Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets

by Beatrice Sparks

  “A ways down the line he started talking about little kids, and I thought of Dorie and Dana and hoped the whole truck would blow up with both of us losers in it. He almost bragged about being a ‘Chicken Hawk’ (a pedophile; child molester). He didn’t deserve to live. Laughingly, he told me that I was too old for him, but I’d do in a pinch, only first he had to take time out at a rest stop so he could dump his lunch, and then we’d get into the bunk behind the seat and have fun. He giggled and showed me some hot Red Hair Sies (strong marijuana) he had and said we’d both take a hit before…His foul mouth watered and his red eyes glistened like the demon pictures on the covers of horror books.

  “I softly said I didn’t have to go, but the minute I saw him turn the corner to the men’s room, I grabbed the Duce-Duce 22 (gun) I’d seen under the seat, stuffed it in my shirt, and dropped to the ground. I landed with such a loud thud that I was sure I had either shot myself or broken open my stitches, but I didn’t care. I was out of the truck.

  “Thank goodness there were high heavy weeds around the rest stop because by the time I hopped and crawled and belly-wriggled ten or twenty feet back into them, I could hardly breathe I was hurting so bad. I wanted to scream out in pain and for help, but I didn’t dare. Ants crawled over me, and some big black bugs began gnawing at my uncovered arm. I didn’t move, but occasionally, in spite of myself, the slightest moan forced itself out between my lips and I shuddered. I was trying with all my might to keep absolutely still and soundless. After a while I began to shake violently, and my teeth chattered so loudly that I knew the demon deviate would see the weeds rustling over me, but apparently he didn’t because after a little while I heard the big old truck grate into gear and drive off without me.

  “I felt a soft black cloud swirling around inside my head and knew I was about to pass out. I guessed maybe in a week or so someone coming into the rest stop, maybe the guys who clean it, would smell the stench of my rotting body and would come and find me. Maybe some wild animals would distribute my bones around the area, or a big dog from one of the motor homes would bring back one of my arms or legs or something to his master. That would be a pretty sickening surprise. It was horrible, more horrible than nightmare time, and I was so hot with the sun beating down on me that I thought for sure I’d gone…you know where.

  “I decided that it was better for me to just do it to myself than to draw it out, so I pulled the gun from my shirt, released the safety, and put the barrel in my mouth. My fingers began to slowly tighten on the trigger and then…then…” Sammy choked up completely. After a few seconds he whispered, “I felt Mom put her gentle, loving hand over mine and slowly pull the gun away from my face. I did! Honestly, I really did! And she said, clear as anything, ‘No, Sammy, not that.’ She kissed me on the forehead and whispered, ‘Relax, precious child. We’ll be together again, soon.’ I wondered if she meant in Heaven.

  “I must have drifted off then, for I don’t know how long. When I woke up the ground felt soft and damp beneath me, and it smelled good. Some bees were buzzing above me, and I was in no pain. I couldn’t believe it and wondered if maybe I’d been there for weeks and nature had healed me up all by herself. But why would she do that? I wasn’t worthy. I was a screwed-up dropout who wasn’t fit for or worthy of anything. Why hadn’t I just died like I’d wanted to for so long?

  “I felt something warm touch my face as though it were gently wiping away my tears, and when I opened my eyes a sweet, bright little sunbeam was winding its way down through the leaves, caressing my face. Did it love me? Did one single little sunbeam in the whole world care about me, want to warm me and cheer me and lighten my life? I smiled and talked to her for a while as she playfully flitted back and forth in a radius of two or three inches but always coming back to me. She cared! That was enough! I had Ricardo and the sunbeam, and had it really been my mom? I fell asleep.

