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improvements: cutting off the top of Cindy’s head from her fourth-grade school picture; removing Paul’s legs from a newspaper photo of him running with a football; cutting me altogether from quite a few family shots.
    Talk about your perfect setup for a big-boom disaster—Mom’s albums and Debi’s “art.” Mom always makes a big deal of Debi’s collages because she knows that to Debi they are important, but Debi had no clue about the difference in value between Mom’s precious albums and Debi’s chopped-up-magazine art. I don’t think there was anything especially logical about Debi’s choices of who to cut, and I’m sure that nothing she did was meant to be hurtful. Everyone thinks I’m a veg. But I’m smart. I know right from wrong, whether anybody knows this about me or not. They think that I can’t be bad or mean or hurtful. That’s not really true. I do get irritated like when Debi makes me crazy watching The Sound of the Music over and over again at supersonic sound. And you already know about my sarcasm. In this situation with Mom and Debi, I feel I’m connecting in other ways. I can feel other people’s heartbreak and pain and grief. I feel sorry for Debi that she’s in trouble for something she didn’t know was wrong, and I feel sad for my mom for what’s she’s lost.
    After Mom comes back upstairs from scolding Debi, I hear her talking to Paul and Cindy in the family room.
    Mom says, “A university in central Missouri is collecting all your father’s papers.”
    â€œPapers?” Paul asks.
    Mom explains. “Anything to do with his career as a poet and writer.”
    Cindy asks, “The family albums were for them?”
    â€œNot now,” Mom explains, “and for as long as either of you want to keep any family things, of course they’re yours. But Shawn isn’t ever going to have a family, be a father, or have children. And since your dad’s career is so closely attached to Shawn’s life, it felt good to me, comforting to know that Shawn would live on, that his album would be of interest to people years and years from now, after we’re all gone. But now it’s ruined—your brother’s album, irreplaceable photographs of Shawn as a baby … all the—” She starts crying again.
    Tears are weird things for me; sometimes they show up without my even feeling sad, other times the most heartbreaking news in the world—stuff that makes me wish I could scream and weep and beat up the whole universe—leaves me dry-eyed. But hearing Mom talk about her album she made for me, how making it somehow made my condition and my life easier for her to handle and helped her feel better—well, to be honest, that made me feel worse. I have a sick, empty, gnarly feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wish I could cry right now.
    An hour or so later, after Mom has calmed down and Cindy and Paul have gone up to their rooms, I can see Mom in the kitchen and overhear her on the phone, telling my dad what has happened. I can tell that Dad is reassuring her. She nods sometimes, a funny habit she has when she’s talking on the phone, as if the person on the other end of the line can see her.
    â€œI know,” Mom says finally. “Thanks for talking me down.” She pauses, laughs a little, and says, “No, really, I feel better. I’m not even sure how many photos are wrecked—I didn’t have the heart to look all through.”
    She is quiet again. “I know,” she says, “you too.... Thanks and good night.” Mom hangs up the phone.
    Rusty lies at her feet and stares up at her. She looks down at him. “You’re not in any trouble, Mr. Rustoleum,” she says. “Catastrophe canceled. Everything’s going to be okay now. I’m sure Debi has learned her lesson.”

19
    T he next morning, Debi’s bus picks her up for