Rise (Excerpt)

Part 1

FALLON

I am not a lost cause.

"Fallon! Please!"

But sometimes you have to pick your battles. Draw lines in the sand.

"Fallon!"

Fight for what you want.

"What about the ice?"

My mom shouts at me from the front porch of the one-story ranch we've called home since she began dating Ron. The bricks are brown, the shutters brown, bleeding into brown grass and trees and pavement. Into brown, winter sky. . . .

I learned about lost causes in first grade, when they taught us how to walk third tile from the wall in a straight line, hands behind our backs, metal handcuffs the only thing missing from thin wrists on what amounted to a prison march. Teachers joked about this with fear in their eyes. Fifth grade. That was the benchmark. We had to read on at least a fifth-grade level. Fifth grade and we'd have a surviving chance. Anything less and we'd likely end up walking the line in a real prison. Living on the street.

Drowning in a sea of lost causes.

At least that's what the hotel manager where my mother cleaned rooms at the time said. I sat nearby—in a wobbly chair at a sticky round table in the middle of the staff break room. Walls flamingo pink. No windows. The smell of someone's microwave-burnt popcorn assaulting my nose. I pretended not to hear, worked hard on my coloring page, making sure the number ones were yellow, the number twos red.

A scarlet red—like the highest note of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" from the lullaby CD our teacher played for us during rest time. The prettiest red.

I colored carefully that day, staying within every line.

I stop mid-lawn, turn to face my mother, the wind biting my cheeks and nose. "It's Michael's last day home," I argue, pulling my gray coat tighter against my body—a gray coat too thin to be of any use in the weather they're calling for later.

Brown, gray, black—these colors don't exist in the music in my head.

For that, I am grateful.

Second grade.

Most of the kids looked like me. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Had mothers who dropped them off at the front doors, waved goodbye, drove their SUVs straight to yoga, coffees in hand. In the afternoons they were ready with snacks—something healthy. They checked homework folders. Made dinners. Asked how school was.

But there were a few of us. We rode the bus. Came home to empty apartments. Brought back those folders information unread, untouched, unsigned.

This new school required uniforms—both blessing and curse. A blessing because we were like little clones, no one caring what we wore from one day to the next—that I alternated between khaki and navy blue pants. White shirt. Green shirt. Purple shirt. White. Green. Purple.

Until red shirts were required for our field trip to the science museum.

I sat at a booth at the Chinese restaurant where my mom was working at the time, sipping on a chocolate milk one of the waitresses sneaked to me while my mom talked to her boss of the month, asking for an advance on her paycheck. I waited in the car while Mom stood at the ATM pressing buttons, nothing coming out.

We drove to the uniform store "just to look." Mom found a red shirt in my size. I remember trying it on—the first dressing room I ever stepped inside—pulling the stiff material over my head, the tag itching my neck at the hairline.