Almost Lost by Beatrice Sparks Page B

keeps expanding until I feel like I’m going to explode.”
    â€œBut we are eventually going to defuse your past! Don’t allow yourself to think differently about that for a second.”
    â€œOkay. Back to East Los. I wanted out more than anything, anything! But I was afraid to leave and afraid to stay, and besides, I had no way to get out. So, I kept myself twisted and spun (drunk and drugged) to the point where I couldn’t have thought if I’d tried.
    â€œThen one night, I stumbled across a softly mewing, little newborn kitten in an alley. I can’t remember where I found a carton of milk, but I got it somewhere and dipped my finger in and then let the soft, helpless little ball of fur lick it off. I hid the two of us behind some old crates, with him inside my jacket for I guess a couple of days. He just kept getting weaker, and I kept getting more in touch with reality.
    â€œI couldn’t believe where I was and how low I’d sunk. Sammy was the only important thing I had in my life. Oh, I’d named the kitten Sammy. In some strange way, he was like all the good things that had once been me. He kissed my face, and sometimes I’d put milk on my chin and cheeks so he’d lick it off, and I’d feel that I belonged to some good someone, something, somehow, somewhere.
    â€œA few times I heard Cholo calling me. I suspected he had a run, but I didn’t want to kick with them anymore, even though my stomach was growling from lack of food and my head was aching as well as all my other body parts.
    â€œAfter a while Sammy died, and part of me died with him. I took off my shirt and wrapped him in it, then scrambled through the trash can till I found a little box his size. I buried him in the corner of thebin and walked down to the church to pick two flowers to put over him. I was off my turf and was asking to get popped, but I didn’t care. Most of me was dead already.”
    â€œThat must have been inconceivably painful.”
    â€œNo, actually by then I couldn’t feel anything , but now I know not feeling might be even worse than feeling! Anyway, some forevers later Cholo found me wandering around looking for a way out and thought I needed action. I was too weary to resist. A few of us piled into his car and oozed around looking for trouble. Nothing much happened, and I’d just gotten out of his buggy when another car drove up and started shooting. They got me in the thigh and through my shoulder and waist.”
    â€œYou were hit in a drive-by?”
    â€œYeah, and I went back and forth between being glad it was me that ‘got it’ and being in so much pain that I wished the shooters had done a better job. The guys wrapped me in plastic so I wouldn’t bleed on Cholo’s car and took me to General Hospital, where they unceremoniously dropped me by a side door. In a way I understood, because it wouldn’t do any good for them to get themselves involved.
    â€œAfter what seemed like another creation of time, with me moaning and crying for help and bleeding all over, someone came to the door and called for some other guys with a stretcher. They took me through endless doorways and then left me lying in a cold, drafty hall. People scurried back and forth, and it was like I was invisible. After what seemed like eternities I could hear myself sobbing like a baby and under my breath calling for my mom. Eventually two white ghouls stopped, pulled down the blanket someone had thrown over me and shook their heads.One said, ‘See this rag (bandanna showing a gang’s colors)? These guys come in like flies. There’s no end of them.’ The other ghoul snickered as they pushed me into the operating room. I tried to get up to leave, but a big white-dressed refrigerator came out of nowhere and held me down while someone gave me a shot. As I drifted off I heard them talking about how bad I stunk.”
    â€œYou must have been grossed out