he is my brother

I call him my brother, though he isn’t anything near related. I still say he is. Actually he is my brother’s best friend since the second grade. His name is Cody Costa, and he holds a special place in my heart.
By special, I mean, I love that guy. ABSOLUTELY love him! He’s like my best friend too. Whether it be camping with the boy scouts or dressing up to go trick-or-treating around the nearest neighborhood, Cody has always been apart of our lives. Though Cody is my brother’s friend, I get to spend lots of time with him, not as the third wheel or anything but as a little sister. Colby and Cody are just one year older that I am, so they have to get used to me tagging along. Though I admit… they often push me to the side. But that’s what you get with being a girl trying to enter into a boy’s world, especially if one of those boys is your real brother.
According to my brother Colby, their friendship clicked from the first time they met. Colby and Cody were placed in the same second grade class and from that moment on they were pretty much inseparable. As for me, I didn’t meet Cody through my brother. In fact, I met him during my kindergarten year along with all the other students in my kindergarten class. Cody was introduced to our class by our counselor. You see Cody is a burn victim. When he was just two years old Cody’s older cousin was playing with a lighter. His cousin accidently dropped the lighter onto Cody’s bed where he was laying, and the lighter caught Cody’s blanket on fire. Cody got scared and crawled under the burning blanket. He suffered with third degree burns from his head to his torso almost 85% of his body got burnt, and since then gone through numerous operations and endured tremendous amount of pain. Every year Cody has to undergo between 2 or 3 surgeries. From multiple skin graphs to fixing his eyes to allowing him to shut them, implanting eyelashes, widen his mouth to do dental work, allowing a nerve to move like a thumb.
From being burnt, Cody lost all his hair, eyelashes and eyebrows. He has no ears, or hands, not even a nose. His skin is scared from the burn marks but even if he looks different, he’s still human like you and I. Though he is handicap Cody is capable for doing normal activities just like a teenager should do. Even if he has no fingers or hands, but nubs instead, Cody has an out of this world talent in drawing and painting and even playing video games. Our last gathering at Cody’s house he showed is a painting he did in school. It was a painting of the ocean in stormy weather, with different shades of blues, purples and whites. You couldn’t help but stare at the picture, and just by looking at it you could actually imagine some massive storm appearing out in the ocean. Aside from Cody’s drawings or paintings, his one true love is video games. And he is pretty darn good at it to! He’s just like a typical teen aged boy obsessed and addicted it video games. But what I find fascinating about it is that he plays with no hands and can still whoop anyone’s butt in playing those games.
From accepting Cody into our family I have another older brother to look up to. Though Cody and my brother don’t attend the same school they are still in contact with one another. We often see each other, and when we do he shows us or tells us what new miracle that doctors did for him. Today, Cody is seventeen years old and he’s the reason why I believe in miracles.