Pretty Girls Bleed Flowers

Thank you

  I don’t know what direction the number five is meant to face. I can’t tell left from right or B from D. I have to read directions three times to be sure of myself. Now that I’m grown, I think it’s dyslexia, but when I was in school, it just meant I was lazy.

  Doing homework just meant my dad screaming at me at the kitchen table. So, I decided I wouldn’t have homework. A few sheets of paper were easy to hide before my dad got home. They fit perfectly into my jacket's lining or box spring. 

  The only hitch in my plan was that if your grades dropped enough, the teacher would call your parents. If that doesn’t fix it, they give you a case manager. 

  I met Ms. Andrews in sixth grade. She was a math teacher, but the school decided I was her problem. For forty minutes a day, she had to sit down with me and watch me do homework. She was nicer than my dad, but I still didn’t love it. Even turning in my work only got me a D in math that first year. I only just passed. 

  In seventh grade, she asked me why I was always so sad. I didn’t know why I was sad. I didn’t know I was all that sad. She sat me down with a piece of paper and a pencil; she wanted me to write down why I was so sad. I wrote my name at the top of the page; I didn’t know what else to write.

  I had to start group therapy through the school that year, and they had a teacher watch me eat my lunch. I hated it all. I thought I must be stupid. I was never good enough. 

  In eighth grade, I got Nick’s old phone. I didn’t have many friends, so all I wanted to do with it was read. I found an app that would let me read all I liked for free. After a few months, I even started writing my own stories. 

  Ms. Andrews caught me on my phone one day and asked what I was doing. She smiled when I told her. She told people I was going to be an author one day. I never agreed. I hated writing.