Im Juli = In July

If any of you out there are students of German—which some of you are—then you recognize this title. Im Juli is a film by prominent Turkish-German director Fatih Akın, probably the most positive of his that I've seen, though I've only seen four. I think the other three (Gegen die Wand, Auf der Anderen Seite, Soul Kitchen) are more powerful or just plain better, but a lot of people really like this movie, and, well, I'm writing about July. Im Juli is a road movie with a love story. The two main characters travel from Hamburg in northern Germany all the way to Istanbul. They travel by borrowed car, hitchhiking, stolen car, more hitchhiking. In July, I traveled by plane, and car, and boat. I didn't hitchhike. I didn't even get on a train.

I started the month celebrating the Fourth of July in West Michigan with Ali and Drew and Cooper, spent twelve days in Rhode Island with dear old Rachel and co, then ended the month with Ali and Drew again—first Ali came to Detroit (she got to take the train), and we went to a concert, then we drove back to Gobles and Mattawan with a puppy in tow who was on her way to a new home, which she reached via the ferry in Muskegon that crosses Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. In between these trips, I was in Ann Arbor off and on. I spent twenty of July's thirty-one days as a guest.

This backpack and I have gotten real close this summer. (And, the boots from this post.)

Rhode Island was a big commitment. There was no way I'd drive that far, by myself, in a car without air conditioning, so I had to buy a plane ticket. Once you're spending that kind of money, you want to stay a while, but not too long because you set the dates and generally stick by them. Her family had told me, again and again, that I could stay as long as I wanted. Since college started, we had only caught Rachel for days at a time except at Christmastime; then, last August, her family finally made the long-postponed move for her mother's job, so she doesn't even come back for the holidays anymore. I hadn't seen the whole family the way I used to—going over after school, staying for dinner, spending the night on weekends—in a while. I hadn't really seen them like that since sometime in high school, but even though they're in a new house in a different state, and Rachel's a college graduate while her little sister has accumulated many more sisters through her sorority, a lot was the same. We did touristy trips, went to the beach a couple times, but also just existed together.

Ali, Rachel, Maddie, and me, with Emma above us. This is actually in Ohio, in May, but it includes three of the people I stayed with in July.

The weirdest thing to think about while in Rhode Island was that I didn't actually know when I would see the whole family again after that. Rachel, I would probably see in the not-too-distant future—about a week from now, it turns out, coinciding with Emma's return from Poland—but she won't live in the woods of Rhode Island with her parents for too long. Rhode Island's not that far from Michigan, and definitely not from the rest of New England, but it's not somewhere I'm likely to go with any regularity. Staying with Ali and Drew was completely different.

On the Fourth of July, hurtling along the country roads at sixty or so trying to follow Ali from her grandparents' to Drew's place was challenging. After a couple days going back and forth during my visit at the end of the month, I knew exactly where to go, although I would forget to watch out for Drew's driveway. And even though Drew, like the rest of us, won't be where he is now for too long, I had this pleasant feeling that driving under the arching trees past the ranch houses and the fields was going to stick, because Ali and Drew intend to stay in the area. As the years go by, they'd like to move up from the five golden chickens Drew keeps at the house he lives in now to land of their own where they can grow their food and raise the children they might one day have.

I can picture the next year of my life, sort of. I've got the setting and a lot of the characters picked, at least, if not the plot. You could even say I know some of the conflicts. After next summer, though, it becomes much hazier. I live places. I make money, I hope. I have a life, eventually, but maybe not in close proximity to the people I have willed to stay close to me. Ali and I sat one evening on the raft, dangling our feet in the little lake, talking about her future, the jobs she'll have, the dinner parties she'll invite me to. Her mom and her five siblings, who have always been of utmost importance, will probably spread farther apart than she would have once liked. "But they'll visit," she said. She always insists I'll stay, or end up, in Michigan. I don't know. I hope that I'll end up living close enough to visit often. I realized that evening that this vision she's been forming of her future gives me a glimpse into mine, because I will be part of it. I don't know where I'll be getting my mail and paying my taxes, or who with, or when, but at some point, if everything works out to the bare skeleton of our dreams, Ali's home will be a fixture in my life and my children's lives. Even if they're a decade younger than her kids. Hopefully not all of them—it would be inconvenient.

