Virginia’s Story

I don’t remember much about when mom got sick. Dad took her to the hospital and we were not allowed to visit. I was like every other kid in school back then. I didn’t have a lot of friend though. I didn’t like the things that the other girls liked. My father was my hero and I liked to learn about the things he liked. For dad, that meant prepping for disasters, both real and imagined.

My older brother didn’t like me hanging around with him, and to be honest I didn’t want to. My older sister, Lori, was always on the run. While I liked being with her and most of her friends, she didn’t seem too happy having her twelve-year-old sister tagging along. While my friends were learning to do make up, I was learning to shoot my very own cross bow. Mom used to look at me and just shake her head while rolling her eyes.

The last time I saw her was the day she waved at me from the car. By the time dad got sick, the local police would hang a sheet with a red “X” painted across it from the front of houses. A week after they hung one on ours a group of men in yellow suits covering them from head to toe knocked on our front door. The held guns on Lori and I as they dragged dad out into the