I continue to play, the piano, my life, even though the scars burn and char after all this time, after the accident. It impairs me to think back to that tragic day. Father and I are still trying to put the event behind us thought it is hard to forget a loved one.
 Hectic is what it’s been lately. But also moments I never want to have to face again. The dust storms, frightening, horrid dust storms. The feeling you get when you can just tell you are going to have one. Your hair stands up on end and the feeling of threat flows over you and knowing that no matter where you hide you can not get away from it. The dust and sand and dirt that gets all collected in the wind finds its way to you no matter what. Your eyes fill up with dust, like having your head dunked into an immense sandbox while your eye are wide open. They burn and itch for days and days after, while the rest of your body is just all red, blocky, itchy and burning.
 Life’s not easy living in the midwest, the hot blazing sun, and work. Lots. You don’t have a choice to say yes or no, when someone tells you to do something , you do it, or there will be consequences. Teachers are brutally strict! Whacking you with a ruler left and right until you have blisters and welts across you hands so they’re burning, felling as if you put your hands on a 100 degree stove. Teachers and parents say it’s only teaching us discipline, but we look at it as just plain abuse. Luckily, I have missed so many days of school, I have not had it half as bad as my other classmates.
 The school houses are very small, only about 13 children in a class. The teaching skills have not done us any good for all our past school years. The teachers don’t even care. They tell us, “It is important to have an education, but even more important to know how to farm, and grow crops for that is all anyone does around here these days to survive.” When I get older, I don’t plan to just farm, or do anything we learn about in school, my plans are different. I am going to be a professional pianist. Papa says I have more skill then any other child he knows and if I really try and work up to my goals, then I cant make anything happen. Mamma always said that too, that’s what I plan to do.
 I don’t have a good impression now though. Ever since that day when mamma ran through the front door. We had a fire near the doorway and I grabbed a bucket of what looked like water. I wouldn’t find out what it was until I poured it. Mamma didn’t know about the fire yet, so she ran in the door like nothing was going on. Next thing I knew, mamma was on fire. Without even thinking, I swung around with the bucket and threw the so called, “water” only to find out it was gasoline, papa was using earlier today. Flames went everywhere, with mamma in them. I killed mamma, and everyone knows. They pitied me at the wake and funeral. They told me it was all my fault. It was all my fault. For months and months that thought haunted me, let alone the day of the accident replay and replay in my mind. It still does today. If I would of just grabbed water, mamma would still be alive today. But I killed her. It was my fault. My fault.