Broken by C.J. Lyons

enough. I race to my room before she can change her mind.
    Ever since the Year of Nothing Good when my folks almost Lost Me not once but twice, my room has been here on the main floor of our house. At first I missed my room upstairs with its gable and window seat, but Dad worked really hard on my new room while Mom stayed in the hospital with me. He calls it the “every girl’s dream come true fairy princess room.”
    Sometimes I think he thinks I’m still five instead of fifteen. But the look on his face when I came home from the hospital as he carried me from the car and inside the room that used to be his study—he was so excited, so proud. How could I say anything, do anything, except smile and thank him?
    This is my room…imagine a wad of bright-pink strawberry Bubblicious gum. Blow the biggest bubble you can. And pow! It bursts all over a room stinking of pipe tobacco, with pine paneling stained so it’s more rust-orange than brown and olive-green carpet. Then add pink lace curtains, a dresser painted—one guess—Pepto-Bismol-princess pink, and a hospital bed disguised by pink fluffy pillows and comforters with lace trim (that itches anytime it touches your skin) covered with pink roses.
    Yes, it’s hideous. But know what? I love it. I really do. My dad might be color-blind, but every time he comes into my room, his smile makes his eyes crinkle and blink fast, like he’s holding back tears. It breaks my heart, the way he feels that he can never help me the way Mom does. He’s as powerless as I am against my Long QT and he hates it.
    So it’s easy to keep the lights low and ignore what my room looks like or the fact that I can still smell Dad’s pipe every time I walk in. Instead, I concentrate on the love he put into it.
    Hoping for the best, that I’ll be in English class tomorrow, I finish the last of my homework, my memory journal entry. I give Mrs. Gentry one of my hospital memories since I can’t remember anything from my real life that far back. It’s a good story, though. The time when I was five and had diarrhea so bad they had to drill a needle into a bone in my leg to give me fluids. Mom tells the story a lot, especially in the summer when I have shorts on and you can see the scar left behind from where the bone got infected after.
    One of my many Near Misses. I hope Mrs. Gentry doesn’t mind a little gore and pus with her memories—sometimes I forget all this stuff isn’t normal for everyone.
    The good thing about using this story is I don’t have to bother Mom since I already have her first-hand account (have heard it so many times I can recite her version from memory—my own version is a little foggier since I was so damn sick), so that counts as a primary reference source as well.
    I’m a little disappointed I haven’t been able to remember something that doesn’t have to do with being sick. Not because of the homework assignment, but because I’m afraid it’s not because I can’t remember, but because nothing memorable has ever happened to me except being sick.
    How pathetic is that?

Tuesday

23
    I have a hard time sleeping. Images of Jordan and Tony. The way both of them went out of their way to help me. Thoughts of Nessa and Celina, wondering if they really like me or if it’s just part of the peer mentoring, hanging out with me.
    I decide that I think they do like me. All four of them. And I want to keep it that way.
    Tuesday morning, Mom and I go in early so she can meet with Celina. I don’t mind; arriving early means I get into school before any lines form at the metal detector. The only other kids here at this hour are the athletes with early practice and kids taking remedial classes during zero period.
    I want to go to the library—especially as my first period is study hall—but Mom decides she wants to keep an eye on me, so she sets me up in the far corner of her office, behind the privacy screen.
    She keeps checking her watch, obviously upset that Celina hasn’t