Her Only Thought Was Of Getting Away,

What I Suddenly Understand My Job Is To Make People Uncomfortable. + I Will Do It All My Life. ---> My Mother, Sasha Blake, Is My First Victim.

I Was A Stepchild In Two Different Families. The Hardest Thing About Being A Stepchild Is You Know That In Some Way Everything Would Be Easier If You Didnt Exist.

One Area I Have A Huge Amount Of Trouble In Is Writing About Myself. I Get A Heavy, Almost Depressed Feeling.

At Night, The House Thick With Sleep, She Would Peer Out Her Bedroom Window At The Trees And Sky And Feel The Presence Of A Mystery. Some Possibility That Included Her--separate From Her Present Life And Without Its Limitations. A Secret. Riding In The Car With Her Father, She Would Look Out At Other Cars Full Of People She'd Never Seen, Any One Of Whom She Might Someday Meet And Love, And Would Feel The World Holding Her Making Its Secret Plans.

Rebecca Was An Academic Star. Her New Book Was On The Phenomenon Of Word Casings, A Term She'd Invented For Words That No Longer Had Meaning Outside Quotation Marks. English Was Full Of These Empty Words--"friend" And "real" And "story" And "change"--words That Had Been Shucked Of Their Meanings And Reduced To Husks. Some, Like "identity" And "search" And "cloud," Had Clearly Been Drained Of Life By Their Web Usage. With Others, The Reasons Were More Complex; How Had "american" Become An Ironic Term? How Had "democracy" Come To Be Used In An Arch, Mocking Way?