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stops on her side, she enters and I watch her take a seat. When the bus is ready to go again, she turns her head and looks straight at me, holding her hand up to the window as if waving good-bye. Is she trying to tell me something? Why do I keep seeing her?
    â€œMilly! Milly! Wait!” Beth yells out from down the block, breaking my trance. She’s running toward me, holding something in her hand. It’s her phone.
    â€œBeth! Did you find that text message?”
    I’m glad to connect with her before heading home. I wait as she tries to catch her breath. She’s taking big gasps of air in between the words, “I have…” then more deep breathing “…to show you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHere, look.” She hands the phone over to me to look at. “It reads ‘The fire changed everything,’ then the letter A and what looks like a date: 3.21.2004. It’s exactly ten years ago.”
    Dear God! Not that date! And the letter A ? What could that mean? I try to calm my thoughts to not look so stunned. “Yeah, that is weird,” I reply back at her. But in my mind I am speechless. And for once Amelia doesn’t say anything either. Beth just looks confused and a little annoyed at my lack of an explanation. But she doesn’t know how devastating that date is for me. She doesn’t know the horror that happened that day—the day of the accident—the day my parents died.

Chapter Six
    I step onto the crowded bus, walk all the way to the back and try to find a spot there, but they’re all taken. Either that or some people have their bags on empty seats beside them.
    I decide to stand; I have no choice at the moment. For a while, as the bus travels down 95th Street, I glance at the old neighborhood. I miss it—now more than ever. I just don’t understand why all this is happening to me. What really started that fire? Was the fire really an accident, or was Grandpa George just trying to protect me? What if someone was after us? You did it, Milly, remember? It’s all your fault, like everything else is in your life. Like I told you, you are nothing.
    I am letting Amelia get the better of me. I try to think of good things—things that will get my mind off all this turmoil. Trying to still hang on to the good memories I have—mainly of my mother. Although they seem to be fading fast these days with all that’s been happening. I can’t seem to hold on to the good memories since Amelia’s been crowding my mind.
    My mom—again I will myself to think of her. She was an angel to me, and I loved her so. I stand there looking out the bus window, remembering all the good times we had together. Every morning before school started she’d take me to Al’s Doughnut Shop and I’d order the same thing every time—a jelly doughnut with chocolate milk, while my mom just had coffee. She’d let me put in as many creams and sugars as I wanted, and she still drank it, whatever overdose I would put in.
    As my eyes flutter across the moving vehicles, I spot a travel agency with a huge beach poster on the window. My thoughts shift to the times she’d take me to the beach downtown. She’d sit there, shaded by an umbrella, as the white foaming water rolled in at our feet. She was always reading. Many of the books were Aunt Rachel’s. She was so proud of her older sister, I don’t remember how many times she said that—countless. Even though I never met her until just recently, Aunt Rachel looked exactly how I pictured her. I see my mom in her face and mannerisms.
    â€œYou’ll love her,” my mother had said, closing the book as she grazed her fingers across the thick embroidered cover. “Just wait till you meet her. Someday Milly, someday I promise you will.”
    But that promise never came to be when she was alive. So many times she tried, but my father always talked her out of it. I remember