I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.

I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot.

My mother is part albino.

I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me.

I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Daughter of the Chief’s flight ex-wife, come home at last.

Good luck tended to avoid me.

The thing, I thought to myself… it had possibilities — as a nickname, at the very least.

I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.