"Laura, the one with the bandana and wrinkles around her eyes, got voted off Survivor last night. She was kind of annoying and weak so she wasn't much help anyways. She wasn’t going to win anyways." Rodney tells us.
"Try to think of something nice to say." Jillian encourages, smiling with her eyes.
"She probably has a loving family waiting for her and they'll be thrilled that she's back home and not on some island." She answers politely. Every time we say something negative, Jillian tells us to turn it into something positive. She's written a book all about it aptly titled "The Positive Life".  We turn our daily experiences into positive life lessons every night during dinner to distract ourselves from Jillian’s awful cooking. Rather, Jillian’s cooking, which helps us appreciate the food we eat elsewhere even more.
"Good." Jillian will accept this revision with a smile, "Amy, how about you?"
"I hit a boy today. Really hard. In the face." I amuse myself with the thought of trying to twist such an occurrence into a positive experience.
She frowns, "Why's that?"
I refer with a swift side glance to Maggie who's grinding her rice almost completely with her bottom teeth which stick out far further than her top. Rice probably wasn't the brightest or cleanest choice of food for tonight's dinner. She can eat a little bit on her own, only soft foods in a bowl with a spoon. It is the most independence she is allowed. "Maggie!" she screams, as though she knows we're talking about her. She was doing that in the line for the bus, and Billy Hemme had repeated her and asked "why she always says her name and nothing else like a goddamn pokemon". His stupid little cronies laughed along which made Maggie confused and upset so I had to teach him a lesson. I'm telling Jillian a white lie when I say I hit him - I pushed him into the fence, slammed him to the ground, sat on his chest and punched his face until it bled, ripped out a chunk of his hair and kicked him in the stomach when I was finished. The details are better left undivulged.
"They probably deserved it." Dad mumbles. Rodney pushes his peas and onions around on his plate in the little pool of liquid they've created. He's only 10, but he knows just as well as a grown up person how cruel human beings can be, especially to those who can't stick up for themselves.
My mother used to hate it when Maggie repeated her name over and over and wouldn't stop. Especially when she'd scream it. She'd yell back at Maggie and sometimes hit her like I hit that boy until Maggie would cry instead of scream.
"Mrs. Everwood called me." Jillian says finally without looking up from her plate.
"So you knew already. She told you what happened." I say this with an edge in my tone. I hate when Jillian does this to me.
"Yes."
"So it was pointless to even ask me what happened today, if you already knew."
"Well I wanted to hear your side of it before coming to any conclusions."
"What other side could there possibly be?"
After a long bout of silence Jillian asks, "Do they make fun of you too?" as if this is a reason for concern.
I scoff, "Only by association." Jillian looks sorry. I wonder if she is sorry for me or for Maggie.
The conversation ends, everyone becoming suddenly involved in the dry pork and rice and swimming peas before them. I feel bad for Jillian. It must be difficult to be thrown into such a mess of a broken family. Perhaps I should give her more credit than I do, but she handles our situations so shallowly and with such naive lack of thought it angers me.
"Excuse me." I say as I push myself from the table. No one's paying attention anyways.
I go to my room, my private sanctuary. It's the same room I had in Seattle but a little smaller. It's as if Rodney and dad and I moved across the country but took a chunk of our house in Seattle with us. All of my trinkets and decorations are the same, placed the same way as they were back there. It comforts me, though I have little good memories from our home in Seattle. My room was private sanctuary there too - a place to lock myself away from the chaos outside my door.
There are pictures everywhere. And by everywhere I truly mean everywhere. The ceiling, the mirror, the walls, the headboard of my bad, the windows. Photographs, and little mementos: ticket stubs and posters for movies I enjoyed more than the others, things I drew in art, keychains and friendship bracelets, poems and written work I wrote, notes from teachers and friends, notes between a pen pal and I from grammar school, class photos with the faces of the kids I didn't like scratched out, the faces of those I did like circled, the ones I didn't care for either way left alone. Girl scout badges, recipes, interesting articles from the news or magazines, favorite pages from books with my favorite lines highlighted (I always returned the books like this, with the best parts missing, but no one ever noticed or caught me or tried to do anything about it). Of all the mementos I've clung to, the photographs mean the most. The photographs say the most.
My sister Maggie is 12. She has a slew of problems and takes about a million pills every day morning and noon and night but most noticeable is her severe multiple sclerosis and nerve damage which binds her to  a wheelchair and blindness which causes her to be almost totally incapable of taking care of herself, as if her excessive brain damage and physical disability didn't already do that. Regardless, she's optimistic or at least seems to be. I like to think she hasn't a clue that she's any different from anyone else. I often wonder if she knows all or anything she's missing out on.
