Lux was the youngest of four children. Two boys, two girls. A six year gap between her and her sister meant that by the time she was twelve she was the only child left at home. She spent her childhood lost in a gaggle of neighbourhood kids. Constantly surrounded by children. Summers spent roaming the nearby streets. Endless games of kick the can, four square and mother may i. Going home only when her mother leaned out her kitchen door and shouted all their names.

Often, being youngest, she would be the first in bed. The summer sun still lighting the dusky night. Kids outside her bedroom window, continuously changing the rules for kick the can, or capture the flag.

Her childhood was a happy one. Surrounded by siblings. When they all left, she became an only child. A lonely child. Her parents had moved past parenting. Her mother going back to work. Finding a new career. Finding some freedom after twenty years of raising children.

Her highschool years were spent sleepless, siblingless and alone. Neighbourhoods changed. Childhood friends long gone. Music and books filled her room. The top bunk piled high with newspaper and magazine clippings. She became an avid scrapbooker. Filling hardcover sketch book after another with handwritten quotes, stickers, photos and lost love notes she found in the halls of school.

She could often be seen in the cafeteria during school, writing furiously in one of her books. Alternately changing tapes on her sony walkman. Homemade mixed tapes full of songs half-hazardly recorded from the radio. Money saved up to buy one of those all in one double tape deck, record player and radio white plastic stereos from the local department store.

Her room, with the daisies, was filled with posters of James Dean and The Police, Marilyn Monroe and the Go-Go's. She was not unlike so many girls her age. Struggling to figure it all out in the midst of angst and hormones, baby fat and pubic hair.

As a teenager Lux lost herself in the small details of her life. She would lay in her bed at night tracing the shadows that danced along her wall. Her bedroom was painted sunshine yellow with a wallpaper trim of daisies. Her mother had put it up for her when at the age of twelve she began having nightmares.

Her nightmares came every night. She would wake up often too terrified to get out of bed. She would knock on the top bunk, trying desperately to wake up her older sister. Cecilia would wake up groggy and crawl into bed with her little sister. She would stroke her hair and tell her to close her eyes and imagine a field of daisies. Something happy. A happy place.

As years went by Lux began staying awake all night. Keeping the nightmares at bay by not sleeping when it was dark. If she kept herself up until the moon began to be replaced in the sky by the sun she would not have bad dreams. Instead she would dream of her daisies and wake after a few hours of sleep to face the teenager day under the haze of sleep deprivation.

The world worked its' way around her while she lived life a couple paces behind everyone else. Noticing the way the boy with the locker beside hers would empty his pockets left to right bottom to top and finger each object gently before putting them all back again right to left top to bottom. The way girls would travel in groups, effortlessly tossing their hair as they giggled and swaggered their perfect hips. Oblivious to the way their happiness tortured those who didn't step so lightly.

Lux began watching the carpet in the hallways at highschool. It was easier than faces. She counted blocks of colour and followed lines of patterns to Algebra. She picked up stubby dropped pencils, hairpins, forgotten notes and love letters. She would arrange them all in a shoebox in her room. Passing the hours at night. Arranging thumbtacks and crayons by colour. Smelling the wax on her fingers.