Hope's Beat — Marguerite Kloepfer

The paramedics, one at each end, rolled the gurney out the door. Hummer followed, standing in the street as the men opened the back of the ambulance and slid the gurney inside. They banged the door closed, cutting off Hummer's view of her Nana forever. Hummer was alone. Fifteen year-old Hummer Manning was too numbed by her grandmother's death to understand that even greater problems lay ahead. Would her father take custody of her? Would the woman he was about to marry accept her? Where would she live and go to school? Only the beat of her favorite music could penetrate her grief.