There's a certain book I'm trying to remember, I read it in school years ago, I've tried looking it up on google but I only get tangental results. The plot kinda goes like this:
There's this girl with a little brother who's brain was badly damaged because of this high fever when he was little. This results in him being slower, getting confused, things of that nature. The girl is very protective of her brother, she's distant with her father because I think the mom died sometime after the brother got sick and I think she has an older sister. One of the other characters of the story is this guy who the girl hates because she thinks that he bullied her brother on the bus but it turns out that other kids were bullying her brother and the guy was defending him but her brother said that he did it because he got confused.
I also remember that the brother ran out of the house one night because he saw a white cat go by a window and thought it was a swan or a goose and he wanted to see them. And at some point the girl has a dream where she's standing on steps or a tower, her brother and sister are on steps closest to hers/towers that are nearly as tall as hers but the dad's step is really far away/his tower is really tall. I also remember this one part where the girl brings her brother over to her friend's and when the sister leaves to go do something her friend's aunt or mom asks, not so discreetly, if he really was slow, or something to that effect and the friend is just like, "You know he can hear you, right?"
I can't remember the title but I think it was about swans or geese, I think we read it after the Trumpeter Swan.
