Isaac+L

=**Royce**= If you are black, all the white people look and treat you like a dirty shoe. If you're a teenager the adults are always on your case. If you are homless, everyone feels "sorry" for you. I'm a homeless, black, teenage boy and the world hates me for it. Even my father abused and abandonded me and I'm never going back. No friends, no family, I've never been to school, and I never will. After my father threw me out, I had no idea what would happen to me, untill I saw it, paradise. That's what this old man say 'bout it, but I call it home. I found the garden a few days after my incident with my father. I was scared, no idea what would happen to me, no place to go, then I saw the garden. When I saw it I thought "Home sweet home." I ain't want no cop catching me, so I decided to only stay there from dusk to dawn. I got a big pile of grass clippings and made a bed. Slept there for a couple weeks, occasionaly stealing a a tomato or two. It was going great, untill it wasn't. One morning I didn't get up in time and there he was, tall, black, and really buff. Said his name was Curtis. He ask me what I was doing there. I didn't answer. He say he got a problem with people stealing tomatoes. He give me a deal, if I protect his tomatoes, he'll give me stuff. He got me a nice, new, warm sleeping bag, money and food for a week, and an old, rusty pitchfork. He say if any one comes near his plants I charge at 'em full speed with my pitch fork. That was the deal. After that, I started hanging around the garden more often. People looked at me like I was some sort of a mad man, holding a pitchfork. Some white people still looked at me like a dirty shoe, but I didn't care. A few weeks later, a woman down the street was screaming. Some of the men took off, I was one of them. I grabbed my pitchfork and started sprinting. The woman had been robbed. The group of men ran towards a man who was running in the opposite direction. I, being the fastest of the group, chased him down and pinned him against a wall with my pitchfork untill the cops arived. When I got back to the garden, everything seemed different. The white people did not have hate in thier eyes anymore, it was more like they wanted to say sorry. They were actualy sorry! Not "sorry", but really sorry. They did not see me as a just another black kid, but as Royce. After that moment, I felt so good that I had to tell Curtis it was me who stole some of his tomatoes. After I told him, he looked a little sad, but he forgave me. Then I noticed that right behind Curtis was this girl. She was black, had curly hair, and looked about in her 30s. She noticed me and then she left. I asked curtis who she was and he say that her name is Lateesha. She must've felt sorry cause the next day she gives me that look that says "Oh you poor boy." Then she turns around and gets two huge tomatoes and starts walking towards me. I must have looked scared, because she just quickly dropped the tomatoes next to me and left. After that, all sorts of people start giving me all this food. Thanks to Lateesha, almost every single person has given me something to eat. I was so happy I even went back to my dad for winter. He was so happy to see me, he was in tears and so was I. Every year after that, I leave my dad in the summer to go live with the seedfolk.