Monstrato

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  On Saturday, I called Hope. I couldn't help myself. I just needed to know how she was doing. She sounded really low, maybe the worst I've ever heard her—like someone had died. She said she wasn't as mad at her parents as she was before because they'd gotten together to talk, but now she didn't feel anything towards them. She didn't trust them, didn't feel like she loved them anymore. She didn't even want to be around them. "They don't know what to do," she said. "They keep asking me what they can do to help. How am I suppose to know? God! I can't believe I got adopted by people so dumb." Hope said her mom called a crisis hotline she found in the phone book, and they were gonna go see a family counselor, but she didn't think it was gonna help. I didn't know what to say to her. I was kind of regretting calling her, but I knew she had no one else to talk to. She told me she hadn't talked to Garrett since Wednesday, and she didn't even want him to call because he wasn't showing any kind of support. When I got off the phone, I felt terrible, and I had an icky feeling the rest of the day.

  Then on Sunday, my phone rang, and it was Hope. First thing I asked her was, "What's wrong?" She said nothing was wrong and that she just wanted to talk. She sounded like she was in a much better mood. She talked about how angry her mom was at Tammy. Her mom wanted to press charges because Tammy had broken her confidentiality, and she told Hope she was gonna talk to a lawyer. She also wanted Hope to go to another school, which really bothered me. I couldn't imagine Hope going to Terrence West—it was so big, and she hardly knew anyone who went there. But then Hope told me that her dad said she could live with him and go to school in Sherwood if she wanted, and her step-mom was cool with it, too.

  Hope didn't know if she wanted to go to another school or not, but she said if her mom was gonna sue Tammy, she didn't think she'd have a choice. She said, if anything, they'd just kick her out, which was true. After I got off the phone with her on Sunday, I was pretty sure she wasn't coming back, and when I went to sleep that night, I laid in bed worrying about it for a long time. I thought about my other friends who'd left Lifegate and gone to other schools. I never saw them anymore unless I ran into them at a party or something. I knew, no matter what Hope and I promised each other about staying in touch, if she went to another school, especially one as far away as Sherwood, it'd be over…being good friends and all.