My homeschool teacher kept rattling off about algebra and other math facts, but I was paying no attention whatsoever. I was busy daydreaming. I was on a grand stage with thousands of eyes on me. I danced like an elegant swan as people cheered for me. I could hear my teacher’s faded voice outside my fantasy.

“Margaret!” my teacher yelled.

I suddenly popped back into reality.

I hate being homeschooled, but children like me aren’t able to go to normal school. I got very sick when I was little. My whole family was disgusted by me. They all vanished except for my mother. Although I was really young when that happened, young enough to forget, I still felt devastated. Because of my sickness, I lost my ability to talk and walk, but my mother is very strict about it. She would always scream at me if she couldn’t understand my sign language. Though I think dancing and painting are the best ways to communicate my feelings, my mother discourages it.

After homeschooling, I picked up my pen and wheeled to my mother’s room. I slowly placed my pen on the wall with unsteady hands and drew a beautiful dancer elegantly dancing as if she were a dove. This can prove to my mother that I have a passion for painting and that I would love to dance, even though I’m in a wheelchair. While I was painting peacefully, I could hear my mother’s loud stomps come nearer. The door swung open, and I could tell just by looking at her eyes that she was anything but happy. She stomped towards me and grabbed the handle of my wheelchair forcefully. She dragged me up the ramp with one hand and jerked me into the attic. She didn’t say a word to me. Then she slammed the door shut and left, fuming. The silence was chilling. I could have heard a pin drop on the floor. It hurt when my mother didn’t understand my way of expressing myself. As tears ran down my cheeks and dripped into my shirt, while I was wheeling back across the room, I noticed something weird. In the corner of the room there was something glowing behind a bunch of boxes. I came closer to this shiny object and picked it up as if I were holding one of my dirty socks. It was an ordinary looking paintbrush. It felt like an ordinary paintbrush as well.I carefully lowered it in a tin of paint and dipped a bit of it onto the paintbrush. I slowly but steadily placed the paintbrush on the wall and painted a small puppy about as tiny as my hands. My painting was good enough to look like a real dog, at least. Suddenly, out of the blue, my painting started to glow. If I could have screamed, I would have. The warm glow of the painting was glowing brighter and brighter until I had to look away. Finally, the light dimmed, and when I turned back around, a silky, soft puppy lay in my arms.