  “When I woke up sunset had turned the world to orange. The leaves, the stalks, the sky, even my hand when I held it up was tinted with orange. I heard something rustling through the weeds and my heart almost stopped. What if it were a…a…Bears and lions and tigers and the driver and other unrealistic things flooded through my mind. Then I heard something whimpering and saw the head of a tiny orange-colored poodle. At first he was apprehensive, then he came over and gently licked my face. His tongue felt moist and sandpapery on my cheek and I heard myself giggling. This was a happy day. A sunbeam and a little orange dog loved me…and…maybe Mom…

  “A soft whistle and an even softer voice flittered over us. ‘Come here, Pumpkin.’ Reluctantly, the little creature backed away. In a couple of minutes I could hear him whining and coming back in my direction. The soft voice was coming along with him into my broken world. ‘Pumpkin, Pumpkin.’ Asking the little dog where he was taking her, what he had found. A man’s voice behind the woman’s voice sounded not so pleased. ‘It’s probably just some old dead rabbit or squirrel or something,’ he grumbled.

  “The woman was more concerned and broke her way through the weeds, talking gently to the dog and telling him to be careful. When she saw me she looked like she wanted to shriek, but she didn’t. She knelt down beside me and cradled my head in her soft, grandma kind of hands. ‘You poor, dear child,’ she whispered, ‘whatever happened to you?’ Then she started calling, ‘Karl! Karl, come see what Pumpkin has found this time.’”

  “‘Not another kitten for you to adopt, I hope,’ he answered.

  “By the time he got to me, tears were flooding inside me as well as outside. I’d tried to tell myself I wasn’t scared and that I wanted to die and all those dumb things, but deep inside I knew I didn’t, really. I just wanted someone to pull me out of my dark, mucky hole and clean me off and help me become the old me again. I clung to the woman’s hand like she was my only lifeline, and I guess she was.

  “After a little while, Grandma Maizy—she asked me to call her that, said everyone did—and her husband Karl helped me back to their big, beautiful motor home. It smelled of sweet things and had lots of pretty flowered stuff around. I felt safe.

  “Grandma Maizy cleaned me up a little and fed me and pampered me like Grandma Gordon used to do when I was teeny-tiny. I loved it. Pumpkin and Shale, a cat bigger than Pumpkin, curled up beside me and soon, after I’d told my nice, new, pretend relatives about my pretend accidental drive-by shooting and my pretending to not have any family, I fell asleep. The last thing I remembered was the cat curled up by my neck, purring, and Pumpkin nestled by my chest, snoring, along with Grandpa Karl.

  “I stayed with Grandma Maizy and Grandpa Karl for a couple of weeks or something. She washed and medicated and bandaged my wounds, and made me exercise a little more each day and eat right and all the things she had learned about health care over her many years.

  “One day when we drove through a fairly big town, I decided I’d taken advantage enough of them so I borrowed fifty dollars and had them drop me off at the bus station so I could go home. I didn’t really mean to go there but…well…I couldn’t sponge on them anymore. And I did have their home address in some little funny-named town in California. I would have returned their money with interest, too, if I hadn’t lost their address.

  “In the bus station I looked over all the pamphlets and decided I’d go to Las Vegas, but when I went to buy the ticket, something almost stronger than me bought a ticket home (Sammy’s hometown), even though I didn’t want to go there. I couldn’t! I thought there was no way that my mom and sweet innocent, clean little sisters would ever accept me after what I had become, the dregs of the earth or worse.

  “When I got to town it was dark, so I dared to walk down my old street past my house. There were lights on inside, and I could hear music. Mom’s car was in the driveway, and, as usual, Dorie hadn’t closed the back door tightly, so the little bulbs were shining inside, running down the battery. I wanted to go over and close the door as I had a million times before, but I forced myself to go on. Mom’s silhouette passed by the window a
s I reached the big tree on Mr. Laton’s place. My heart was beating so hard and so fast that I had to lean against it to keep from falling down. Then I heard Dread Red Fred barking to get out. I could see by his jumping against the window that he knew I was there, so I started running away as fast as I could.”

  “Your pain and loneliness must have been intense.”

