Mom worked a double at the nursing home today, 7 in the morning to 11 at night, because somebody called off and she said yes because yes is 16 more hours on the check. She came in the door and sat on the couch to take her shoes off and got one shoe off. That's as far as she got. She is asleep right now in her white uniform with her name tag still on and her glasses pushed up on her head like a headband. I took the other shoe off. She didn't even move. I put the blue blanket on her and turned the TV down but not off because she sleeps better with it on. Some infomercial about a knife that cuts a shoe in half. Why would you need to cut a shoe.

So here is my problem. The couch is my bed. When Mom falls asleep on the couch I don't have a bed. I'm at the kitchen table writing this with the little lamp and I can hear Andre snoring through the wall, and he is ten, how does a ten-year-old snore like a grown man.

I want a room. Not a big one. A room with a door that closes and a desk and a shelf for my notebooks and nobody's Legos in it. I would paint it the purple on this page. I would put a sign on it that says WRITER AT WORK, KNOCK OR DIE. I know we can't. I know it's two bedrooms and four people and the math doesn't work, I'm not stupid, I tutor the math. I'm just saying it here because I can't say it to her. She'd feel bad, and she already feels bad enough for everybody on the whole block.

I'm going to sleep in the chair. Night.

I FINISHED THE STORY.

It's called "Night Bus" and it's about a lady named Miss Odelia who rides the bus all night long because it's warm and nobody asks you anything on the bus as long as you paid. The girl in the story is thirteen and takes the same bus home from her grandmother's every Thursday and she figures out Miss Odelia never gets off. That's the whole thing. Nothing blows up. Ceddy asked me if there were zombies in it and I said no and he said then what's the point.

It's eleven pages in my notebook. I typed it up on the computer and it came out to six, which was very disappointing, I thought I had written a novel. Ms. Harlan said to bring it Monday. I'm scared she'll say it's good only because she has to. I'm scared she'll say it's bad. I don't know which is worse.

Also Friends came back last night and I taped it. I watched it while the boys were in the tub. I won't say anything except Ross is still Ross.

Okay so something happened.

First week of school Ms. Harlan (English, honors, 3rd period) gave us an essay called "A Place I Know by Heart." Everybody wrote about their grandma's house down South or Six Flags. I wrote about our kitchen table. The burn mark from the pot, the phone bill that lives under the salt shaker, the wobbly leg we fixed with a folded-up report card (Andre's, not mine), Ceddy's handprint in marker that won't come off. How it's a dinner table at 6 and a homework table at 7 and a bill table when Mom gets home and my table after that.

Today she gave them back and mine had no grade on it. Just in green pen: This is real writing. See me after class.

I thought I was in trouble for real. I thought she thought I copied it. I stood by her desk with my stomach in my shoes and she said, "Do you write outside of school?" and I said kind of, and she said, "Kind of isn't an answer," and I said yes. And she said she wants to read anything I want to show her. Anything. She said I have "an ear." I said which one and she laughed. I don't know why I say stuff like that.

I walked to the bus like I was floating. Then I got home and Andre had lost his other shoe, so. Back to earth. But still.

Ceddy threw up at 3 in the morning. On me. I'm going to bed. Do not write me.

A normal night, for anybody who wants to know what a normal night is.

3:40 get home. Unlock three locks. Key is on a shoelace around my neck, has been since I was nine, that's why the page is called Latchkey, my grandma calls me that. 3:45 pick up the boys from the lady downstairs. 3:50 snack (crackers, ONE juice box each, Andre you know what you did). 4:00 homework at the kitchen table. Andre has long division and he is at war with it. Ceddy is seven and has a reading book about a pig who wants to fly and he reads it to me like it's a hostage letter. Mom calls from the break room at the nursing home at 4:15 every day to make sure we're alive. At 4:45 she's home for twenty minutes to change clothes and eat standing up and then she goes to the store till 10.

5:30 I start dinner. People think it's hard. It's not hard, it's just every day. I have twelve dinners I can make without a book and I rotate them so nobody riots. Tonight was fried bologna, which I cut an X in the middle so it doesn't bubble up, Grandma taught me that. 7:00 baths. 8:00 boys in bed (8:30 they're actually in bed). 8:30 to whenever, MY homework. Then this.

I'm not complaining. Well. I'm a little complaining. It's my page.

First day of sophomore year. I had to walk the boys to their school first, which starts ten minutes before mine, and then run for my bus in brand-new shoes, which is a crime against feet. Ceddy wouldn't let go of my hand at the door because he's in second grade now and his teacher is new and "has a mean face." She doesn't have a mean face. She has a normal teacher face. I told him that and he said that's what he meant.

My schedule is good. Honors English 3rd period, which I asked for and got. Geometry, which I didn't ask for and got. Lunch is 5th period so I'm starving by the time it comes.

Mom left a note on the table this morning in her nursing-home handwriting, all capitals: HAVE A GOOD DAY BABY. SOPHOMORE!! PROUD OF YOU. $3 FOR LUNCH IN THE JAR. I put the note in my notebook. I'm not telling her I did that.

Tuesday is Buffy night, which is the one sacred night in this house. The rules are posted on the refrigerator in my handwriting:

1. Nobody talks during Buffy.
2. If you have to talk during Buffy, see rule 1.
3. Andre can watch if he doesn't ask "who's that" every time someone comes in.
4. Ceddy can't watch because he gets scared and then he sleeps with me and he kicks.

It's reruns all summer but I don't care, I've seen them all and I'll see them again. New ones don't come till October. October is a hundred years away.

I tape it anyway because the VCR is how I survive. We have one tape (T-120, it says TASHA DO NOT TOUCH on it in marker, which Andre can read, so he has no excuse) and I tape over and over it, so it's fuzzy by now. Tonight the tracking went crazy right in the good part and I had to hit the buttons like a DJ.

Dawson's Creek I tape on Wednesday. Everybody on Dawson's talks like they swallowed a dictionary. Some people at school say that's stupid. I think it's the best part. I watch it for Joey mostly. Joey reads books and lives in a small place and wants to get out and is smart about it. I relate. Except she has a boat to row across the creek and I have the number 4 bus.

Hi. This is my journal. I'm Tasha. I'm fifteen. I'm going to be a writer. That's not a wish, it's a plan, I just haven't gotten to the part where anybody pays me.

My aunt got a new computer for her birthday so we got her old one. It's slow and it makes a noise like a cat stuck in a drawer when it dials up, but it works, and it came with one of those AOL discs with the free hours on it, which is how I'm here. Mom says when the free hours run out we are NOT paying $21.95 a month because that is a light bill. So I have till the free hours run out. After that I'll figure it out. The library has computers. I'm resourceful.

Why a journal on the Internet and not just my notebook? Because my notebook is under the couch cushion and Andre has found it twice. Because I want to practice writing something people might actually read. Because it's late, and everybody's asleep, and it feels less quiet if somebody out there could be reading this.

Things you should know: I watch too much TV. I babysit my two little brothers every single night. My mom works two jobs and is the strongest person in the state of Illinois, and I'm not taking questions on that. I make dinner. I'm funny. I'm tired. That's about it.

Okay. Welcome.