Member-only story
Sarah’s salvation
a short story
You know that flavor of your own snot after you’ve been crying a lot? How it’s a little salty and sweet when it runs down your upper lip and into your mouth a little bit when you’re crying and can’t stop your nose form running?
That’s the flavor Sarah came to love because it was all that was constant in her life.
She didn’t understand what a foster home was, and her new mommy and daddy were mean to each other and to her. Not the same kind of mean the soldiers had been to her other mommy and daddy, but a worse kind.
She remembered people running, and men with guns and outfits with green and brown and beige patches. They wore helmets. And they yelled a lot. She remembered when they came into the house she used to live in, yelling, and the guns made so much sound it hurt her ears badly. Then she was being carried by one of the men with a helmet, and he was still yelling. Sarah was crying because she didn’t see her mommy and she didn’t understand. Then she was in a helicopter, and she saw the boy, Armin, that she knew from her school. He was crying too.
That was all when she still had been Saleen. But now she was Sarah, and her new mommy and daddy looked different. And they were a kind of mean that scared her worse than the meanness of the soldiers.
