Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry by Jennifer Ann Mann Page A

cast sat in my lap. I ran my hand lovingly over it. It was still a little wet, but Shawna said it would dry in about half an hour. At least I still had my cast. It was so orange, and I mean really orange.
    The swimming fish caught my attention. I watchedthem until my eyes started to water, then I let out a giant yawn. Sunny once told me that scientists learned that animals were attracted to certain colors, and that sharks were attracted to the color orange. I made a note in my head that I better not go swimming in the ocean in the next six weeks. That is how long Shawna said I would get to wear it. Six whole weeks.
    To test the shark theory, I clunked my cast up against the glass of the fish tank to see if any of the fish noticed. Before I could tell if they liked the color orange, I was interrupted by a lady walking into the waiting room, followed by a girl my age with her arm in a splint and a blue sling just like mine. The girl looked pale and was moaning, and the lady seemed a little angry. She glanced around the room, and then with a sigh sank into one of the seats. The girl sat down next to her. She sniffed a couple of times and then started moaning again. I knew exactly who they were: Maria, who was born the same day of the year as Sunny, and her mother. I slid down into my wheelchair.
    â€œLook at that brave little girl,” the mother said to Maria, motioning over to me. “She isn’t whining abouther arm.” The mother gave me a tight smile. “And her arm looks like it’s been broken much worse than yours.”
    I choked on a breath of air that was trying to get down into my lungs. And then I couldn’t stop coughing. It sounded like I was coughing inside a tin can.
    I needed to get out of here. I tried to wheel my chair with my good arm, but all I did was turn myself in a semicircle so I totally faced Maria and her mother.

    Maria glanced up at me. I could tell she wished I would disappear in a puff of smoke. I kind of wished I would too. Maybe she somehow knew that this was actually her broken arm I was wearing.
    Somewhere inside my head a voice was shouting at me to get out of there, but that voicedidn’t seem to have control over my legs. Weirdly, I wanted to close my eyes and take a nap, even though I knew that if Shawna came through that door and saw Maria and her mother, I was going to be in huge, huge trouble.
    The door opened, and out walked Shawna with juice and crackers in her hand for me. She looked over at Maria and her mother. “I’ll be with you in just a moment,” she said. She put the crackers in my lap and tried to hand me the juice, but my arm wouldn’t move from the arm of the wheelchair. I blinked at Shawna, waiting for her to realize what was happening, when there was a pinging of a few notes over a sound system followed by a woman’s soft voice,
“Code yellow, department 66, room 452. Code yellow. Code yellow, department 66, room 452
.
Code yellow.”
    Shawna stood next to me until the woman over the sound system had repeated the message. Then she put my juice next to the fish tank, gave my head a quick pat, and hurried from the room.
    I swallowed a giant breath of air, and relief washed over me.
    Once again the pinging sounded overhead. “Great, another one,” I thought. Hopefully this would keep everyone busy until I could figure out how to use my legs again and I could get out of here.
    The same female voice came back over the sound system.
“Would Marsha Sweet please come to the front desk on the main floor of the Shapiro Building? Marsha Sweet, please come to the front desk on the main floor of the Shapiro Building.”
    My face flushed red, and I started to sweat. I looked over at Maria and her mother, but of course they just looked back at me. They didn’t know that I was “Marsha.”
    The door opened again. I closed my eyes and waited for the world to end.
    â€œLet’s get out of here,” whispered