When I was young I retreated here rather often because from the peak of the roof I would will myself to imagine the entire town getting flooded and filled as the ice caps melted, as the ocean crept higher and higher. From my roof I thought I’d watch those boys sputter and drown. It wasn’t an experiment. I thought if they tried to grab hold of my roof while the water was rising, I would walk over to the rain-gutter edge and squish their pale fingers underneath my tennis shoe, though usually in my imagining I had on my father’s steel-toed work boots because they were more effective at finger
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