  “It was.”

  “So how did you get from there to here?”

  “I slept in the park and then came and sat on your steps till you came out.”

  “All day?”

  “All of probably the longest day in my life.”

  “You precious, hurting kid. Have you now finally dumped it all out?”

  “I think so. Everything but it, that is.”

  “That we’ll put in a separate department and take care of later if it’s all right with you.”

  “Anything you say.”

  “Let’s stop for a while and a little later put all the pieces together in the order of their importance. Okay?”

  “What a relief it will be to finally be led out of my…my yucky black past.”

  “Into your brilliant, glorious future.”

  “But I still feel like I’ve got fly-attracting crud all over me even though I’ve walked away from it. I feel dirty and unclean and unworthy and unacceptable inside and outside.”

  “Whoops, remember who is putting those thoughts into your brain?”

  “Ummm, I guess I am, but they are just as real as though some unseen force had pushed them there and won’t let them out.”

  “Then maybe it’s time to face the enemy down and defeat it?”

  “I’m…I’m…I hope I’m prepared for the battle.”

  “First let’s relax and stretch and have some nuts and fruit and drinks.”

  “Sounds good to me. I need nourishment.”

  “Teenagers always need nourishment, physically, mentally, psychologically, and lovingly.”

  “Now you get the gold star on your forehead.”

  After a few minutes our session continued.

  “We may be going over some things you’ve gone over before, Sammy Soul Searcher, but you’ve got to really believe in a principle and precept to have you work for it and it work for you! Does that make sense?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then let’s go back to the beginning. When and how and why do you think you first began slipping into depression?”

  “Well…I used to sometimes get mad at a teacher, or ripped at my mom, or bugged out of my brain by my sisters, but I never hated their guts or wanted evil black clouds to close in on them and make them disappear or any of the other feelings that seemed to come over me after ‘it’ happened. It really did seem that after I got black they all got black, too!”

  “You felt and thought black and you thought they felt and acted black, too? You mean black in the sense of absence of light and love and good, shining happiness?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “Did you know then what you know now: that people see others in direct ratio to how they see themselves, in color, meaning, importance, feelings and everything else?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that since you mentioned it before and I’ve accepted that it positively and absolutely is true.”

  “Gold star for you. Can you remember exactly when the unfamiliar discomfort took over?”

  “Well toward myself and…you know…it came down in one black swoop like a bigger than person-size vampire bat. I told you that after that incident everything in life was like a slow-motion, old black-and-white late, late, late, late-night movie, didn’t I?”

  “What about other people? I mean besides you and—” I shrugged.

  “Everything in life lost all color, even the trees and grass and flowers became black or dull grey. They were even more colorless than anything. Well, at first not my mom and the girls and my home and stuff, but they too gradually drifted down to nothing—sort of dark, evil shadows.”

  “Sammy, have you ever had ringworm?”

  He looked startled. “Yes. Dorie brought it home from school once, and it spread like wildfire.”

  “Did everyone get it?”

  “Yeah, some more, some less.”

  “Who got less?”

  “I think me.”

  “How come?”

  “I think by then we knew what we were looking for and caught it before…Oh, I see what you’re getting at. You think I let the black, disgusting, mind-eating…begin…” Sammy stopped and bowed his head until it almost touched his waist.

  “Extending?”

  “Expanding…”

  “Enlarging?”

  “Defeating…”

  “Imprisoning?”

  “Mind-controlling…”

  “Ego-deflating?

  “Confidence-shattering…”

  “Distrust- and unhappiness-causing?

  “Consuming…”

  “Isn’t it scary to think that the common, old, everyday variety of black depression can become completely consuming?”

  Sammy’s voice was little more than a gentle, pained whisper. “But only if I let it be. Is that what you’re trying to get me to say?”

  “Only if you thoroughly and completely believe it.”

  “I not only believe it! I lived it!”

