I have a few secrets I keep. My friend "Selena" was an illegal immigrant from the time she was about 4. Her mom took her and her younger sister with her and moved to the United States from Mexico. When her mom married an American citizen her mom failed to register her children, continuing their illegality. Selena became pregnant when she was 15 or 16 and forced herself to have an abortion by slamming her stomach against a chair. A year later she became pregnant again and now has a son. Shortly after his birth she and her sister were deported, and were forced to go to country they hadn't been to in over a decade and live with relatives they had never met. Her son stayed with her mother. Selena was able to hire a coyote for both her and her sister and ride a bus back into America with very expensive fake IDs. She now has citizenship thanks to acts like the DreamAct. I have another friend that was molested by her step-father from the time she was 12 til she was 14. Her step-father always creeped me out, he was constantly making sexual innuendos to us and just had a generally off-putting demeanor. When she told her mother, her mother didn't believe her. My friend after a long police investigation that ended in nothing went to live with her real father shortly after. Her mom is still married to that douche. My other friend's parents were arrested for meth. This is a more complicated story but when we were 17, my friend "Melanie"'s parents were arrested for a meth lab in their home and endangerment of a child. My mom had died a few months before and I couldn't live with my dad for long (his house is deteriorating, even at that time it was unlivable) and now my friend's parents were in jail. She was staying with her older sister when her parents got bail and ran out of state. Along with her dad's mistress and their 8 year old little boy. So we talked about it and Melanie and I moved into her dad's mistress's government housing. Our plan was to pretend to be her and just make the $50 a month rent and bill payments because technically neither of us could legally rent or get basic utilities, and they had just up and left it without telling anyone. Melanie had had some contact with her mother and father and his family, they had moved from Mexico to Canada to the Montana to who knows where. Her mom eventually got fed up and split with her dad and his mistress and illegitimate child. She came back home and was caught by bounty hunters in our house at 7 in the morning. They grilled us for about an hour, threatening us with jail and felony charges if we didn't tell them where her dad was. We played dumb and they eventually left with her mom in tow We were kicked out of the government house a few days later and moved into Melanie's family's old trailer. We lived without electricity and water til we turned 18 and were able to turn the bills on. Fast forward to spring break and now her dad and "step-family" were back in the US in Arizona. So because she was missing her dad, Melanie and I went to go visit him. We told everyone we were going to California, even Melanie's sister and boyfriend (our roommate) didn't know, but really we drove 24 hours straight to Arizona and hung out with her fugitive dad and mistress's family. We made it back home a week later no problem. Eventually her dad was caught, ran again, was caught again and went to prison for 4 years. Her mom was sentenced to a year. Most of our friends still don't know the full story. But high school was a crazy time for me and most of my friends.