No Longer the Family Clown

Ten years after the Gardners found me and brought me home, I was still the family's attention seeker. When Dad forgot to take his diabetes medication during a meeting, I barged into the conference room in sunglasses and confiscated his coffee. "Mr. Gardner, you've been caught skipping your meds. Come quietly, and nobody gets hurt." He scowled but took his pills, while the shareholders around the table shook with barely contained laughter. When Mom couldn't sleep, I threw a bedsheet over my head and drifted into her room. "Your request for an early grave has been denied," I intoned. "Your son won't sign the paperwork." She told me to stop saying such awful things, but she laughed until her eyes watered. When my sister, Delilah Gardner, twisted her ankle during a basketball game and refused to see the school nurse, I dropped to my knees beside her and bellowed, "Stay with me, champ! Who's gonna carry this team if you don't make it?" The school nurse came running. Delilah finally got her ankle treated, and I earned a reputation as the drama king who turned a sprained ankle into a full-blown crisis. My family always complained that I was too loud, that I embarrassed them, that I couldn't behave myself like Mason Gardner, the boy they had taken in. But whenever something went wrong, I was the first person they called. One day, Delilah had a panic attack backstage during the school's anniversary gala. I pulled on the mascot costume, charged onto the stage, and made a spectacle of myself so everyone would watch me while someone quietly helped her out. My stunt also cost Mason the chance to go viral with the piano solo he had spent six months practicing. He clenched his jaw and glared at me. "You always have to make it about you, don't you?" Mom tore open my mascot costume in front of everyone, and Dad made me hand over my recommendation for the fine arts program to Mason. I looked at Delilah, but she kept her head down. She didn't say a word for me. Even the person I had been trying to protect was ashamed of me. I pulled off the red nose and shoved the recommendation form into Mason's hands. "Fine. Take it. But the next time this family needs a clown or somebody to clean up a mess, find someone else."