Other kids seemed to have an easygoing approach to life that was incomprehensible to me. Even Hikari, the fastidiously polite Japanese exchange student who spent a year living with Courtney’s family, seemed to be having more fun than I was: During an actual tornado warning, sirens blaring through the neighborhood, Courtney found dozens of crushed beer cans under his bed in her basement. He’d come to America for a cultural experience, and he was certainly having one. Why couldn’t I, in my own hometown? It wasn’t that I was serious all the time. Rachel and I took woodshop solely so we could hang
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