cold. Just a cold...' The boy trailed off as the tears streamed down his cheeks. All of a sudden, the boy's head jerked up and he ran out of the dull brown building. 'Why? Why me? Why now?' He seemed to be asking the raining sky.

Garret was a sophomore in high school. He was and always will be. Ever since that fateful day when his mom died from a mere cold (or so the doctors said), Garret had never been the same. Always hunched over and quiet, Garret slowly lost all his friends. Everyone stayed away from him. He just wasn't the same person as he used to be.

At first, Garret had gone crazy. He would go up to random people and ask them if they had seen his mom and then start asking them if they were his mom. After a while, he ran away from home, hoping to run away from the excruciating pain of dealing with his horrible loss. He ran straight for five hours until he fainted from exhaustion. After that, he was always hunched over and never talked. That is, if he did talk, he mumbled and never looked anyone directly in the eye.

Garret didn't know what to do. His life had gone uphill to downhill. He wrote poems about his life filled with contempt for reality. His school councilor met with him every week to help him discuss his feelings, but that never worked. Garrett let his anger keep boiling inside of him until he finally let it out...

Garrett ran away from home. Home was his one reminder of his past life; the life filled with the burning memories of his mother. He took all his belongings and packed them in his plain but durable suitcase.
Freedom.

Garrett had gained freedom. Freedom to be whatever he wanted. Freedom to do whatever he wanted. Freedom to think whatever he wanted. Freedom to feel whatever he wanted. No more horrible thoughts of his sickly, dying mother. No more, no more.

Already, a month passed. In the time spent away from his past home, things had changed. Garrett's home was now the streets. Every day, he begged for food in the soup kitchen and stood on the sidewalk with a cup in his hand, begging for money. Garrett may have been poor, but he was free.

He thought of it like the freedom of America. The reason people celebrated the 4th of July. The fight for freedom was won, but it also left the new country with nothing. Yet, the Americans were joyous and happy. They finally tasted the sweetness

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