This moving series examines the development of a friendship between high school seniors Iven and Gary, which thrives not despite but because of the financial, legal, academic and family challenges they face.

Baltimore Sun reporter Liz Bowie delicately details the mutual loyalty that grows between her subjects, who stay connected during month after month of begged and borrowed housing, making plans for their prom and graduation day. And she shows how the circumstances of the teens’ lives make their friendship more profound than simple adolescent camraderie, with Iven saying about Gary, “As long as I am alive, he will eat.”

Read “On Their Own,” by Liz Bowie

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