hurts "illuminated"


This is from a "series" of stories I've been writing on and off again for two or so years, about two families. One is the Rose family, and the other is the Pennington family, and it focuses on the children from these two families. From the Rose, which constitutes of only a mother and her kids, I focus on the kids, Connor "Rosie" and James "Jaimy" and their relationships with the Pennington kids, Adam and a girl that doesn't have a name. I originally focused on the story from the Pennington daughter's point of view, and it described how Jaimy ran away from home to New York City, addicted to crack, and is just now coming home because he's run out of money, while trouble is boiling at home. This right here takes place while Jaimy is in NYC, and from Rosie's point of view.

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                      My name is Rosie Rose.
My real name's Connor, but everyone calls me Rosie.
They say I'm a looker, and that my movie taste is that of an '80s freshman, but it's really the thought that counts, right? I'm a really big fan of Guns n' Roses, Tears for Fears, and Mew. I'm a bit of an artist, a comma aficionado, an enemy of periods; endings; good-byes. That sorta thing.

I remember in high school how I was pretty much the rebel. I laugh at the memories.

For four consecutive first days of school, teachers would ask, "Rose, Connor?" and I would stick my hand up lazily and roll my eyes, saying, "Rosie," as my friends snorted into their hands. Rosie. It was universally known that the guy in all black had the girliest name around. Duh. C'mon.

It was also univerally known that I was the chick magnet, heartbreaker, douche bag of the 21st century. Rumors floated around that I would have sex with a girl once and then dump her the next day; weird, because I have only had sex once, and that was with a girl I had known since 5th grade.

I did dump her the week after, but that's a whole other story entirely.

I have a younger brother named Jaimy. He's four years younger than me. They say we act a lot alike, and while I would have agreed with that statement from the ages of three to seventeen, nothing could be further from the truth now. We got into cigarettes for the first time together, and he would ask to bum a whiff or two in high school occasionally, but as for now, my kid brother is somewhere in the country, unreachable, razing his sanity bit by bit with every line of crack up his bloody nose.

Meanwhile, our mom is dying.

I couldn't say if he even knew. He doesn't know anything anymore. He's completely wasted his life on making sure he dies before he graduates.

I don't have a number. No address.

There have been moments when I couldn't care either way if he was dead or alive.

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Q: "Why does Renee like the name Jaimy so much anyway? Why are all of her characters named Jaimy?"
A: I have no idea. I like that name in general because Jaimy is this character in a series of books I like, but Jaimy is this character in my mind that functions as my masculine other-half too, and the name just appears out of nowhere a lot.