It was a geography class of some sort. Everything about it was unfamiliar. Faces, carpet, desk, rules. . . Everything. It was painful. I wanted to cry all the time. It was so very hot during the day; unrelenting heat, and so early in the year. Everything was wrong. I dreamed about home everytime I closed my eyes.

A scrap of paper was delivered, and it was a small note; pre-typed and a single word scribbled out: home. I was going to be excused from the rest of my classes because I was going home. Home didn't mean the drab little tent in the RV park where we lived. I was certain to the core that home meant leaving this cruel desert and returning to my beloved desert.

As it turns out, I was right.

I wish I knew what happened to the little girl who lived next "door" to us. She was a sweet kid.

Over the course of one or two months, I lost about 40lbs. There was just no money for food. I had lunch at school. That is a diet I would fall back on several times in my life.

It didn't help.

I left that place, but it never left me.