By the time I finally said goodbye to Ali and headed home, it was August 2nd. The month of travel was over. Back at home with my parents, I missed living with my friends. I had tried my best for a month to be homeless, but now I want a home of my own again. And so I found one: I'm moving back to Ann Arbor mit meiner lieben Emma and those silly cats come September. Come, September! No, you can wait. I might be impatient during the next two weeks of limbo, but they're full of guests, which will be nice. And despite the stickiness and the sometimes isolation, I don't really want this summer to end.

Also, watch Im Juli. I think I'm going to for a second time.

Dusk on Lake St. Clair

 The color changes gently and was hard to photograph, but I like it. There was also a freighter, a nice red one, but I wanted to keep riding my bike so I didn't stop again when the angle was right.

I promise I'll write about Rhode Island, or something, anything, soon. Once so much time passes, there are so many things I could say, but no convincing way to decide which I should say, and then I think about the things I won't say and fall asleep. Good night, world.

Last Week, I Was in Michigan

On Monday, my primary goal was to not fall asleep until bedtime. My secondary goal was to fill the time until then. I wanted to clear enough space on my desk to use it, or tune my harp, or, you know, eat dinner. But all my energy was directed toward goal number one, leaving nothing with which to fuel actual activity.
The night before, I was at a house on a small lake with some of my favorite people, and it was the Fourth of July, and we ate burgers and swam and got squirted with water guns and watched fireworks set off up close and personal on the lawn. We got bug bites. Exhausted but unwilling to end the party, we ate delicious popcorn and stared at boxing people on TV and I tried to fall asleep against the side of the couch. And then, finally, finally, we retired to our beds or makeshift beds and cursed the heat that kept us up for much of the night. Monday, I drove all the way home, yawning and scratching and yawning. In Wayne County, where I wrote this part of the post, we had a heat advisory. It was so hot, and I was so tired.

I hoped that if my parents fed me, which could realistically happen within two hours, I would wake up. Food did happen to me eventually, but first I fell asleep twice. So much for goal number one.

But, several triumphs!

To swim happily in the lake, you find someone who can sort of steer the raft with its tiny motor, so that you bypass all the horrifying plant matter by the dock and can jump off into refreshing but warm lake water, weed-free. None of this seems too difficult, although I'm sure I'd be a failure at steering. Anyway, in the end you have to get back on the raft, and there is a "ladder" to aid you in this. A ladder with one metal rung, if that even counts as a ladder, and then a chain hanging off that with a loop. That is the first rung, a rung that moves around in the water as you try to position yourself on rung number two and then haul yourself up onto the raft. The guys struggled. I was worried. But then I did it easily, and Ali's youngest sister followed me up, also no problem. And I don't even exercise anymore! (This is where I'm not going to go on a thing about how I miss the CCRB at U of M, but where I will stop to tell you that my bedroom floor—and my desk—are now essentially clear, so when I return to Michigan, I can unroll my yoga mat for the first time in months!)

To tell the truth, I had only one triumph in mind (not the previous one) when I started this list, but felt it could only be noteworthy if there was a succession. So here's another one, one with more lasting benefits:

Over the past few weeks, I've discovered that some of my favorite clothes from pre-Germany times fit again, which means I can wear more things! Without shopping! This is especially good because shopping trips are becoming increasingly frustrating. Dresses that fit my bottom half are too big for my top half. Jeans that fit me are ultra low-rise and I don't approve. Even good t-shirts are hard to find. But a miracle has occurred: a pair of jeans that I have owned since fall 2006, fairly skinny jeans purchased before the label "skinny jeans" had stuck, jeans that I realized were too big at the waist after I bought them, which were then too tight when I tried them on this spring—now, mysteriously, fit me almost perfectly. Okay, they're not perfect. But after wearing them for three days, they still hadn't even tried to fall off. This is unheard of. After a taste of jeans-wearing-security, I'm thinking I might have to renew the quest for jeans that actually fit me. But it's so hard.

