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You
walk back towards the cab and then something stops you.
"Would
you like a ride," you ask the pretty girl.
"Sure,"
she says.
She
gives the driver directions and he pulls away from the school.
"I
come from a small community outside the city limits," the
girl tells you. "Our community is different from those in
the city. Developers created it years ago and sold the land but
they didn’t register the community with the county or the
city. We have no paved streets, no addresses, no electricity connections,
plumbing or any of the things you are used to."
The
driver takes a turn down another street and you see a small library
to the left.
"What
do you do about homework?" you ask. "If you don’t
have electricity, you must not have a computer."
"Most
teachers at our school require that papers must be typed for a
good grade. So most of us go to that library and use the computers
there. Or the computers at school after school."
"There
is also a computer center near our neighborhood, but you have
to get there before 5 p.m. There are very few families in our
neighborhood who have computers in their homes."
You
are getting more curious about where she lives. You have heard
of communities like the one she describes but only on television
and you had no idea that a place like this exists in the United
States.
The
driver turns on to a dirt road and begins to drive up to a cluster
of shacks. You wonder if this is where she lives.
"That’s
my house over there," she says as she points to a gray house.
The
porch is sagging and there is no sidewalk. Mud and pools of water
cover the front yard and she doesn’t have any place to sit
on her porch.
"Would
you like to come inside?" she asks.
Do
you?
- Go
inside.
- Ask
if you can meet some of her friends.
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