n'est pas

Excerpt from the autobiography of Josephine Drake, who does not exist.
page 58

Upon exiting junior high one asks oneself and possibly those in earshot if there is anything worse than junior high. Yes. Of course there is. One could leave junior high only to discover that one's house is for sale and one's parents now live somewhere completely different. One could discover that this is in fact some sort of survival tactic planned out by one's parents to find one's new address. One could panic upon realizing that they could have moved anywhere on earth, subsiding only after one realizes that parents do not have passports. One could wonder how the property value could possibly be altered by leaving your belongings in the backyard, only after discovering location of said belongings. One could contemplate assimilation into a new family, one that allowed consumption of most major food groups and did not refer to one's fear of the microwave "irrational." One could think of the hours of uninterrupted espionage, the acceptance of a one-page manifesto as a history essay, and the complete freedom to choose one's own brand of dryer sheet. One begins to contemplate tearing down the wallpaper and putting in the much-desired dumbwaiter. One begins mental blueprint of dumbwaiter, and exactly how many winecoolers can be transported for safekeeping in the basement. One imagines sneaking into alan's car with a newly fashioned friend and drinking said winecoolers, and one thinking that one way streets are, in fact, a suggestion and only designed for people who live in the first dimension. One can imagine an ensuing fiery crash and the news report being used for years as a bad example in drivers ed, to the point where the clothing looks laughably out of fashion. One imagines a class laughing at fashion instead of fire. And then one turns around to learn that one simply had the wrong house, and that one's parents were not moving but simply existing as they were yesterday when they decided you no longer needed a map. One could curse the original architect of split-level suburbia. One could decide to leave a paper trail in the future. One could decide to get a lot of paper.