Homeless in high school
By Brian R. Ballou/Boston Globe
After her sister kicked her out, Barbara Hollis started bouncing from one friend’s house to another’s, sleeping on couches and keeping her possessions in trash bags. Couch surfing was terrible, she thought as she wandered through a neighborhood where many of her high school classmates lived. Several nights last summer, the 18-year-old Malden High School student slept in area parks. At Suffolk Park, she curled up on an elevated rubber platform at the playground, wary that a classmate might see her. She attempted to fall asleep by counting sheep. She got to 180. “I wouldn’t say I was really asleep - my eyes were just resting,’’ said Hollis. “I could never get to a deep sleep there.’’ (more...)