A year ago, I was in a hospital. Loes tried to make it special, but...I was only alive because Tigger woke Dawn up. Because of luck. Because of luck.

Today, I am in a beautiful dress, and my best friend who gave me a home just finished doing my make up, and my boyfriend will be over soon to drive us both to the train station for a party and no matter how much he and I are trying to be realistic about the future I have so much hope that we'll find our way back to each other that my heart feels like it's taking flight when I think of Logan and I, and...and my father will be coming over, too, to take pictures of me a day after he and I had breakfast together.

I wrote in my journal on my birthday that I felt like I was starting to grow, that I wanted to see myself blooming.

This is the first blossom. This is how it feels, to be a year older, with scars on my wrist that might never go away but have healed. I am blooming.

I always knew that Anne eventually would emerge: and this is how it feels.

My grandmother is dead. Just like that. She had swine flu, and she passed before I could even get a plane ticket to see her. My grandmother died, and the next morning, I was nominated for Homecoming Queen, and I want to say that I would have called her to tell her, but I hadn't called in over a month. She had no clue who I was...and I was doing so well, and then I slipped...and me me me, it was all about me. I didn't want to call her, so I didn't. It shouldn't have mattered if she knew me at all; it still would have been her on the other side of the line. But I didn't, and now she's gone.

We're flying out, on the Hirsches' plane, after Logan's game on Friday: Mrs. Hirsch, Logan, Bee, and me. Dawn offered to come, but I didn't want to make things weird with Dad. She comes out of the closet and he accepts her; I have the audacity to be less than perfect and he pushes me away. Maybe I said no to Dawn not because of Dad, but because when I see her, all I can see is that she's his favorite daughter now. He doesn't need me anymore.

My grandma needed me; I was her one last piece of Alma in the world. And what did I do, I pushed her away. I cut off ties with my father, and I'm angry at Sharon over the letter, and I'm so jealous of Dawn, and I don't know my mother.

I'm my own family now. And I've never felt so small.

I'm seventeen today, and to celebrate my birthday, my friends planted a garden. They made it so that Amelia's garden will bloom more brilliantly in the spring, taking all of the dead brush and undergrowth away so that it could grow anew. And if you don't think that I didn't stand there, feeling the weight of the metaphor for my own life, on my birthday...well. I guess I'm not doing a good enough job in my journal, am I.

I'm seventeen, and I'm not cured, but I'm better, and somedays, I'll feel less better than others, but it's a balance, and I'm learning. I haven't talked to Dad in so long, and I don't know if I will, but he's the underbrush that I've cleared, and maybe...maybe...something will grow back, but right now, that's not what's important to me. What's important is that I want there to be growth. I want there to be blooming again.

I want to grow, over and over, I want to keep coming back. I want to see eighteen and nineteen...twenty-four...thirty. I want to see what comes next in my life, stretching skyward and unfolding without shame: I want to see what blooms.

Today, I am seventeen, but I feel...I feel like it's a rebirth.

There's this line, in You've Got Mail, where Tom Hanks says that the autumn makes him think of bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils.

I love that smell.

In a few weeks...the stress of five APs, of keeping all of these As spotless and lined up neat and identical on my report card, lined up like soldiers, will ruin this, but right now, before the first day, everything about school is still perfect and clean and waiting for me. I love school. I love learning. I love hanging pictures on a locker door, I love the crisp covers on textbooks, I love the smell of an eraser on the page. I love school.

And right now, still...it loves me back.

I'm home. I had one of those summers that...only really happens in books or movies, where everything happens all at once, and you feel lifted someplace higher. Higher than the girl who wrote in May that she was so depressed that she never thought she'd escape. But I have, and I touch my back and wonder if someone put wings there.

For the first time in...years, I'm eating when I'm hungry, and I think it shows: I look better. I haven't gained much, but I took all of the size tags out of my clothes, so instead of it being a size zero shirt, it's just my shirt. I went riding a lot, and i listened to my body, adjusting to the horse and afterwards when it ached, so I'm okay with listening to my body when it needs fuel. Fuel to take flight, I guess. I was going out and getting sun, here and in Italy and in California, just drinking up the sun, taking photos wherever I could. I let it all pour into me, and I had energy that I had forgotten I had. And working for Samantha, even when it was total grunt work, so thankless...it was always full of thanks. Maybe this is more than a hobby: maybe all of those years standing on the sidelines has brought me here, to a place where my passivity is really active.

Do I sound like I'm bragging? That's not right: I'm just happy. I'm just strong, I feel strong. My whole life, I've lived to make other people happy, and right now, no matter what I do, I can't make Dad happy until he starts to heal himself, so the only person I can make happy is me.

