Roller Coaster called life: The first rise

(Okay, guys. This was both a great year and an enlightening one for me. I found a few new interests, and began a road to changing how I saw myself.)

At the beginning of the school year, the librarians finally gave me what they promised years before. I was able to read any book I wanted in the library that students could read. I immediately went to mythology since I began to start having a love of history and various cultures. Mainly things like monsters and how heroes fought them. At this age, I was afraid of a lot of things. From bugs, arachnids, and movies to things I had no control over. Some were brought on by dreams of my past, others would be implemented by the foster parents as what they called 'consequences', but even then I knew they were punishments. Yet, I loved reading stories that showed people courageously fighting them. It wouldn't matter what the outside cover had, I would read anything related to people facing fears head-on because it gave me courage. Then, the librarians showed me a book they just added to the system. The cover shined with metallic colors and had 3 green mythological monsters on it. It had Medusa, Cerberus, and the Minotaur. The name of the book was Percy Jackson and the Olympians The Lightning Thief, and I loved the story so much I checked it out every week for months. It wasn't favored by my foster parents since they never understood why I was able to read from high-level books while at a lower grade level. The main reason is they hated the cover and thought that I shouldn't read it since the cover should have terrified me. They never understood the real reason I loved the book. I saw myself in the main character. And felt strongly enough to call myself the nickname of his best friend. I took the name GMan because I felt like Grover. I was terrified of a lot, but never backed down when given the choice. I would do anything for those I loved, and Grover did the same in my eyes. I never saw any other books from the series in that library, but would find one of them at various garage sales in the next few months.

With the books being my focus, I'm surprised my grades soared rather than plummeted to zeroes. I became known as the class geek rather than the jester. I was proud of my accomplishments, and, by November, was given a task by the teacher. I would give a small speech at the PTA in December. I made the speech, despite my handwriting being extremely poor at the time. I was ready to give it, and the foster parents revealed that the day of the PTA was the day I had to go to go to my psychiatrist. They kept me from branching out, but the psychiatrist had a gift for me. The book I saw at the garage sales was my gift. Despite all the foster parents' attempts at keeping it out of my hands, I got the Sea of Monsters as a gift. I soon focused on reading it intently, and the foster parents decided to bring their church into play. They used the children's church leader as a way to try to sway me from the series. That January, I was told the book was off-limits. I wasn't giving up, however. I checked it out every morning and turned it in each day at the end of the school day for 3 months before they noticed. And they gave up since they knew the series wasn't an option for me.

With the rest of the year going on like usual, I felt much better and started looking into having more friends. Then, I took the TAKS. These days people gave STAR tests, but the TAKS was more difficult than that. My first TAKS scores were considered at the 6th-grade level. This was my best moment for a while. I soon found out that my next teacher was going to be one known by Cross. He told me she didn't treat her students right, and I wasn't going to like her. I decided to ask the older foster child. He told me that I was in for a bad year. I would soon find out it was going to get much worse than bad.