The History of the World

Shit. Read Dan Barry: Under a dreary sky the color of uncertainty, on a city block pocked by abandonment, a door opens and a girl of 15 steps out. With a black-and-blue book bag slung across her back, she starts walking to school, a high school sophomore of this country.
Her name is Janay Truitt, and she lives on the crime-rich and money-poor north side of St. Louis. She shares an apartment above a dry-cleaning store with two grandparents, two sisters, a brother and her mother, who leaves at 4:30 in the morning to drive a school bus. Her father lives elsewhere.
Janay sets out at 7:05 today for a city school system in which poverty, politics and mismanagement so closely conspire against the likes of her that the state recently decided to take it over. But who knows what that takeover means for this lanky girl with braids, now lugging gym clothes, math homework and a world history textbook the size and weight of a slate slab you'd find along a footpath.

Her name is Janay Truitt, and she lives on the crime-rich and money-poor north side of St. Louis. She shares an apartment above a dry-cleaning store with two grandparents, two sisters, a brother and her mother, who leaves at 4:30 in the morning to drive a school bus. Her father lives elsewhere.

Janay sets out at 7:05 today for a city school system in which poverty, politics and mismanagement so closely conspire against the likes of her that the state recently decided to take it over. But who knows what that takeover means for this lanky girl with braids, now lugging gym clothes, math homework and a world history textbook the size and weight of a slate slab you'd find along a footpath.