  I touched his hand softly. “I’m so happy that you’re emerging out of your long trip through a tunnel of darkness. How would you measure the light in your life on a 1 to 10 scale today?”

  “Where does…say…112 grab you?”

  “Right in my bright-light-, sunshine-, happiness-filled heart.”

  “Don’t you ever feel depressed?”

  “Of course! Everyone does! There are times when pain, sadness, emptiness, and/or depression are a part of each human existence. Can you think of some of those times?”

  “For sure when parents divorce their kids.”

  “And?”

  “Well…I’d feel…I don’t know how I’d stand it if Mom died, or even Uncle Gordon, or Grandma Gordon, or…I guess anybody I love, even Dread Red Fred.”

  “What about when someone is treated cruelly or disrespectfully, especially over a period of time?”

  “Yeah, or loses a job, or doesn’t make a team, or gets sacked. Man, there must be millions of things that could make us depressed to the max.”

  “So should we learn how to handle trauma before it enters our lives?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Yes, if we retain the knowledge that any trauma deserves time and space for grieving and healing.”

  “You mean like a short time for a small wound and a longer time for a deeper one?”

  “Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, and they should find a friend, a family member, a minister, a coworker, or even a crisis line to help them verbally ease their stress and pain so they don’t hold it in until, like a pressure cooker, they explode!”

  “Great simile, smart Sam.”

  “Great because I lived it. Grandma Gordon’s pressure cooker blowing its top, leaving all sorts of straggly, multicolored gook dangling from the ceiling. And the ringworm simile helps, too. We shouldn’t ever let any problem multiply until it gets out of hand completely! Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Did I tell you that Mom once wrote in fancy script CHOOSING NEGATIVE PATHS CAN LEAD ONLY TO NEGATIVE DESTINATIONS and framed it and hung it in our front hallway, beside the mirror? That’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. Does it make sense to you?”

  “It does now that I’m getting my life unscrewed.”

  “Good. Let’s consider what you might have done at the time you gave up your free agency.”

  Sammy thought for a while. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “It’s very hard to think rationally when you’re in shock, isn’t it?”

  “Terminally trauma-trashed.”

  “Not terminally, thank goodness. You’re st
ill here.”

  “Well…I guess I could have…I know what you want me to say…NOT handed over to…the monster…all my thinking, rationalizing, judging, cognitive powers.”

  “Not what I want, what you want! Did you at the moment of trauma GIVE him your remote control ability?”

  “Absolutely and completely, I allowed him to make me a hate-filled clone monster just like him, always looking for the negative, not caring about anyone else’s feelings or wants or needs.”

  “Do I hear you saying that after that you began hating, not only him, but everyone, including your neighbor as yourself, instead of following the Biblical teaching of loving your neighbor as yourself?”

  “I hate to admit it, but that’s true.”

  “What if you had put your emotions on hold long enough for you to talk to someone and ease your pain. Suppose you had taken time out to recognize ‘him’ doing his thing, as the evil, terrible, BAD THING it was, with you still continuing to love and respect yourself enough to go on with your doing your good, loving things?”

  “Maybe if I’d known then what I know now I could have seen him as the thoroughly crazy, lunatic, every single which way demented abuser…” He hesitated. “Abuser…loser…abuser he is, and not let him rub off on me; making me feel too dirty and disgusting to live on the planet!”

  “And you could have thereby controlled some of the contagious, debilitating hate and disrespect for both yourself and others that began taking over your thinking. Right?”

  “Probably…absolutely. If I had just retained command of my thinking and actions, instead of giving that power to the person who deserved it least…man…it was stupid of me to have tried to O.D. and become a complete hog-head just because he was one.”

  “And…”

  “I’d have not stopped using my brain just because he had stopped using his.”

  “Good! Have you ever thought about how much energy it takes to HATE? Energy that should be spent on loving, caring, helping, healing. All the things that make others, as well as oneself, happy, belonging, nestled harmoniously into the environment.”