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    Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station
    Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station
    Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station
    Ebook391 pages6 hours

    Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station

    By Tina S. and Jamie Pastor Bolnick

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    About this ebook

    When Tina S. meets April, a teenage runaway, she thinks she's found her best friend. She leaves behind her dysfunctional family to join April in the tunnels of Grand Central Station amidst the homeless and drug addicted. Soon she's bingeing on crack--just like April--and stealing, scamming and panhandling to support her habit and to survive on the streets.

    In her own words, she describes her descent into crack addiction, being raped in the tunnels, her several arrests and jail terms and her grief and guilt over the death of April, whom she'd come to love. Finally faced with the reality that she might not make it through one more day, Tina takes her first difficult steps towards a normal life.

    With the help of a homeless advocate and his wife, a gay uncle dying of AIDS, and the woman who was to become her co-author on this book, Tina turns her life around and makes her way back to the world of the living.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateAug 18, 2015
    ISBN9781250094568
    Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station
    Author

    Tina S.

    Tina S. currently works as a supervisor at Ready, Willing & Able, an organization that teaches job skills to the homeless. She lives in Brooklyn.

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    Reviews for Living at the Edge of the World

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      I received this book through Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.There are so many things I like about this book, I don't even know where to start.For starters, Tina S.'s story is one that is not only interesting, but eye opening as well. The account is written with such brutal honesty about the ups and downs of her life. She is easy to empathize with, even when she does things the reader may not agree with. Overall, Tina S. seems like a very likable and smart person, which really comes out in the writing. Even when Tina S. did something bad, you can't help but still like her.Tina S. chronicles her life in Grand Central Station as well as the lives of those around her. She recounts drugs, alcohol, rape, abortion, abuse, panhandling, theft, and crime as it happened to her and the people around her. Her words help to bring awareness about homelessness and drug abuse, some of the issues the homeless population faces, and reasons for why many people stay homeless. Secondly, this is a book of non-fiction, but it reads like fiction. It is so easy to get into the story. It has a really important message and brings awareness to an important issues, but also is fascinating to read. Tina S. has a very unique story. The timeline recounted jumps from chapter to chapter and even within chapters, but overall the story is relatively easy to follow. And I feel that the time jumps add an interesting layer to Tina S.'s story. An amazing book because of it's writing and the intriguing story it tells. A very important story on a personal level as well as a social level in what is really needed for people who are homeless.
    • 5/5
      Loving this book. I feel like I know Tina. Making me so homesick for NYC and East Village. Over the years I had many friends and acquaintances just like Tina.

      Only halfway through, so more to say later. For now I will say the story flows smoothly and is not so serious as to be depressing, even though it is a very depressing circumstance that the author was in. Glad to see on the section about the author that she now helps others.
    • 3/5
      As interesting as the story was, I was really annoyed by the style of the book. Knowing that it wasn't written the way it was by Tina S., Bolnick's structuring and tone were distracting and made this feel more like fiction than a true account. Still a worthwhile read.

    Book preview

    Living at the Edge of the World - Tina S.

    PART ONE

    THE COPS ARE FOLLOWING ME. I can hear their walkie-talkies somewhere behind me, I can hear that crackling static sound they make, I can hear one of the cops saying, Okay, we got a tail on her now.

    Or maybe they’re not following me. You get real paranoid when you’re smoking crack.

    I’m walking up Lexington Avenue and I need more smoke real bad, so I duck into a doorway, light up, and then I have to start walking because I’m getting paranoid again. Keep moving, keep running to stay safe. Because I can hear those cops behind me with their walkie-talkies.

    Three, four, five hours I’ve been doing this. Maybe all day. I’m so high now I don’t even know where I am anymore.

    *   *   *

    These are the clothes I’ve been wearing for at least a week: jeans, sneakers, two layers of T-shirts, over them a plaid flannel shirt and a sweatshirt. Over all that is a man’s blue down jacket I took from the backseat of a car that me and Jackie broke into. And under that is grime and soot that doesn’t come off when I wash anymore. Built-in dirt, I call it.

    When I get tired I sleep where I am. A doorway, a park bench, a stair landing in the subway, wherever I happen to be when I can’t keep on going. I don’t even bother, a lot of the time, to go back to Grand Central Station.

    It’s like I’m running away from running away.

    *   *   *

    If I’m not too stoned, I’m sometimes looking at other people lately, people I’m passing on the street. People going to work or coming from work, people going home to wherever they live. I wonder what it’s like to be them. And how did they manage to do it, to just be so right and ordinary and safe?

    Probably they’re thinking I’m dirt. Probably they’re thinking I’m shit, just a piece of garbage.

