When Kyra was younger I believe she was the most observant in her entire life. She noticed her dad didn’t come home until late at night. She noticed the tears her mom tried to hide while looking out the window. She noticed the deafening screams coming from her living room late, very late at night. However, the thing she mostly noticed was money. A twenty to be precise, laid on the ground one day. Of course she picked it up, it’s money after all. She didn’t know why but, she thought this twenty was very important. She made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t spend it until she absolutely needed to.

This is the past of Kyra Nilt. Her father was cheating on her mother and so a divorce was established when she was 7. Sadly, it was a very bad divorce so her mom got the kids but barely got enough money. For a year they were getting by, until Kyra’s mother got laid off. She cared for her children as best she could but it was soon too much for her. She was announced insane in 2006... Kyra was 13.

Kyra went into the foster care system. Being tossed around wasn’t the best thing in the world. She experienced the worst of the system, the people that only wanted the money. During her travels she was exposed to drugs, alcohol, and worse things that I will not add. She kept the twenty close to her heart at all times, never even thinking of spending it. It was the only thing that gave her a sense of home, of hope. She was informed when she was 15 that her mother had hung herself in an insane asylum. Have you had anyone that close to you that died? Do you know how she felt? How she cried every moment at the funeral and every night before sleep overcame her. How she had to hold back tears every waking moment of every day. Don’t worry reader I don’t either...it’s a pain I never want to feel.

At the age of 16 Kyra’s grades were at their worst and she dropped out, succumbing to the things her foster parents had let her get exposed to. She kept going to her supposed friend’s houses to drive off into the woods and get high. The weird thing is reader, is that she kept the twenty, even though it now caused her pain. To think of the past and to remember all the sleepless nights because of her parents and the day she was told her mother was dead. She was stupid for the drugs and such, but she was strong because of how she held onto that twenty.

Kyra got busted by the cops when she had just turned 17 and was put into a rehabilitation center. Luckily she had learned how to properly hide something so the twenty got in with her and she slowly got better. Her current foster parents at the time had given her up but, Kyra had a plan. She was going to become her own legal guardian. To be the master of her own life for the first time, heaven.

When she was 18 she got out of the rehabilitation center and was officially free. Not in the system of lies she knew. Not in a house where screams seem to be louder than they are suppose to. Kyra knew of this freedom but, for some reason, she was scared. This is a world that she knew most of the bad things of the world. The only thing that will give her comfort is the slightly faded twenty dollar bill that will be there for as long as she could. Sadly the first thing she needed was food. They had given her enough money to pay for a hotel room for a week. It was twenty dollars a night.

Destiny. According to the dictionary it means “the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future.” This is what Kyra thought. It was destiny for her to be there, destiny for her to still have that exact amount of cash that she had for so many years. This was a sign, a good sign for once.

Kyra spent 8 nights at that hotel, hoping to be at peace with the past and doing the best for the future. Not just for her, but for her mom.