Most of the pictures on my wall are of us two. My favorite is us at the beach. Me, all long skinny limbs and the same black crew cut with bangs I wear today at 14. I'm giving the camera a wacky, but childishly genuine smile, my nose scrunched, the little freckles across crumpling inward, my eyes shut, my hands behind my back. Maggie's in one of those giant beach wheelchairs that scream "look at me! I'm disabled!" She wears the same expression I do: the scrunched nose, her little eyes shut beneath her glasses, her matted hair in pigtails. Her legs are skinny like mine, but due more to atrophy than just being skinny. The open ocean sprawls behind us, meeting with the overcast sky somewhere in the middle. That's how I think of Maggie and I now, despite the fact that we're about 7 years younger in the picture than we are now.
I remember then being told she would never make it this long. Year after year my mother would mark holidays, birthdays and special occasions as drudging milestones of Maggie's life. "This'll probably be Maggie's last Christmas" mother would say, deadpan. This always put me into a panic so I would buy Maggie something extra special with my chore money, but she always managed to stick around another Christmas despite my mother's predictions. My mother was always talking about her as though she were already gone, or that it were imperative to plan life after her death instead of living with her and embracing as we did, as we were supposed to.
I have a single photo of my mother, and her face isn't even in it. Half of the photograph is covered by the open palm of her hand. Just the white collar of her shirt, her chin, and her black bob are visible of her person. Behind her is the window of our family room, behind the window the trees that sprawled behind our house in Seattle. This is the photo I have chosen to commemorate her existence, however unworthy an existence it is. My heart squeezes within my chest whenever I look at it. I keep it on the ceiling directly over my bed. Perhaps I keep it there to remind myself that she's still out there somewhere, and that I'm not her and I'm not with her. I don't know why I keep it there at this point, to be honest. At first I put it there feeling bound by some sort of duty to remember the woman who gave birth to me, as if such an act of having a child cleared a woman from the wrongdoing she acted upon her children. Now the photo only succeeds in making me mad.
It's the first photo to catch my attention on nights like these when I cannot possibly handle the frivolous dinner table small talk Jillian incites. It isn't her fault, really. Before she married my father last year she didn't really know what it was like to live with someone so severely disabled. Her naivete is a lesser evil. She makes the best of her newfound situation in the way she can, and I appreciate that, however infuriated she tends to make me. I have to give her credit - she took us in when we moved from Washington to New Hampshire, letting us stay in her house when all we could afford was a two bedroom condo far too small for a family of four with someone who was disabled. At the time, I believe her love for my father shielded her from the trouble our family was actually facing and she was able to pretend little was wrong for his sake, at least. After a year, I think she’s growing to understand the severity of our situation. She's gained 20 pounds and more than a few wrinkles in her short time living with us.
I shake myself from my funk just in time to wheel Maggie from the dinner table, wash her, comb her perpetually messy hair, dress her in pajamas, and read her a short story before she falls asleep.
Sometimes I tell her a story I've come up with myself but often it frustrates her to deviate from reading one of her typical three favorite story tales, so I don't do it often. When I do, she falls asleep almost immediately, but I finish the story as if she were awake.
Tonight, it's "The Little Engine that Could" again; one of the three favorites. She falls asleep before the little engine makes it over the mountain. I kiss her on the forehead as spittle runs down her cheek. I wonder what she dreams of. I hope her dreams are better than her reality.
When I return to my room, the lights are on and the shape of Rodney's little body provides a lump under my covers. Rodney finds his way into my room whenever he's afraid or something's gone wrong.
"Jillian and Dad are fighting again." He tells me when I remove the covers to expose his weary face. He looks so small next to my pillow with his stuffed dog pulled to his chest. I crawl into the space beside him and turn off the lights; a silent indication that we should both sleep and forget the tribulations of the day behind us. I can hear the anger in the muffled shouts being exchanged between Jillian and my dad a couple rooms down. I know it’s probably my fault they’re fighting.
"Amy?" Rodney asks in his little voice.
"Yeah Rod?"
"Do you think Jillian'll make us leave like mom did?" He’s afraid. He has reason to be. Our mother had worked full time to support our family while my father cared for us kids and took Maggie to our appointments. Work for my mom was like my bedroom for me - it was a way to escape her reality.
"No, Rod. Jillian isn't mom. She's a nice woman, she's just having a tough time adjusting."
Silence follows. I imagine the cogs in his brain churning as he tries to comprehend this. I can imagine how frightened he must be and how confused he must feel.
"Amy?"
"Yeah?"
"What if she does? Make us leave, I mean. What if Jillian makes us leave like mom did?"
