“I’m sorry,” I said under my breath as I left the office. I was sure moving here would help me break my shell, but really I was just running from the past. New places, that meant nowhere to hide. I slipped onto the sidewalk, trying to find a family to walk beside. Spotting a mother and her two young children about 2 yards ahead of me, I weave through the people on the sidewalk. As my pace quickens the tapping of the gun in my coat pocket becomes harder. How I wish I could get rid of it. “It’s for your own safety,” he would tell me. People start to crowd the sidewalk and my anxiety kicks in, “Big crowds are dangerous, but so is not being around anyone.” A normal life, that’s all I can think of, being a mother like the one I have been following, just me and my innocent children, that was my goal. I can see the apartment. As I near the steps, my hand goes directly into my pocket. Gripping the gun now, but still concealing it. I walk up the steps. Fumbling with the keys in my left hand, finally managing to get the key into the hole and open my door. I slip inside keeping my head down and immediately locking the door. Peering into the kitchen now holding the gun at the ready I check the apartment. Nothing is in here I remind myself calmly, as I switch from formal interview clothes into sweatpants and a Utah Jazz t-shirt my dad gave me last time I was home. I sit on my oversized couch in my almost empty living room. Since I never really was home, between the incident and moving away, my mother never taught me how to cook. So I relied on the one skill I had mastered, using the phone, I order Chinese, that’s the only thing he didn’t like, so it’s all I eat. The news is so boing all about politicians and the weather, but I guess that’s better than it being scary. A face appears on the television screen I stop and stare. The face on the screen could be me, but she’s not. We both have thick long dark brown hair, pale pink lips, rosy red cheeks, large cheek bones; she has bright blue eyes, while mine are dark brown. Turning the volume up loud enough that I can hear every word, I realize that this girl and I have more in common than I thought. We were both kidnapped.