Notes on a Near-Life Experience Read Online Free PDF Page A

that the lack of a bologna sandwich may be the thing we notice most about my father's absence.

I MET MY BEST FRIEND , H ALEY, ON THE SECOND DAY OF FIRST grade. Actually, it was my first day of first grade, her second. I was supposed to be in kindergarten that year, but when I got to class on the first day, the teacher found out that I already knew how to read, tie my shoes, and add.
    “Do you know your address?” she asked.
    “Two nine oh one El Rancho Via, Yorba Linda, California. Nine two eight eight six,” I said.
    She left me in the chair where she'd been interrogating me since she'd found me reading
Make Way for Ducklings
and spoke in loud whispers to the other teacher.
    “What am I supposed to do with her?” She acted as if I'd done something horribly wrong.
    They decided to call my mother. The next thing I knew,I'd been kicked out of kindergarten and put in first grade. I wasn't a child genius. I knew how to read because Allen did. I'd had no idea I was transforming myself into some kind of freak by learning to read, tie my shoes, add, and recite my address.
    So I met Haley on the second day of first grade. I thought she must have been a princess or a giant, she was so tall— taller than all the kids in first and even second grade. I was pretty short, I guess, so that made her seem even taller. When the teacher had us draw pictures of ourselves, Haley's looked different than everyone else's: she had a neck in her picture, and her arms weren't drawn as short as the rest of ours.
    Our teacher, Ms. Beccia, assigned me the desk next to Haley's, and it just made sense for us to be friends since we had to share paste and stuff.
    We've had disagreements: I used to want to hold her hand all the time—it felt natural since she seemed almost as tall as my mom—and she didn't like it; she wanted us to take tennis lessons together, but I was more interested in dance; she wanted us to dress up as cowgirls one Halloween, but I wanted us to be princesses. At some point it must've dawned on us that we didn't have to be clones to be friends.
    Now I make up dances and Haley practices tennis. I dream about kissing Julian Paynter and Haley dreams about finding a guy who is taller than she is but who doesn't think basketball is the only reason to live. I hang up flyers for the spring dance concert and Haley writes the phone number for the RwandanRelief Fund on the chalkboard of every classroom in school. Between the two of us, we can talk about anything.
    But I feel that saying something out loud makes it more true. Final. I haven't told Haley about my parents. It feels like telling her will make this whole mess real. Right now, there are some things I'm not ready to finalize.

M Y DAD DECIDED THAT A LLEN , K EATIE, AND I NEEDED THERAPY if we were ever going to be normal again once he moved out. I think it's the Woody Allen thing; all the people in Woody Allen movies see analysts, but they're all weirdos who live in New York City and have affairs with their sister's husband or their girlfriend's best friend. Mom agreed to take us to a shrink, but only if she got to pick him. These are the things they argue about. Like they are children. Mom's friend Eileen recommended Dr. Lynder. I had no say in the matter.
    So here I am, sitting on the leather couch in the waiting room, reading
People
magazine, trying to guess what Dr. Lynder will be like.
    I wonder if he'll try to seduce me. That's what always happens in the movies. You know, a young, innocent girl, a bitunstable, goes to a shrink, and the next thing you know she's thinking, He's the only one who really understands me. One thing leads to another…. You get the picture. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing…. And then when the girl tries to expose the psychiatrist after she figures out that what's going on isn't right, after she regains some of her sanity, he diagnoses her as delusional and has her locked up, along with his other victims.
    The receptionist tells me to fill out a paper with a