Sarah to Peices

         Growing up the way I did, surrounded by people that love and would die for you despite the fact that they aren't family, you grow up special.  You grow up strong.  Especially if all of this happens on an airforce base.  My mother, an Air Force Pilot and twelfth degree black belt is my role model.  Dill, Allister, Dimitri, Geraldo and Esther being my gaurdians after my mother was deported to serve in Iran, then to fight the Taliban.  With no living relatives, my mom left me with them.  Esther being my sereget mom, and the rest of them playing big brother.  But that wasn't what made me special, at least, that's what the doctor at the virginia base told me.  No when I was born a was born quiet.  I squaled for two seconds when they took me from my mother, but the rest of the time, i was quiet.  The nurses that I had met when I was still very young told me that I had big intelligent eyes and that i even smiled at them when they explained what they were doing.

       I didn't like being in the white room with the other babies, I always had something of great itellectual worth in my hand.  LIke once when I was three I pulled down the Picture of the man drawn by DaVinci, with his arms and legs spread out and showing his limbs in multiple places at once.  Or the time when I was six and I stood and looked at the stars with Geraldo on the Base in washington.  When I started crying he lifted me to his chest and stroked my hair.

"What's wrong my little wild flower?" He had asked me gently as he carried me back to the base patting me.  I don't remember it myself, but Esther and Allister told be that I explained to Geraldo that it was incomprehendable that amongst every other planet, and the infinite space, that we could mean anything more then a speckle of dust means on a peice of paper.  I then went into the fact that I didn't understand who god was, and how god came to be, and who created him, and who created the man that created god.  I guess that's weird for a six year old to say.  Many other things.  When I was nine the General on the base recognized that I had a gift, and enrolled me in school.  I think it hurt Dill the most when I left.  I spent uncountable hours with dill at the training field and at the gym.  Dill was only twenty, but one of the best explosives experts in the country.  And thats how I got to be here.  On the bus talking my mouth off with people I had known since I was nine.  Sicilia, Benjamen, Judy, Tyler, Emily, Colter.  As they watched the ATV drive back the long winding dirt road to the Base.  Dill blew me a kiss and I caught it and put it on my heart.  My friends stared at the base in the distance.  And when they finally dragged their eyes away from it I was sitting staring straight forward, grinning.

        We road in silence, trying to recover from the lack of sleep.  I looked at my watch.  It blinked menacingly at me. 6:23... 6:23... 6:23... 6:24

I laid my head back against the imitation leather seat and stared out the window.  Yes Oregon was beautiful.  I could see the ever cold Pacific ocean in the distance, across a swaying green field of lush wild flowers, just over the cliff lay the waters.  I closed my eyes and began to slip away back into a lovely part of mind that was my secret world.  And I related things from my world to what they may be like in a fantacy, I was a queen.  In my world.  I was a loyal, self-sacrificing and on some days, self hating.  But my fantacy world was more reality then i would have liked.  Self hating, yes, but i'd never admit it.  Self Sacarficing?  Why wouldn't I be.  But what truly hurt, what slashed me like a knife was what I had become.  I was also an angel in my world.  A gift to those who needed me.  They told me secrets.  All of my friends told me the secrets that kept them awake at night.

   I have cancer Sarah,.... My parents are dead and I'm living in a foster home, please don't tell,... My father beats me,.... My grandmother is dying... she was my best friend,........ I'm pregnant,......... I loved him and he left me,........ My father is being deported to the front lines,........ They all, hurt me.  But after taking their grief, I was their safe haven.  A sturdy rock to stand on.  I was a gaurdian.  Yes, hearing those problems over and over in my head at night kept me awake.  Even with Esther playing Poker with Dill and Geraldo in the kitchenette.  I loved them though.  They all knew it.  They all knew that if anyone had to take a 9 millimeter slug for them, I'd do it.  If anyone had to take their place in a burning building, or in front of a bus, I'd do it.  It wasn't that I was looking for a way around life, or that I was suicidal and wanted attention, it was just who i had become.  ANd for that, in the back of my mind, I quietly, secretly, silently called myself a blessing.  To me it was a way of keeping my sadness at bay, but it also made me feel conceited.  I was also a little bit of a freak.  Okay, alot of a freak.  This was my vanity.  A kinky, weird personality that only ever released positive and nurturing energy.  And my style reflected that.  A pair of dark wash jeans, ripped, curtousy of a day with Dill.  A pair of adidas flip flops, the white stripes on them colored in with checkers squares of blue, purple, red, green, pink, yellow and orange.  A  black three doors down tee shirt with a yellow tank top under it.  

        My long brown hair was becoming a light caramel color with the time spent out in the sun reading with Allister.  The blond high lights showed and the curly waves flattered my face.  I had high cheek bones and large dramatic eyes.  My skin was olive tone, always dark thanks to mystery dad's italian heritage.  I had petite sexy body.  An hour glass figure and a great butt.  But no body got near it.  MY rules.  I felt my phone vibrate in my purse and I took it out, saw it was a text from Geraldo.

we need to talk.  Me and esther pick you up after school.  Love from all of us here at base have a good day, love Geraldo.

I brushed off the eerie feeling of dread and swung my legs out of the seat to talk to Colter who shook his head drowsily and looked at me with friendly, twinkling eyes.  But no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get the text out of my mind, we need to talk  to you after school, need to talk to you....