November 6, 2007, Word Count 10460

Time for a little backstory - hope it's not too confusing to add it, but it's all coming together - in ways that I hadn't set out writing...but it is what it is...

And if you're worried that it's going to be sad all the way through the book, that's okay.

So am I.

October 13, 1975

The light filtered into my pink fortress as the sun made it’s way up over the trees in the back yard. At 7 years old, there was nothing finer in the world to me than the color pink. Every shade was fair game – pale peppermint pink, deep rich magenta. It made no difference to me – pink, pink and more pink! My brother, Ray, who was 10 years older, often teased me about my pink obsession, but I didn’t care. Pink was made for girls.

A noise had woken me - The phone, maybe? I wasn’t sure. But then, yes, I heard voices talking. My mother screamed loudly, and I heard the phone thump on it’s way to the floor, before clattering wildly against the wall where it hung. I jumped out of my bed and ran to the kitchen. My dad was supporting my mom and leading her over to the table. His face was white with shock. “What is it?” I asked with a quivering voice. No one said anything. My mom’s sobs rushed over me and frightened me to the core. “What is it?” I demanded more forcefully. I had never been a demanding child, but this was different. Something was terribly wrong.

“Go to your room, Anne.” My father’s voice was flat and emotionless. “NO! Tell me what is wrong RIGHT NOW!!” My mother looked at me with hatred, it seemed. “It’s Ray. He’s dead. He’s never coming back. Are you satisfied, you nosy little bitch?” I looked at her face and could see she was telling the truth. Ray was dead. “How?” My voice had gone back to it’s normal child-sized portion. “He wrecked on the way home from the concert last night. We’ve been up all night calling hospitals, after he didn’t come home. He ran into a bridge abutment on the interstate. Everyone in the car was killed. All four of them.” My father recited the facts as if he were reading it from the daily news. He didn’t look at me. I stared at their faces for a moment, and then turned to go back to my room. I felt the hot tears rushing down my cheeks, and I didn’t want them to see them.

The next days passed in a blur of activity. Funeral arrangements, receiving friends and family, casseroles and flowers filling the empty spaces of the house like solemn reminders that Ray was gone. As if we needed them. Everything about our house screamed it. The quiet spaces that he used to fill with jokes and songs and snippets of movie dialogue. My parents roamed the house looking for solace, but they found none. They looked over me like I was a dirty sweatshirt piled in the corner. I was only 7. Before long, it seemed that it had always been that way, except for the pictures on the wall that showed a different sort of family. One of my aunts brought me a small sketchbook and some pencils and markers. “Here, Annie-love. You can use it to write down your feelings. Maybe it will help your grieving process.”

I was 7. I didn’t know how to spell “grieving process,” so I started to draw. I drew Ray. Ray with his guitar. Ray in his McDonald’s uniform. Ray riding a bike while holding a giant fish over his head. Ray and me walking together in the park. Ray hugging me and telling me “I love you, Annie-banany.” I drew Ray’s car – his pride and joy that all his McDonald’s money went toward, fire-engine red and slow as molasses. I drew Ray’s car crumpled against the bridge. I drew dead Ray and his dead friends in the crumpled car. I drew and I grieved and I healed.

I wished my parents would learn to draw.