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She can’t even read that good either.
I also heard them talking about medicine. Mommy says it might be good for me—that it could help. Daddy was against it, said he doesn’t want to start pumping chemicals into me at such a young age.
“Let’s just give it some time. Mary Ann said he will likely grow out of this. Meds should be the last resort.”
“Well, it’s too early for ice cream,” Mommy says, pulling me from my head, “so how about we get a late breakfast at Chickie’s? We’ll get Linda to whip up whatever you want.”
The heavy feeling in my chest goes away, and my mouth stretches into a smile. “Cinnamon Toast pancakes?”
“You got it.” She winks back at me through the mirror.
She reaches for the radio, hitting play on the CD player. It’s The Goo Goo Dolls, her favorite band. I like them too. Izzy doesn’t, but that’s okay, this is just for us.
Mommy starts humming along, then singing. She can’t sing that good—she says her talent’s all in her fingers. Just like my sister. Even my dad, though he plays guitar, not piano. He can sing okay though. Izzy makes my ears hurt when she tries.
I don’t think I can sing—though I never really tried. But I did try piano. It was really hard and it didn’t sound like how it does when my mom plays. Izzy didn’t care how bad she was though—she never cares about that stuff—so she kept up with it, and by the third class, she was already able to play, like, a whole bunch of songs, and was asking for even harder stuff. Stuff like Mommy plays on our piano at home and in the videos Izzy likes to watch.
Daddy said she had a gift for it. And something called persistence. I clearly didn’t get either, so I asked if I could do something else.
So, they tried me with guitar.
They took me to a music store my dad’s friend, Tim, owns, where they have smaller instruments for kids to learn on. It was a little easier, until they started teaching me something called chords and I had to make my fingers stretch and do all these things they couldn’t do. Just like on the piano.
It made me feel all shaky and sick when I couldn’t get that right either. I felt like Tim and my dad were getting annoyed with me. And Mom seemed sad, and I hate making her sad.
So when Daddy brought Izzy along one day, and I saw how excited she was to try a guitar—just like with piano, she didn’t even care she couldn’t make her fingers work the way they needed to—I grabbed my backpack, pulled out my drawing pad, and started drawing guitars instead.
All while Izzy practiced, and the grown-ups helped her, smiling and laughing and having fun, I sat in front of the pretty red guitar hanging up on the wall and copied it onto paper. It wasn’t perfect, but there was no one around to tell me how to do it, so I didn’t care. I had an eraser and lots of blank paper to get it right.
Drawing is more fun anyway. Instruments are confusing and boring.
When Mommy found me later on, and asked if she could see, I handed over my best one. She asked if she could keep it, and I said no. It was mine. She laughed at that, nodded, and said she understood.
She then ruffled my hair and said it’s okay to not want to play an instrument if it doesn’t make me happy.
“I like drawing,” I told her.
She smiled, nodded, and said, “Then drawing it is. You’re very good. We can see about classes if you want, so you can learn and get even better?”
But I shook my head at that, blond hair falling around my face, and held my drawings to my chest. I didn’t know how to explain it, but she just smiled, and dropped a kiss to my head. “Got it. Yours.” And she never brought it up again.
Mine, all mine.
In the car, I twist my head to look out the window, watching as the school grows smaller the further away we get, before disappearing behind the trees, leaves kicking up around the street from where they’d fallen.
I hit the button on the door, lowering the window as far as it’ll go, which is only about halfway.
Chilly air blows in, and I wait for Mommy to tell me to close it, but she doesn’t. She just opens the other windows and turns the song up.
Biting my lip, I glance down, my eyes drifting to where my backpack rests against the lip of my booster.
“I love that one! Captain America is my favorite.” At the echo of that boy’s words, I find myself hunchin’ in my booster, knees squeezed together, fingers folding into my palms.
I want to draw what happened, just like something you’d see in a comic book.
I can picture each square—one with me kneeling in the mulch; big scary bullies standing over me. They’re hidden by shadows, because they’re bad, while I’m in the light because I’m good.
That boy would then appear in the next square, hovering over them like Superman—no, like Captain America, with his shield raised. And with his free hand, he’d be shoving the bullies away from me with big letters and exclamation tops over their heads to show how mad he is.