    That makes me want to sink even lower, get so far down no one can see me anymore. To where I have nothing left to lose. Or maybe to where I just plain stop existing. Because I know as long as I continue to exist there’s a choice I’m making: staying like this, or getting better.

    But I don’t want to do either one. It hurts too much.

    *   *   *

    The baby I’m carrying, it’s Harley’s. I know that. Because I wasn’t messing around with anyone else. Harley wants me to keep it. He started making all these promises, he gave me the It’ll Be Okay story: I’ll change, I’ll stop dealing drugs, I’ll get a job, you’ll see, we’ll get an apartment, we’ll get married.

    I told him, Yeah, right, Harley. Forget it. It’s my body, it’s my choice. Hey, I’m not stupid, you know? I just looked at him like he was crazy. Like who the hell do you think you’re kidding? I’m not going to do this for you. I don’t love you enough to do this for you.

    *   *   *

    When I’ve had a lot to smoke I talk to myself. Only I don’t realize what I’m doing until I see people staring at me when I pass them on the street. Then I notice my lips are moving and words are coming out.

    I’m having all these little conversations with myself when I’m stoned. I feel like nobody else in the world can understand what I’m trying to say anymore.

    *   *   *

    Harley spots me dozing on the steps of St. Agnes Church, half a block from Grand Central. He bugs out.

    I told you to leave that fucking shit alone and go home, he yells. He’s talking about crack, but while he’s yelling this at me, he has his stem in his hand, ready to fill it up and take a blast.

    Sure, Harley. While you sit there getting high.

    I’m not fuckin’ pregnant.

    I wouldn’t be neither if you didn’t lie to me. You said you were being careful.

    Harley is a big guy, black, he wears his hair in clumpy dreadlocks. He can be sweet, which is why I stay with him, but when he gets mad you better duck fast. He’s mad now. Grabs me around the neck with his big hands and squeezes. I’m trying to push him away, but he just squeezes tighter until I start choking. You don’t belong on the streets when you got a baby inside you. Go on home to your mama, girl.

    He lets me go so suddenly I fall against the railing of the steps. My throat hurts too much to yell back at him.

    *   *   *

    My mom is surprised to see me at the door because usually I call first. Also, I’m dirty and crying. She’s seen me dirty before, but I almost never cry in front of people unless I’m drunk.

    All I tell her is some guy was strangling me. By now there’s bruises coming up on my neck. She says, I’ll call the cops.

    No, I tell her, I’ll be all right. I just need to rest.

    My mom lives in a welfare hotel, the Prince George. Her and my little brother and sister, and my mom’s boyfriend, Robert, who is the father of my little brother. All in one room, like sardines. My other brother, Frankie, who is almost my age, doesn’t live with them anymore. This is my mom’s second time in a welfare hotel. When I was twelve we had to move from our house in Astoria, Queens, because of a fire and we wound up spending a year in the Martinique Hotel.

    I run home to my mom once in a while. I don’t go there because she can protect me, I’m just running to someplace where I know no one can hurt me. My mom, she has her own troubles. Plus she and Robert are always fighting and screaming at each other. He gets his welfare check, runs off to Forty-second Street, comes back broke, breaks down the door to get in, then they fight all night long. He wants more money, and she doesn’t have it because she spent it on food or clothes for the kids. And if it isn’t about big stuff like money it’s about something little, like my mom turning the TV off, him turning it back on. It’s insanity. I feel sorry for my sister and brother, who are stuck there.

    When I’m at my mom’s I can take a shower, I can eat, and if they’re not fighting I can get some sleep. There are two sets of bunk beds in the hotel room. I sleep in with Robby on the bottom or up top with Jessica. But Jessica moves around a lot while she sleeps, and she kicks. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with bruises.

    When I’m leaving, my mom always says something like, I worry about you all the time. Every time I see something on the news I’m wondering if it’s you.

    I tell her, I’m fine, Ma. I can take care of myself.

    I never stay more than a couple days.

    *   *   *

    About a week later I call my mom again. I’m coming down from a three-day binge and I don’t want to bump into Harley again. I ask her could I come spend the night and she says, No, no, I don’t think so.

    She never said no before.

    That really knocks the wind out of me. I can’t answer. Can’t even ask her why not.

    Then she says, Robert told me he sees you sometimes on Forty-second Street. He says you go there to buy crack.

    I tell her, Yeah. Sometimes I do.

    Well, Tina, if you’re smoking crack I don’t think I want you around the kids. Jessie is almost ten now and you could be a very bad influence.

    I’m standing at a pay phone on Madison Avenue and the tears start pouring down my cheeks. Crack is the worst thing in the world and it’s killing me. How could she think I would turn my own little sister on? How totally disgusting does she think I am, anyway? I hang up the phone and stand there for five or ten minutes because I’m crying too hard to

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