Chelsea, now a senior in college reflects on her senior year of high school and how very different it looked from all of her other classmates. After being terrorized by her father for years her mother finally decides that she can’t take it any longer and wants to leave. She gives Chelsea a choice to come with her and have nothing or stay, but for Chelsea the decision was easy. So, on the planned day they pack what they can in her mother’s car and walk away from the only life they have known for nearly two decades and walk into homelessness. Living out of their car created a very different reality but with her mom she still felt safe. It was in this moment that the good work of other people came to lite. Cleaning themselves up in the local hotel bathroom daily they encountered Melissa the front desk clerk who supported them daily and fed them breakfast and Chelsea’s teacher Mrs. Cartwright who knew something was different with her favorite students. She required Chelsea to write in her journal daily and promised to write her back. It was in these communications that Chelsea told her their situation and Mrs. Cartwright shared with her that there are other homeless students at the school, ensuring that she didn’t feel like she was alone. Through the story Chelsea gains her balance from her supportive mother and teacher and before her senior year is done something amazing happens to her and her mom as well as the other homeless students in the school that remind us all that in the midst of a terrible situation there are always good people who are willing to do for strangers what they would do for their family. A difficult story of teen homelessness that is actively happening in all of our schools across America. *Character gender does not matter and can be changed to fit any performer.
