I woke to the sound of sizzling bacon and the smell of chocolate chip panckes. This was one of the rare days when Ms. Young made bacon, the pancakes were for "every time a guest spends the night and stays for breakfast," as Kay would put it. Kay says that I am the only one who has tasted her pancakes whose last name isn't Young. Sometimes I wonder what we would do if our first grade teacher hadn't paired me up with Kay to show her around and, hopefully, break the impenetrable shell I had put up around myself. I had mainly built the shell because of Mum and Dad. At first when Dad was angry, like hitting mood angry, I would go tell Mum to calm him down but soon she couldn't help any longer. He was so unstable he was angry practically all the time and when he wasn't it took only a tiny pebble to set him off, running around hitting, cursing at, and breaking anything or anyone around him, including Mum. Nothing helped except to leave him in a room alone, he needed space to blow off steam. Anyway, the teacher assigned me as her personal guide as in I show her around, warn her about certain things and/or people, and be her friend until she can make her own. At first Kay acted like she hated everything and everyone around her, including the new school. Little by little she started breaking out of that anger and seemed to actually enjoy her new life. I started retreating back into my shell but it seemed Kay had made it her mission to break that shell for good, and she succeeded. I was a new girl in, like, three months. I wore light makeup, dressed in bright colors, and started talking more. She was a miracle.
