"My parents are liars. They told me anything was possible. They said if I worked hard enough that I could create the life I wanted for myself. They said all I had to do was paint the sky with my dreams and reach and reach and reach. And I was stupid enough to believe them."
Ebony, protagonist of Liara Tamani's What She Missed, feels like her life is over. Her parents have lost their jobs. Unable to afford the cost of living in Houston, the family had to move to a small rural town. She's lost her home, her community, and her friends. Enroute to their new house, she gets a group text.
"Just leave it alone, I responded. Jealous they'd get to stay together. Mad they'd get to hang out all summer and go back to Houston's Academy of the Arts in the fall while I was stuck in the boonies."
Ya see she isn't just leaving any old urban school. It's the school that she's dreamed of graduating from since she was eleven, the school she worked so hard to get into, the school where she'd come into her own as an artist. There's no way her new school can live up to it.
The new home isn't really new to Ebony. It used to be her deceased artist grandmother's. Until six years ago she'd spent happy summers there. But things and the proverbial boy next door (and her feelings for him) have changed. Spiraling into despair, unable to communicate her feelings, and blind to many clues (the things she missed) she's acting impulsively and making serious mistakes. Maybe ones she can't come back from.
On a purrrsonal note I had a move that felt like the end of the world. It was so that my severely brain damaged sister could be closer to her special education school. I was losing my home, my community, and my friends. I was starting high school at a place where I knew nobody. We'd moved away from my beloved ocean and into a no pets allowed apartment. My growing up home had been full of animals: cats, raccoons, red foxes, flying squirrels...I even had an ocelot, my beloved Sheba. After Harriet's life altering illness when I increasingly felt like I didn't matter in my family it was so 💔 to lose this source of unconditional love.
A great big shout out goes out to all the kids who lose so much in moves they have no say in.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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