Sunny(4)

Aurelia’s clothes always look dirty, even though they always smell clean. “Clirty” is a word I’ve made up to describe the look.

Aurelia has tattoos all over her. Weird ones. Loopy and lopsided stars that look like I did them. With my eyes closed. She even has tattoos on her hands. On her fingers. Her knuckles. Big letters that on one hand say S-T-A-Y, and on the other, B-U-S-Y.

Remember?

If not, just know Aurelia is part of the plan. I know you don’t know this part, Diary, because I didn’t know this part until last year. (Know that no know is a no-no.) She was part of my parents’ original plan. I don’t (know!) the whole plan, or if it was actually written down in outlines and graphs and charts and diagrams and codes, or how far they even got. But from what I know, my mom and Darryl, who, by the way, were boyfriend-girlfriend since they were my age, which by the way, means they’d basically been lovey-dovey for infinity times infinity, which by the way means great grossness and gross greatness, were planning to graduate from middle school, go to high school, be king and queen of all the things (most likely to succeed at being boyfriend-girlfriend), get scholarships to college, where my mother would study psychology and my father would study business (even though he loved taking pictures), then graduate and go to more school to study the same things over again, which seems . . . I don’t know, the opposite of smart.

But that’s what my parents did. School, then more school.

And after more school, once they both got fancy jobs in offices with carpeted floors and phone answerers and vending machines with trail mix and fruit snacks, they would buy this giant house, then move on to step four of the plan—or is it step five?—which was to make me, and I was going to be named Sunny whether I was a boy or a girl.

The next step in the plan was to homeschool me, which just means go to school at home, and Aurelia was supposed to be my teacher, all along. According to the plan.

And so she is. And I’m glad she’s here.

Crazy thing is, Diary, you weren’t part of the plan. But I’m glad you’re here too.





Dear Diary,

Aurelia laughed at Darryl this morning. She was coming in and he was going out and he said good-bye to me, but it was in a weird way, like the words were coming through his throat but not actually out of his mouth, and Aurelia thought that was funny and asked him what was wrong with him. He said nothing was wrong with him, but Aurelia knew that wasn’t true. Not just because of the way he was talking, but also because of the way he was looking. He wears a gray or blue suit every day, and today it was a gray one, but it was wrinkled, and one of the pant legs was too long, so he looked like half of him had shrunk overnight.

She asked me why he looked like he had just run a mile in his business suit.

Him need to fix his hem. That’s what she said in a baby voice, and it was funny until she asked me what his problem was, and I told her he hadn’t really said too much to me since Saturday’s race. Or . . . not-race. Aurelia knew I was going to do it, and she gave me a high five before shaking her head and saying, Him need to fix his attitude And his hem. Then she told me that I needed to fix us pancakes.

For breakfast.

And for math.

This is what homeschool is like for me now, Diary. I don’t remember if I told you what it was like for me back then, but that’s probably because homeschool back then just felt like . . . day. Like nothing to talk about. Like nothing different. But now I know it’s different because everyone on my team has to go to school—outside school inside of a building—and they complain about bullies—at least Ghost does—and Patty’s always going on about hair flippers, whoever they are. So I know my version of school isn’t like theirs at all.

First pancakes. Turn a recipe for six into a recipe for two. If I do it right, I eat the pancakes. If I do it wrong, I have to watch Aurelia eat all the pancakes (extra syrup) and I have to eat a health bar (extra health).

Then science class. Which today was dissecting a health bar. Because I had pancakes for breakfast. Because division comes pretty natural to me. Thankfully. So, yeah. Turns out a heath bar has a lot of funny-sounding stuff in it that actually seems kind of weird. Also, they taste like dirt. I know, because I’ve had dirt.

After that, English. Right now I’m learning Shakespeare. You know Shakespeare? Wait, first let’s talk about that name—Shakespeare. Shake a spear in your face. Tell you to back up off me before I . . . do something bad. Like . . . recite you some poetry that sounds like, Thee thither thather rather in rhythm, Dost thou knowest such promise of prism, O hallowed light! All swallowed by night!

O am nee ah tick em buh lism!

Seriously, Diary. His name is like a warning. And for good reason. His work is hard. But Aurelia makes it fun. She acts out the plays and stuff. Romeo and Juliet. I love you, no, I love you. We have to be together. But we can’t. But we have to. Oh, but we can’t so now we have to die. Made me think of my parents, but only until Aurelia turned on this movie called West Side Story, which she said is just like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, except with gangs and knives and snapping and dancing. That makes me think I might want to join a gang. Of dancers.

And then social studies. We do a lot of different things, but today we went to the museum. One of my favorite things to do. We wandered the big halls, staring up at the walls, reading about war and art, gazing at soldiers who wore white ponytail wigs, and queens and kings wrapped in bandages and buried in gold, and castles and constitutions and letters like these, and on and on. Until we finally sat down and just looked at other people looking at the things we just looked at. Watched their heads swivel as they read, and their fingers point, sometimes too close to the art. Watched old people hold hands and creep around. Old people whose brains are probably just as museum-y as the museum. Romeos and Juliets, who I bet had pancakes for breakfast, and health bars in their back pockets.