I’m lying on the couch in my study at home and dinnertime sun and neighborhood sounds are coming in through the open window. It’s a good place to be. I highly recommend it. My brother is downstairs, probably communing with poptarts and the computer, and my dad will be home anytime, and we’ll have frozen pizza for supper. This evening, I may do some reading for school, I may look for jobs (I have an itch to clean houses this summer), or I may watch a movie. Nothing here is really of a particularly high-caliber, except that this is that place called home, and I can sit on my picnic table and watch the sun stream through the thin oak leaves, so new that they’re almost damp. We have a new car. He’s a 1992 navy Volvo, and I’ve named him Horace. I have a crush on him. Right now I don’t really want to go back to school. I just want to lie on this couch for few more decades. Then maybe I’ll get up and wander off into the sunset.

I can feel myself detaching in a funny sort of way.