The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

I know what I was feeling at that moment about Annabelle. Why don’t you tell them that? Because the truth is that I was ashamed of her. I hated her. I wanted her to disappear—oh, shit, just say it—I wanted her to die. Why did it have to be my Dad who got killed? That’s what I was thinking. At least my dad was cool and a musician, and we had all these interests in common, like jazz and outer space, and we used to do stuff together like eat breakfast and watch old TV shows about interplanetary travel on YouTube, and when he picked me up after school, I was proud of him. I loved my dad. I loved him like crazy, and he was dead. And there was my mom, sitting in the principal’s waiting room where everyone could see her, looking like a total loser, and this voice in my head kept saying, Why couldn’t it have been you? And it wasn’t just some random voice who was saying this, either. It was my voice. It was me.