This Time it's Real

by Ann Liang

But for now, this small, simple ritual feels enough. Because it’s ours.

If I’m honest, though, it’s in these moments—with the music filling the car and the wind whipping past the windows, the late-afternoon sun flashing gold through the trees and my family close beside me—that I feel . . . lucky. Really, truly lucky, despite all the moving and leaving and adjusting. Despite everything.

Sometimes I’m convinced I’ll spend the rest of my life this way. Alone.

Sometimes I think loneliness is my default setting.

Words just move me. A beautiful sentence will sneak under my skin and crack me open the way a phrase of music might, or a climactic scene from a movie. A well-crafted story can make me laugh and gasp for breath and weep.

This is my trick to surviving new schools: Find a space like this, a place no one can disturb me, and claim it as my own.