My name is Uneme. I am currently living in the back alleys. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It may be dark at night, and has a bit of a smell, and gets cold in the fall and winter, but it’s better than nothing..

“You’re back took you long enough.” This is Ekon, aka my childhood friend and one of the two people I can call family.

“You could welcome me better.” I said as I pulled my hood off my head.

“Would you prefer ‘welcome back princess, how was your journey on the road?’”  Ekon mocked me in a sarcastic way.

“Yes, actually I would. Thank you.” I got sarcastic right back at him. Since we have known each other since we were in diapers we’re really close to each other.

“Anyways, did you get any food today?” Ekon asked as he stopped leaning on the wall and walked towards me.

“Yeah I did, but it’s only two pieces of bread...so.” I pulled out the brown paper bag that had 2 pieces of bread that were each  7 inches and handed it to Ekon. He stood there looking at the bread for a while. He then sighed as he said

“Hey it’s better than nothing.” That sentence seems to be our motto. He gave me one of the pieces of bread.

“Eat up, you're going to need it for energy if you're going to get us breakfast tomorrow.” He told me as he started to eat the bread in a small bite. He seems to have the habit of taking small bites, well you can’t blame him if we didn’t save our food back then we didn’t have food for the whole day. I sighed in disappointment.

“It seems I'm gonna have to get up early in the morning tomorrow.” I complained as I bit into my piece of bread. You might be wondering why me and Ekon are living in this kind of condition, even though I'm only eighteen and he’s only nineteen.

After hearing our age you might  suspect we ran away from homes and family, but we never had a home or a family in the first place. We lived in a church that took in orphans, and me and ekon were always treated unfairly. We never knew why, the nuns there just hated us. They would keep us from eating dinner and lunch and if we were unlucky even breakfast. 

That's why Ekon has a habit of eating slowly and taking small bites. We always had to save and hide our food so we could eat on days.  When we did small stuff like accidentally dropping food on the floor we were punished severely, but with other kids there they only got a lecture on how they should be more careful.

The nuns would keep us locked up in dark, cold rooms for hours and only let us out when the other kids would notice me or him gone. We were constantly getting hit and beaten for stupid reason like, “You two are demon children.” or “You’re taking the punishment that your parents should take for their sins.”  Whatever that meant, it's not like either of us knew who they were. I've been there since I was a baby and Ekon since he was one years old. 

I couldn’t remember anything about my parents and neither could ekon and we don’t want to. If they abandoned us at a young age obviously they didn't care for us. We ran away from the church when we were sixteen and seventeen. Which is why our motto is “it’s better than nothing.”