A Shiny Copper Penny

Chapter 1

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Facts.

I'm surrounded by thousands of facts. Maybe millions.

Here are some of them.

The Sun is the largest star in the Milky Way. Millions of Galaxies exist outside of our own, and we are just a droplet of water in the oceans of galaxies and potential life. The square route of 144 is 12.

Facts have always trickled around me like raindrops-- each one a different number of words, each one important in it's own way.

Deep within me, facts pile up in huge dams. Thousands of miles of footage of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Science and Chemistry. Geometry. Geography and History.

From the time I was really little, maybe just a year or two old, facts were like new gifts and I opened them as fast as a child on Christmas Day. I could almost feel them. They made my words and jumbled thoughts have feeling. My parents and my older sister, Melody, have always been blurting out facts. They chattered and babbled. Melody practiced every day for the quiz team, which meant lots of facts. But I sucked in all of them, word for word.

Every fact that my parents or my neighbor, Mrs. V, spoke to Melody or I I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.

I have no idea how I managed to keep this from everyone, but I found a clear and complete process on how to do it.

But only in my head.

Nobody knows still. I am almost 11 years old.

Chapter 2

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Unlike Melody, I can talk. I can walk. I can feed myself and take myself to the bathroom. That's a big bummer for her, since she can't do that by herself.

Her arms and hands are pretty stiff, but she can mash the buttons on the TV remote and move her wheelchair with the help of knobs that she can grab on the wheels. She can't hold a spoon or pencil without dropping it. She says her balance is like zip-- Humpty Dumpty had more control than her.

Melody is a truly beautiful girl. She has short, dark, and super curly hair and she is strapped into a pink wheelchair. Her wheelchair is the palest of pinks and is covered in white hearts. I think her wheelchair is cute.

Her dark brown eyes are always full of curiosity, but one of them is slightly out of whack.

She can't really sit up straight.

Sometimes she drools.

At a very young age, Melody was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Melody has a Plexi-Glass talking board which also serves as an eating tray. It has very few words and phrases, only the vital ones like "I have to go to the bathroom", "I'm hungry", "please", "thank you", etc.

She is very very intelligent. She has no idea how much I look up to her, want to be her, and love her.

She is really tiny for a girl who is 19 and 3/4.

Her legs are very thin, probably since they've never been used.

Her name, Melody, is the best part about her in my opinion.

I've always been very close to her, and I've learned that she is basically a genius. She could identify thousands of words on sight since she was very little. I wish I would be able to do that.