Hi. My name is Lance Sepulveda. At least that’s what they called me in Children’s Services when I was a baby. On the streets today they call me “Pretty Boy” ’cuz I’m Mexican with long-ass hair and wicked green eyes. Basically, my life sucks and it’s always sucked. Never met my dad – that jerk split before I’s born. My mom, well let’s not even go there. I grew up in foster homes or the streets my whole life. How I made it to fourteen I’ll never know. Especially after . . . well, after what happened. Anyway, I don’t trust no one. I got no friends and I don’t want none, either. School sucks big time. Not that I’m not smart – I’m hella smart. All my teachers said so since first grade. It’s just that everybody gots to do the same thing and the stupid schools act like everybody wants to go to college. Hell, everybody don’t wanna go to college and everybody don’t need it, either. What if a kid wants to be a mechanic or something? There aren’t no classes like that. I figured out long ago that the system isn’t about us kids, it’s just about the grownups and what they want and what they can get for themselves. I got one cool teacher at Mark Twain High named Ms. McMullen. She’s real pretty and seems like somebody I could trust if I needed to. But then, I don’t usually need to ’cuz I run my own, and I miss a lot of school, anyway.
Why? Cuz I skate. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. Right now I’m on the run from Children’s Services ’cuz I’m sick and tired of people using me or . . . , well, worse stuff, too. Much worse. That’s another system s’posed to be for kids and it’s the grownups who get everything out of it. Us kids don’t get jack! In fact, the whole city, no the whole country, is all about what grownups want and not what kids need. That’s why everything’s so messed up. So me, I just skate. I’m the best street skater around, and I’m goin’ to the X-Games one day and I’m gonna win a gold medal. Hell, a bunch ’a gold medals! At least, those were my plans. Until I met Arthur.
Who’s Arthur? This crazy knight on a horse I met one night in Lennox. A horse? In ghetto Lennox? And an armored-up dude carrying the biggest-ass sword I ever saw? That caught my eye for sure. Like I said, I don’t trust no one, and didn’t trust him at first, neither. But something about the guy made me listen to his crazy-ass ideas. And yeah, they were the craziest I ever heard in my sorry life, but the most exciting, too. Something about a crusade, a children’s crusade, here in Los Angeles, a crusade to help all the throwaway kids like me. Hell, my so-called life wasn’t going nowhere at the moment anyway, so I figured, why not? Might be fun. So I joined up. And man, did everything change after that, and nothing would ever be the same. Check out my story in a book called Children of the Knight and you’ll see what I mean. It’s hella cool.
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