The sky above my town is the same as it was before. Blue and white, every day. It hardly ever rains here except when somebody dies.

"Hello, Libby," says my neighbor Ezra as he is plucking weeds by his mailbox. I smile and wave. My name is not Libby.

I have been sick for seven months. A great wad in my left leg they took with a knife. I wanted to know what it looked like, but no one would tell me. I have a right to know because it's my leg and it's my disease.

My hair is wispy yellow-white like the fluff on a dandelion. I hate it. My brother said I looked like Charlie Brown and my father made him apologize even though I know he thought I looked like Charlie Brown, too.

I called my ex-best friend Kimmy on the phone yesterday. "I'm going to the social," she tells me. "I bought a dress. It's blue and shiny."

"Oh," I say.

"Well, I have to get ready," she says. "See you around."

I'm OK now. I can live at home again in my own room and sleep in my waterbed with its pink flannel sheets. I can take my medicine with Coke and play with the hamsters and feed the fish and make myself lunch with deli cold cuts from the fridge and watch tapes on the VCR and listen to Peter, Paul and Mary on my father's stereo and fall asleep on my cat.

I'm OK.

Kimmy has a new best friend. Her name is Johannah Ritz and she's got blue-black hair that reaches her elbows. Johannah's dress for the social is the same as Kimmy's but it's red. They're twins now. Everybody says so.

I wish that I could change my name to Heather and wear a wig to school. I would make all these new friends and start over again because girls named Heather are always popular. I would say, "Oh you know that girl who had cancer, well she's my cousin and we traded families so she's not coming back ever."

Today it's my cat's birthday so I think I'll let him sit on my lap for awhile, even though I'm allergic. My parents and my brother are at a baseball game. There is no one home at my house, just me sitting on my pink bed looking out into the gray sky. It looks like rain. n