When she was two, Janey Mackintoshe was dragged to daycare by her mother. She was dragged in kicking and screaming and biting until she gave up. But then it was all ok, because she was allowed to colour, and God did Janey love colouring. She would colour all day if she could. She couldn't though. Next to her sat a boy. He seemed very small to her, and he was colouring with a brown crayon. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but making grass brown made it look dead. Maybe it was an uncommon opinion to have, but Janey didn't like dead stuff. She thought it was stupid. And so she told the boy that. And he had told her she was stupid, and that that was his favourite colour. And so a life long friendship began. He had told Janey his name, but 'Maddox' was a very long word, and Janey had never been too good at long English words.
When she was five, Janey learned that you could only have one best friend. This made her panic, because she had two. Her friend Selina and Brown. How was she supposed to choose? But then Brown and Selina got into a fight. And Selina had pushed Brown down onto the floor. And Brown had been so small and so weak and Janey had been so angry so she had pushed Selina. So Selina wasn't her friend anymore, but Brown was her bestest friend ever.
When she was eight, Janey got two younger siblings. They were twins - Dave and Samantha (Janey called her Sammy) - and they cried a lot. Well, Dave cried and when Sammy noticed he was crying she would start crying. Brown and his mom came to the Mackintoshe's house, so they could see the babies, and Janey could see that Brown wasn't very impressed with her little siblings as well. However, he had bought them two stuffies, and he poked them in the stomach (which made them laugh) and Janey liked that all of them were happy. And then Janey's parents were leaving on some trip for something and Janey was alone with her four year old siblings.
When Janey was thirteen, Dave broke his arm falling down the stairs. She and Brown had been in the kitchen doing homework when she heard the crashing. Her aunt Diana had ran to him but he started screaming that he didn't want her, he wanted mom. Janey came to tell him mom wasn't there and he cried harder. Brown called his mom and she drove them to the hospital. Dave fell asleep on Janey's lap on the car ride home whilst Sammy and Brown played Chopsticks in the back.
When Janey was fifteen, she and Brown joined some sort of league. They met a girl called Xelia, and she used to glare at them. Janey and Brown were staring to argue. They had never argued before. But now they argued almost constantly, but Brown slept over every night. His mom died whilst she was watching a movie with her bestfriend. It was a gas leak that killed them. Brown moved in permanently, and although he had his own room, he just slept on a blow up matress in Janey's room most of the time. And then Janey's parents came back and dumped three one year olds in Janey's lap. They were called Charles, Lyllian-Fiona and Teddy. Her parents left a week later.
At seventeen, three of Janey's siblings called her mom. Brown had been her boyfriend for two years. Her other two siblings were nine and they had class projects like every week. Xelia was over at their house constantly, proving to be the only point of stability in their crazy lives. Brown cooked dinner whilst Xelia smoked a cigarette outside and played uno with the kids. She taught them about the solar system and stuck on power ranger plasters on all of their little scratches. Brown danced with the kids around the house and took them to parks. He taught them to play the piano. Janey sometimes sat back and watched it all
At eighteen, her parents dumped two more kids on her; Harper and Ben. And Janey decides she's had enough. She fights for legal custody, and she gets it. Those kids aren't her parents' kids anymore, they're hers. But Xelia is dead now.
She's twenty when her parents come back again, and Ben and Harper don't know who they are. Ben grips Brown's shirt when he tries to hand him over to Janey's dad, but Ben says 'I don't know who he is, you're my dad.' and Janey's parents are furious. But Janey is smiling, and Dave is laughing. They were never parents, not like Janey and Brown were.
Janey is twenty-six when she dies. She's not sure why, but she's holding a grenade in her hand and all she can hear is buzzing. She dies a minute after the flash. She feels guilty, because she's got a husband now. And she has about seven parent-teacher meetings that she has to attend. She has to help Dave with his algebra homework and Sammy with her music. She needs to remind Fiona she loves her and that she doesn't have to have long hair. She has to sing lullabies to Harper and Ben. She has to teach Charles to play tennis and she has to watch Teddy's gymnastics routine. She dies anyways, with her jaw blasted open.
