usually preferred fall as opposed to winter, so she was a little bummed out when November had passed and December had come along.

She always liked the cold as opposed to the warmer temperatures, which was funny because Calypso preferred the opposite. Daisy wondered if it had to do with the fact that she was born in fall and her sister was born in spring.

It definitely wasn't fall, but Daisy felt like she couldn't complain. The air was frigid, just enough that the end of her nose felt numb, and she loved it more than anything.

She crossed her arms to retain heat as she walked out of the school building, her red scarf knotted around her neck.

Daisy spotted Mark's car in the parking lot, making her way over to it. She sported a smile as she walked, seriously in the greatest mood ever. Next to fall, winter was definitely the best.

Daisy opened the car door, getting inside. "Hi."

Mark wasn't in a great mood, Daisy could figure that much out without him even saying anything. Upon further observation of her surroundings, it became evident why.

Calypso was sat in the back seat, her teary eyes glued out the car window.

Calypso was dropped off first in the mornings, but Daisy was picked up first in the afternoons. That's how their schedule had been since the girls had started school in September. Calypso is never in the car when Daisy gets picked up from school, Daisy's first indicator that something was wrong.

"What...what happened?" Daisy asked, scanning over Calypso's teary face before looking over at Mark.

"Calypso?" Mark spoke in an eerily calm tone, another indicator that Mark was very angry. "Would you like to tell Daisy what happened?"

Calypso was silent though, her eyes clouded as she glared out the window. She looked as though she was experiencing anger and sadness and frustration all at the same time.

"Something happened?" Daisy asked. She was scared that maybe Calypso wasn't okay. "Did somebody hurt her?"

Mark laughed dryly, shaking his head. "No. She's suspended for hitting another kid. Repeatedly hitting, apparently."

Daisy sort of thought Mark was lying at first. Daisy's sweet, naive, curious little sister would never intentionally hurt somebody else, she knew that for a fact. This had to be some sort of really early April Fools' Day prank.

But Mark work that grim expression again, and Calypso looked as embarrassed as ever as her eyes got teary.

"Calypso." Daisy frowned as she looked back at her sister. The girl looked like she was ready to explode in a fury of tears, and Daisy felt sympathetic for her.

She knew what it felt like to lose your temper in school. Daisy herself had that episode with her teacher only a couple weeks ago, she knew how infuriating it felt when somebody kept pushing your buttons and you couldn't control it.

But still...Daisy hadn't reached over and repeatedly hit anyone, surely Calypso knew better.

"First grade." Mark mumbled in amazement as he drove, shaking his head. "How do you get yourself suspended from first grade?"

"It was an accident." Calypso's voice trembled as she attempted to defend herself.

"Yeah? You accidentally reached over and slapped a kid repeatedly?" Mark prompted as he looked through his rearview, Calypso lowering her head. "Because if you can somehow explain how any of that was an accident, I'd be more than thrilled to listen."

Daisy heard Calypso's tiny sniffle, and the sound of the six-year-old trying so hard to keep it all together and force all her emotions down broke her heart. "You're making her feel bad."

"She should feel bad!" Mark pointed out. "She hit a kid!"

Daisy wanted to open her mouth and defend her sister, but Mark wasn't wrong. Calypso shouldn't be hitting people, and she most definitely knew better.

The remainder of the ride was silent, and incredibly tense. Emotions were running wild. Mark was angry, Calypso was upset, and Daisy felt uncomfortable. She still wasn't quite sure about everything that had happened.

The usually bright apartment that always greeted them felt dull as the front door swung open. It felt cold, like it was mirroring everybody's feelings as well as the December weather.

Calypso wasted no time in making a beeline for her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. As soon as the wooden door was shut, a loud sob was emitted, slightly muffled as it came from down the hall.

Mark sighed as he too retreated down the hall to his own bedroom, mumbling about having to get ready for his hospital shift.

Daisy felt Mark's pain to a degree. She imagined it wasn't fun for him to sit there in the principal's office and be told that the person he's responsible for taking care of and teaching right from wrong is going around hitting other kids.

With Mark and Calypso both having left to do their own thing, Daisy was stood alone by the front door. She wasn't really sure what to do first.

Part of her wanted to sit down at the kitchen table and get her homework finished for the night. Part of her wanted to just go lay down on her bed and sleep, let Mark deal with Calypso himself. Part of her kind of wanted to just disappear down the hallway to Callie and Arizona's and let everyone work their own things out.

But Daisy wasn't the kind of person to just sit by for things to resolve themselves, and she most certainly wasn't the kind of person to just let her sister cry alone.

Daisy dropped her bookbag off by the front door, ensuring that it was shut before she made her way down the hall to Calypso's bedroom.

As expected, Calypso was crying loudly in her bedroom. Not expected was the fact that she had pulled her desk chair over to the corner of her room, sat so that she was facing her wall.

"What are you doing?" Daisy couldn't help the quiet laugh that left her lips. "Mark didn't say you had to sit in time-out."

"Yes I do." Calypso cried quietly. "I...I was bad. I'm a bad kid."

Daisy frowned at that. "You're not a bad kid."

Calypso stayed silent though, knowing it wasn't worth arguing. Daisy loved Calypso so much that she tended to overlook Calypso's flaws. Calypso knew the truth anyways, so it didn't matter. She knew she was a bad kid.

Daisy flopped down on Calypso's empty bed while the six-year-old was busy punishing herself. "Can I tell you about my day?"

Daisy hadn't had an interesting day. It had been boring, and relatively uneventful. Just the same as always. But Calypso was always more inclined to tell Daisy about her day if she had heard about Daisy's day first, and that's all Daisy really wanted. She wanted to know why Calypso had acted in such a way.