This summer, I've only had that fog feeling, that lost-in-my-own-darkness feeling once. Maybe twice. And maybe, now that I'm home and surrounded by people I love...maybe I won't ever feel that way again. Maybe I'm all better: I might be. I think I am. I'm all better, all I needed was me.

John Hughes died. Sixteen Candles is my all-time favorite movie, even more than Roman Holiday or anything that Cameron's been in. I remember the first time I saw it: I was ten. I usually had old women as my baby-sitters, but Dad had hired this high school girl that Mrs. Thomas had recommended; well, not so much recommended, but Mrs. Thomas said that Laura was nice, made sure everyone had their homework before TV time, did the dishes, and didn't burn the house down.

And she was nice, she did make sure I had all of my homework done, though there wasn't much. And the house...well. Anyway. I had taken my copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which was my favorite book at that time, since I would discover Wuthering Heights and Jane Austen the next year, and curled up in a chair. Laura turned on the TV and pulled out a VHS tape, put it in, and grabbed the phone, saying she had to quick call her boyfriend.

I meant to ignore her, but I couldn't: I was transfixed, I couldn't stop watching what was on the TV. And she talked for an hour with her boyfriend, and then called her best friends after that, and I just watched the movie. The exotic and exciting and scary party, the awkward dance, the wedding. Samantha, jaded and yet so vulnerable; Samantha, who was overlooked and forgotten, but so special. And Farmer Ted, geeky yet totally confident...and Jake Ryan. Jake, who was the golden boy who didn't want a girl like Caroline. Without talking to her or even knowing her, Jake knew that he wanted a girl like Samantha. I felt so much like her, in Kristy and Claudia's shadow, in Dad's, seeing Sixteen Candles wasn't just a glimpse into High School. It was this little whisper that said, There's hope. Someone like Jake would see me. And I'd see myself.

Then what happens: the first day of eighth grade, I got a Jake...and I still have him. I go to dances and feel awkward, too. I still feel weird and unsure and scared and lost, even though I know I have something in me that...is something. I always cry at the end of the movie, when Jake tells Samantha to make a wish, and she said it's come true, and they kiss, lit by the glow of the candles. It's so perfect, it's so perfect, I can hardly breathe.

I always felt like the movie knew me, before I knew myself, and now, it knows where I'm going. Am I really Samantha? Do I get my happy ending, too? When should I breathe?

I haven't talked to Dad since Father's Day. I don't know how I feel about it, so...how can I write about it?

I haven't been writing much here at all, lately. In my dayplanner, I have a section for daily notes, and I guess I've been using that as a diary, but...I mean, one of the things that shattered my heart after the fire was losing years worth of diaries, and here I am, in one of the most important times of my life, living in New York, and...I'm not documenting every day here, dissecting every move.

Instead of writing them down...I'm seeing them all. With my new eyes. I feel like I'm seeing the world for the first time.

Stacey's stepmother called me today: I guess Stacey showed her some of the portraits from my photography project...and she thought they were good, really good. So good that she offered me a job this summer, an internship: I'd be an assistant on her photoshoots and her castings, help her with her equiptment and her studio...I'd be working for a real live well-known photographer! I'd have to move to New York for the summer, though Kevin and Shoshannah said that I could stay at the brownstone in the city with David; it didn't even hit me until after we three had talked it out that I had no intentions of asking for Dad's permission.

Not after what happened on Father's Day. No.

I don't want to leave here, my new home, Bee and all of my friends. Dawn. Loes. But if I told Samantha no, wouldn't I be doing what I've done all year? Putting everybody ahead of myself and nearly breaking apart over and over. It's like I have to give all I can because back in December, I took all of those pills and this is my penance. Have I done enough? I feel like I've been lying still on the bathroom floor, drowning in all of that water. Can I stand now? Can I walk into something new, something that's mine, and not be guilty?

Do I have a label on my head? This girl is disposable. This girl is invisible.

This girl is worthless. Walk through her. Bulldoze through her.

Rip her apart like Kleenex.

How many people have treated me badly my whole life because they thought they had more value than me? Corinne is just the latest. Susan...I'd like to believe her when she said she didn't know it was all to hurt me, but...she's a part of it, too, isn't she. I've been quiet and shy, but I've been good, and I don't hurt people, and I never ask for anything, and yet this happens over and over again.

You think it wouldn't hurt like this anymore. When my father's been doing this my whole life: not listening to me. Acting like he knows better, even when I hurt. Right for him is right for me.

I have a sparkling tiara on my bedside table now, and it glitters like a faraway star. I used to wish on stars for things, but all of my wishes were for him. I never wished for a first kiss or a boyfriend, like the other girls did. I wished for good grades for Dad. I wished that Dad would be happy. I wished that Dad would be happy with me. Even my dreams belong to him.

But I have a crown now that says that sometimes, you can flip it all upside down. Maybe this isn't a symbol of one crazy night. Maybe it's the first star of my own.