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The way I walked.
My face.
My hair.
Every little thing about me was somehow wrong, and no matter how hard I tried to hide, to blend in, to belong…
Nothing helped. It just kept getting worse, and by spring, I was sick all the time, even when home. It just never stopped. I started having nightmares. My stomach burned all the time. I lost weight. I didn’t want to leave my room. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, or see anyone, not even Mason.
I felt dirty.
Mom and Dad had meetings with the school. With Mary Ann. They started me on anxiety medicine, but all that did was make me really sleepy and feel even more sick than I already was.
And then one day, I threw up blood, and everything changed.
An ulcer, they called it when I went to the ER. It’d been forming for a while, apparently.
I didn’t need any operations—medicine fixed it right up.
But it was scary.
It scared everyone, I think, my parents most of all.
I’ve been homeschooled ever since.
After we eat cake, Mom and Dad head to the garage to finish setting up for Izzy’s party later, while we have our own little party inside. We move to the living room where all the furniture’s been pushed back, and blast my boombox. Mason brought his binder of CDs, and as usual, is playing DJ.
I don’t mind. I love his music. Waylon does too.
Izzy’s the only one who usually complains, sticking out her tongue, and whining about wanting some Broadway musical or classical or Avril Lavigne.
And I love Avril Lavigne. But it’s not all I want to listen to.
She doesn’t usually put up much fight. Not like she used to, or how she normally would if it was me or Waylon picking the music.
I think she has a crush on him.
Mason.
She’s been acting real funny around him, all pink-faced and girly in a way she never gets with Waylon, or me for that matter.
She knows all the words to the songs he likes and I don’t even think she likes them. It bugs me, ’cause I do like them, and I know all the words too, but I just keep them to myself instead of singing along and showing off.
She’s the musical one after all.
I’m the artist.
That’s what Mom said once when talking about us to one of her piano friends.
I smiled real big at that.
Her little artist.
Up until then, I never really thought of myself like that. I just draw and color ’cause I love it.
Sure, it’d be cool to make my own comics to sell in stores and turn into movies… action figures of my superheroes on shelves, and kids dressed in the costumes I invented.
But no one knows about that except for Izzy.
