Student #5 Continued

constantly just walk out and leave for a few hours. I stopped doing any of my homework-my mom seeing this and not wanting me to fail out of school, would call around to kids in the class, get the assignment, do it, and give it to me on the way to school to turn in. This continued all the way through 8th grade. In the middle of 8th grade, because of the influence of the kids around me and my own inward rebellion I ended up, going into the faculty parking lot and keying a car of one of the teachers. Within the same day my mom took me out of that school, and I ended up attending a small, Christian school. Unlike my mom or I had expected, the kids there were mostly from broken or poor families and some from city gangs. I was exposed to things I had never heard of.

There I ended up getting involved in dangerous relationships with guys, gangs, drugs, and drinking, partying, and complete rebellion. I had been threatened with my life and the life of my family many times for wanting to break off relationships with people. Weeks would go by without speaking to my mother. I would do all in my power to avoid her and home altogether. My mom was so overwhelmed with having to pay my brother's college tuition, my school tuition, and trying to satisfy my material desires. In my mind I had everything any girl could want- my own cell phone, home phone line, computer, internet, designer clothes, purses, shoes, jewelry, "friends", boyfriends, drugs, alcohol, and money. At the end of the summer of 9th grade, my mom felt my life being so threatened that she was willing to spend more money to give me the opportunity to go to