Although I ran away in second grade, I obeyed my mother and did not cross the street. Seven years later, anxious and unhappy—and unable to understand or articulate this angst—I tried the same technique. My good grades, composed demeanor, and compliant personality earned me an exchange student assignment in South Africa within three months of application [...]

I am at the Vancouver airport, frantically searching for a lost, rogue Buddhist nun with my three-year-old son in tow. Then I spot her, looking like a wan otherworldly creature in her grey and brown kimono-like jacket. I wave and yell her name repeatedly until she slowly turns her face towards me, her eyes looking out at me from a great interior distance.

The way I like to remember it, I was never quite like the other girls. I played rough and my idea of fun was cutting up earthworms with a dull plastic Play-Doh knife. But ask any of my family members and they’ll tell you that I was the vainest little girl they knew. [...]

I still walk the halls of my elementary school when I dream. It seems very normal when I’m there, even almost forty years after sixth grade... I can think of no better place to die...