Calypso continued to cry softly to herself in the corner in response to Daisy's question, so Daisy took that as a yes.

"I had a substitute in English." Daisy spoke as she stared up at the bedroom ceiling. "Which...I think is a good thing. I don't even like my English teacher that much. The substitute was nice."

No response. Calypso clearly was not interested, and Daisy couldn't blame her. Her story was quite boring.

"Um...we had a fire drill?" Daisy tried to think of the most interesting part of her day. Upon reevaluation though, Daisy found it pretty pathetic that the most interesting part of her day was a fire drill.

"Do you do fire drills at your school, Caly?" Daisy asked, a desperate attempt to engage the girl in conversation and interact with her.

There wasn't any answer other than the regular sound of crying though, and Daisy hated that the girl was so upset.

There was, however, a knock on the open bedroom door, Daisy looking over to see Mark fully dressed in hospital scrubs.

"I have to go." Mark spoke, glancing down at his wristwatch. "Uh...Naomi should be here soon. There's dinner in the fridge."

Daisy nodded, giving a thumbs up. She was very used to the weird hours Mark worked. Sometimes he went into the hospital in the morning, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes in the middle of the night. Daisy didn't find it bizarre that it was 3:00 and Mark was leaving to go to work.

"Is everything...alright?" Mark asked, his eyes flitting over to the six-year-old still crying and facing the wall.

"She's self-punishing." Daisy explained as she shrugged. "She'll be okay, though."

"Right..." Mark nodded slowly. "I'll see you later then."

Daisy nodded, not saying anything else.

Mark tilted his head to the side, turning his attention over to the crying girl in the corner. "Goodbye, Calypso."

Calypso was usually very cheery, and she was usually always more than happy to sport a smile and say goodbye.

But Calypso continued to cry intensely as she ignored him, and Mark wasn't really sure what to do.

"We're good, I've got it." Daisy assured.

Mark wasn't quite sure she had it though, and honestly, Daisy wasn't either. But she would definitely try her best. Mark really had to leave anyway, so that would have to be good enough for the moment being.

He nodded, exclaiming a goodbye one more time before he turned to leave.

With his absence, the room grew as quiet as it was before, and Calypso's cries intensified.

"Mark hates me." Calypso's tone wavered as she tried to calm herself down. "And then...and then he's gonna tell Naomi, and...and Naomi's gonna hate me!"

Calypso cried even harder at that revelation, at the thought that Mark and Naomi hated her.

"Nobody hates you." Daisy carefully calculated her next words as she spoke. "I think...I think everyone's just a little...upset, you know? I think Mark's just worried about you, and he wants to know why you would hit somebody because-"

"I can't read." Calypso blurted out, her red and teary eyes meeting Daisy's brown ones. "I...I can't read, and...and...I'm so stupid!"

Daisy furrowed her eyebrows. "You can read. I've heard you read to me, Cal."

Calypso always liked to point out anything she could make sense of. Billboards, the big lettering on the sides of stores, the signs in the hospital. Heck, Daisy read Charlotte's Web to her every night, she was pretty positive Calypso would've pointed out before now if she couldn't read.

"Some...sometimes." Calypso stammered as she slowly nodded. "But...but sometimes it all just...all the letters just..."

Calypso winced, like the thought of letters pained her to think about.

"I think you're just being too hard on yourself." Daisy spoke gently. "I mean, you're only in first grade. I don't think anybody expects you to be able to read like Shakespeare."

"But today was easy." Calypso frowned, her eyes as glossy as ever. "Our reading in class today was easy, and I couldn't do it. I was in front of the entire class and...I sounded so stupid."

Daisy noticed that Calypso kept using the word stupid, a negative word that usually wasn't in the bubbly girl's vocabulary.

"Did somebody say that to you?" Daisy took a guess, wondering if she had picked it up from someone else and wondering if this at all correlated with the whole "hitting another kid" thing.

"I didn't mean to hurt him." Calypso sniffled. "I didn't mean to hit him, but...it just happened. He was being so mean, and...and he kept stuttering on purpose like I did. And then he brought up Mom, and...he, he said that's what happens when people don't have moms to keep them in line, they turn...stupid."

Daisy would be majorly lying if she said that she wasn't kind of proud of Calypso for whacking her bully. She would never admit that, of course, because that would encourage a bad message.

Secretly though? Daisy thought it was awesome.

"You can't hit people though, Cal." Daisy spoke gently, Calypso nodding.

"I...I know. I apologized to him."

But Daisy knew that a meek apology after deliberately hitting somebody was like covering a bullet hole with a band-aid. She doubted that little boy even cared about an apology, and she knew the school board most definitely wouldn't think that a little apology was deserving of automatic forgiveness. In their eyes, Calypso was a rampant and violent student who went around hitting other children.

"It's something we can work on." Daisy nodded. "We can practice reading. If we can practice a page every night, you'll be able to-"

"You're not understanding." Calypso let out a defeated sigh. "I can't read. The letters, they...they jumble up, and they fly everywhere, and...and they move all the time. I can't...I can't read, they never stay still."

Daisy frowned at that. Her own brain made her feel crazy with all the anxiety and obsessive-compulsivity it carried. But her brain never made her feel crazy when she read a book.

Calypso's problem didn't sound like a mental illness, it sounded more like a learning impairment.

Daisy was the expert in regards to mental illness, but the grounds of learning impairments were foreign to her. She figured she would let the adults handle that one and she would provide moral support for her sister while they did so.

Calypso sighed, her gaze not letting up from the wall. She had entrapped herself in the corner, but she deserved it. She would continue to punish herself for what she had done, and she would continue to punish herself until she could stop feeling so stupid.