FINDING A SMILE
A few years back I had the fortune to be involved in the life of a young girl, just turning age sixteen. She was as hard as nails. Not rough, not earthy or vulgar, just hardened. She was always polite, always clean and neat, conscientious and, according to her teachers, a very good student and a hard worker. But she had a very hard exterior. There was a wariness in her eyes. She hung on the fringe of lots of groups. And whenever I felt like she was just starting to get close to the others, she pulled away. If you could ever get her to smile or laugh, that hardness melted away and her face became a thing of beauty. But just for a second. Then that hard exterior slammed back into place. It wasn’t until the day she walked into the County Attorney’s office with her brother and two sisters in tow that we found out the reason for…
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