“Oh my God! They saw me!” Nickolina thought panicked, as she tried to catch her breath. “How could I be so stupid?!?!”

She leaned against a brick fence as she attempted to calm herself. She never knew how hard it was to run while pregnant. Pregnant, and carrying two bags of apples – and a teddy bear.

“Boy, they sure were funny, weren’t they Sammy?” She asked her stuffed friend. She stood straight a moment, realizing she wasn’t holding her beloved stuffed friend. “Sammy?”

She tried not to freak, as she frantically looked about for the one thing she loved more than anything else in the world.

“Sammy?!?!”

She didn’t care if she was thirteen and supposedly too old to be carrying around a stuffed animal – that bear was her bestest best friend and she would rather die than lose him to anyone or anything.

“I must’ve dropped him when I ran,” she thought aloud softly. “I gotta go get him before someone steals him!”

She very quickly ran back down the sidewalk, stopping in front of the house she’d been looking at a few minutes beforehand. Once she was sure no one was outside to see her, she began to look about for her, now lost, friend.

“Sammy!?!?!” She hissed quietly. “Sammy!?!?!”

She could feel her eyes well up with tears as she realized someone had picked him up in the short time she’d tried to catch her breath. She sadly trudged her way back towards the way she had come – she just hoped she’d be able to find her new ‘home’ again, as this was the furthest she’d been from it since she’d arrived.