That night, I dream about Bambi. Everything is so real and I see Bambi’s mom get shot. She’s alive but she’s writhing in pain, trying to get to Jessie—wait… I see Jessie. I don’t know why but then the view changes to where I’m looking at Jessie through Bambi’s mom’s eyes. I’m the dying deer. I try to protect the one I love but I can’t. I got shot and now I’m broken too. I wake up at 2 in the morning and stay awake.

         At 7 a.m., I can’t eat my cereal. I just fix Jessie a fruit smoothie—the only food I remember how to make correctly. The blender wakes him up and it makes our mom start screaming. She thinks the blender is a demon and if I listen close enough to it sometimes I can hear it. But I make the smoothie anyway. Jessie comes out and looks at me, annoyed. I ask him if he wants it and he nods. So we eat together.

         When I was, like, 5, our real dad and our mom, Jessie, and I were in the car driving back from something. I don’t remember what we were doing. Jessie was a little older and he could still walk and talk. Our real dad had this disease that cause turrets and tics that made him do stuff without him knowing. I learned all the swear words from him.

         But it was his tic that made him jerk the wheel into the path of another car that hit the side Jessie was on. It crushed his legs and pieces of metal hit him and some hit me. I have a scar on my head. One piece of metal got lodged into Jessie’s throat, which severed a part of a vocal chord. It was too dangerous to remove but every year that piece gets closer to Jessie’s windpipe as he grows. That’s also why Jessie can’t turn his head that much. He can only eat liquefied foods so his esophagus doesn’t stretch too much.

         I look at Jessie from the table. He gives me a “what?” look. I don’t talk to him. He doesn’t mind. Our mom comes out of her room and tells me to throw the blender off the roof because it’s a demon. Demons don’t belong in a house. I tell her that throwing blenders off roofs doesn’t expel demons from common objects. But I admit that it would be fun to try but I don’t think that I could carry Jessie up there with me. She tells me to throw it off the roof after school. I ask her where we can get a new one. She walks away, talking to the ceiling again.

         Can we throw it off the roof? Jessie types. I shake my head and tell him that mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I look at the clock, dump my cereal out in the sink, and look at the microwave clock, which is supposedly 2 hours off.

         “How the hell did so much time pass?” I demand to the microwave. It doesn’t answer. Stupid-ass microwave. I go to my room and put on my clothes and try not to put my shirt on backwards this time. Then, I realize that my underwear feels weird. I put them on backwards. I curse again and start all over.