The girl came at me from my blind side.

I was at the gas pumps, squirting fuel into the Suzuki. She approached quietly, like a ninja with painted fingernails.

“Hi,” she said.

“What’s up?”

“Nice bike. Can you give rides on that thing?”

“Afraid not.”

“How come?”

“It’s just not designed for passengers,” I told her. “Plus my tires are pretty well worn and I shouldn’t . . .”

Ninja girl bored quickly of the explanation.

“You got a cigarette?”

“I don’t,” I said. “Gave ’em up.”

She was a blond, sort of. It was hard to tell. This was one of those downtown girls who might have been pretty if her life had zigged instead of zagged. Her face was pale and spangled with small sores. Her teeth were going bad. A good dentist could probably save them and probably wouldn’t.

“You got a dollar I could borrow?” she asked me.

As I patted my pockets — first the front, then the back — you know the routine, it came to me. I knew this girl. She was the daughter of a woman I chummed with a few years ago. Back then, she was one of those teenagers. Cheerleader, debate club, track team, honor roll. One of those young people who just seems to figure out life early. They get a bead on a future and take an unwavering path to get there. College, grad school, internship, big job offer. Date for six months, find a mate, marry and squeeze out 2.7 kids. Buy a big house, fund the 401(k), retire at 55.

Only this girl stepped off the track somewhere. As she stood there at the gas station, waiting for me to turn my pockets inside out and relieve them of whatever silver was in there, I thought it was probably drugs. Maybe she tried crack at a party while she and the girls were slumming. Maybe she got hooked on painkillers while treating a knee sore from all that running. Hell, maybe it was just good, old-fashioned booze that sent her wandering the Lewiston streets in search of rides, smokes and spare change.

Whatever. It happens. Happens quite a lot, in fact. Still, it was sad and disappointing to see. If asked earlier in the day, I would have predicted that this kid was somewhere between BU and Harvard, running the American Dream mile in record time.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Markiverse, I got a friend request on Facebook. Familiar name, familiar face. It was a girl I best remembered from Brookside Elementary back in Waterville. She was one of those girls, missing from class two days each week, looking tired and undernourished when she was there. Haggard at age 10. There were rumors that she slept in the same bed as her brother, swapping head lice back and forth. There were rumors that they lived with a drunken uncle who beat them and fed them dog food.

Rough stuff. I figured she got knocked up before she was out of junior high. Dropped out of school, shacked up with an alcoholic who beat her, turned to the bottle herself just to see what the fuss was about.

I knew that story, too. Her kids would get taken away, she’d have four more with four different men and she’d spend her life on terminal welfare, as tired and undernourished as she was back at Brookside.

But wait! The girl on Facebook didn’t look that way at all. She was bright-eyed and smiling, posing with a pair of kids who were clumsily carving jack-o’-lanterns. A quick look at her info page showed she had graduated from a community college and had been working with the same company for six years. She was married to a fellow who didn’t look like a coke dealer at all. She looked fit and healthy, a bigger, more robust version of the mousy girl I knew in grade school.

There might be a lesson here, but I doubt it. People defy expectations all the time. The girl at the gas pumps might rally yet and get back to where she’d been going. At any rate, she didn’t recognize me and that’s probably for the best. I figure she’d have been disappointed to see that I’m still in Lewiston because she might have expected more from me.

Or maybe she’d be thrilled to find that I’m still alive because, really. I was living recklessly for a while and you know how people like that turn out.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Tell him how surprised you are that he’s still alive at [email protected].