I hadn't considered it before. It seemed unrealistically awful to consider that the same cruelty could be imposed on our family twice. Besides, Jillian was not my mother. However clueless, her soul was pure. I do not share this with Rodney instead opting to say, "Then we'll go to a new city, I suppose."
"I hope not. I like it here. I like my friends."
"If we leave you'll still have me and dad." I hope this small comfort is enough to ease his worry. 
"And Maggie,” he adds.
"And Maggie." I feel wrong for not having included her initially, "And you'll make new friends, just like you did when we moved to Manchester."
He’s silent again, likely considering the loss of his friends, of this house in which we’ve just begun to settle, the city whose streets names we’ve just begun to learn, whose buildings have become as friendly as the familiar faces of neighbors who smile pitifully when we load Maggie into the van with a ramp or lead her down the street as she screams incoherently.
"Goodnight Amy.” He nestles beside me, his small body warm against mine, “I love you."
"I love you too, bud." I say before his breathing slows to a snore.

The next day in school Billy mocks the way Maggie eats her pudding, dropping most on the bib she wears to prevent such a mess as she eats. He slobbers his applesauce the same way.
"Why do you make fun of my sister?" I ask when Billy and I get off the bus at the same stop. Maggie is at an appointment today, so I’ve had to take the bus again and endure Billy’s presence once more. He inconveniently lives three houses down from me on the same cul de sac, so he’s difficult to ignore on a regular basis.
"She's funny." He wrinkles his nose in a way that suggests he means this in the least positive way possible.
"She isn't funny, she's a beautiful person and I'm sorry you don't have the pleasure of knowing her like I do."
He laughs, "She's stupid!"
"She isn't stupid! She just sees the world differently than you do or I do."
He considers this for a moment.
"Come here." I bring him around to the back of my house. He's hesitant, but more curious than he is wary so he follows. Behind my house in a patch of overgrown grass is a shed. Probably used once for lawn mowers and tools and other things people who have time for repairs and house maintenance, the shed is used for old items sitting somewhere in the purgatory between usable and better fit for the junk yard. For example, the wheelchair Maggie used to use before she grew a few inches and pounds and needed a new one. It’s leaning against a shelf and squeaks when I release it from it’s folded position.
“Sit.” I command. Billy sits warily. I find a rag amongst the mess in the shed and cover his eyes. He thrashes a little and tries to ask me what I’m doing but I tell him to shut up. 
"This is all she knows. This is all she understands." I preface. I lead him through the weeds and grass to the sidewalk in front of my house.
“I don’t get what you’re…”
“Shhh. She can’t speak. She doesn’t know any words besides her name and mine and my brother’s and a few other basic words. But pretend you don’t know them. You can’t speak.”
I roll him around the neighborhood like this until he stops trying to resist and relaxes. This is when I stop.
“You can pull off the blindfold now.” I tell him. He does. “This is what she knows. This is what living like Maggie is like. She sits in her chair all day and hardly can communicate what she’s thinking or how she’s feeling and can’t see anything around her. She can’t see the sky she can’t see the houses, she can’t even see your pathetic face. Nothing. Not even that, she doesn’t know what seeing is like. But you know what? She’s always smiling. And every time she experiences something new she gets so excited. She screams the few words she knows even louder. Yeah, she’s disabled but she lives a more brilliant life than you do. She’s happy. And if you try to do anything to ruin her happiness, you’re the miserable one. You cannot judge someone until you’ve been in their shoes, but because that’s completely impossible, you have to try to empathize with them even if you will never struggle like they do. Do you get it? Do you understand now?”
He nods vigorously, the tied rag still hanging around his neck. I don't know if he really gets what I'm trying to teach him or if he's just afraid of me - a stranger who just pushed a blindfolded boy twice her size around the sidewalks of a suburban neighborhood in a wheelchair - but he looks like there's a possibility my lesson has traveled through it's thick skull and perhaps even lodged itself somewhere in his small brain. I hope this form of teaching proves more effective than a few bruises and a bloody nose did. He removes himself from the chair quickly and leaves without another word. I feel like I’ve done my little deed of kindness for the day. Jillian tells Rodney and I we should complete some small positive and outwardly beneficial act every day if we wish to lead an ultimately positive life. Perhaps Jillian is a smart lady. Perhaps I should try to understand her more instead of despise her for the lot she’s been given or dismissing her as an outsider. I make a mental note to try this.

I find the photograph of my mother on my ceiling and place it in an envelope. If she still lives where she lived before we left, the address I scrawl on the front of the envelope is correct. I leave no return address. I stick it in the mailbox leaving the rest to fate, time and the US Postal Service. I've never seen such a lovely empty space on a ceiling.