Wrong

If everything was right in my world, there would be 12-year-old girl asleep in my basement.

She'd be impossible to wake up in the morning, what with the activities and homework and hormones and all.

There'd be blinds on the window of her bedroom and various beauty products scattered across the top of her bathroom counter. There'd be uniforms to wash, math homework to struggle over, and friends moving in and out of her circle and back in again.

If everything was right in our world, we'd be prepping for our first junior high dance, laying out potential outfits and experimenting with hairstyles, all the while pretending not to care about impressing anyone.

Instead, Scott and I are desperately trying to find a way to escape this weekend, to wrap ourselves in some sort of soft cocoon that surely will protect us until it's safe to come out.

If everything was right in our world.

I've said it before: our axis shifted the day Addie died. Our world will forever be off. And my visions of a pre-teen girl sacked out in her bed stressing over homework (and, let's be honest here, seriously stressing over whether anyone will actually ask her to dance at the dance) are visions that exist only in my mind. They are what I remember from being a 12-year-old girl.

And what I wanted so much for my girl.