And finally: my denim miniskirt (possibly my favorite clothing item of 2006-2007) fits again, which enabled me to build the perfect outfit to head west to Ali and Drew on the Fourth of July: the miniskirt, a black scoop-neck t-shirt, and my ten-dollar, not-leather, red cowboy boots. (If Emma had had her way, I'd have been wearing a black leotard for my top, but American Apparel is too far away and expensive, and Emma's already starting trends in Pittsburgh. I think she's doing okay without me following along. Plus, how do you explain to someone why you are wearing a leotard?) The outfit seemed right, and I've been dying to wear my cowboy boots because it's been months since it was coldish. And the miniskirt had been out of my life for well over a year. I usually feel that it plus not winter (read: bare legs) is sort of questionable, and I have this idea that sometime soon after college you have to start dressing somewhat more modestly or elegantly, but I'm not sure when that happens. Ali and Ali's mom approved of the outfit—as did some guy at the gas station in Detroit.

This is unrelated to the gas station. This is the bonfire from Sunday night. Those flames are much taller than a tall man.
 
I'd pulled to the pump ahead of him because it's the one I always use and I didn't think they were ready to leave yet, but then felt bad when I realized he wasn't pumping gas anymore, so I'd inconvenienced him. As I was starting to pay for my gas, I heard him yell out that he liked my boots, and asked where I got them. The answer was some random secondhand place. Then he asked me where I was going. Was it to church? Uh, right. Right, friendly gas station man. I'm headed to church at 12:45 in a short skirt and cowboy boots. On the Fourth of July. He kept talking but I had a hard time hearing him, especially while trying to get my gas and not do something wrong and embarrass myself. I had to insert my card three times before I pulled off my zip code—you see, I tend to get flustered when people talk to me at the gas station. People being strangers, always. But he won for most friendly.

Anyway, I would love to grace you, the internet, with a photo of my beloved inferior red cowboy boots (my real leather ones are nicer, but less interesting), if not the outfit which I have attempted to describe, but because I am the photographer of my life, I have no photos of myself, and my boots are in Michigan whereas I am in Rhode Island, the Ocean State, or as my friend Rachel's dad told me, "the Kentucky of New England. And we live in the sticks." On Friday, I reacquainted myself with the Atlantic after eight years away, but that is clearly a story for another time. Since my photos are not plentiful, I will leave you with another picture relating to the Fourth of July celebrations:

This honey-whiskey liqueur was my birthday present from Ali. I like the pretty goldy color (accentuated by my bedroom window) and the mysterious turkey silhouette. Yes. Such a mysterious turkey. Now laugh.

This is the last straw, as Rebecca Dew* would say

The last straw is that my throat is sore. My throat is making me feel miserable. This happened just two weeks ago—I woke up on my birthday, realized I was far too aware of when I swallowed, ingested far more vitamin C in the form of sugary little tablets than necessary, and crawled back under the covers seeking a healing oblivion. I refused to be sick for birthday, part two, which was to take place the next day in Ann Arbor. Anyway, today my throat hurts like it did that time, and I've decided to blame it on my stuffy, dusty, cluttered bedroom.

There are people who would say that I place too much weight on the tidiness of my bedroom, especially considering that this bedroom, the one I've had since we moved here when I was five and half years old, probably hasn't met anyone's qualifications for tidy since I started college just about four years ago. Because, you see, my dad stole my closet from me around then, and nothing has been the same since.

When we picked bedrooms, I got to choose before my brother because I am the eldest, and at five years old, I guess large built-in desk trumps much bigger room with closet large enough to turn into a bathroom if you wanted, a fact which I often regret today, although the afternoon light I get and the fact that my room is on the first vent-thing from the furnace makes up for it. What this means, though, is that the closet I have been deprived of for so long is not that big, but it still makes a difference. Dresses and skirts and jackets need to hang somewhere, and it's really annoying to have to search through everyone else's closets to find what you're looking for. Plus, the other closets get blocked by piles of stuff because no one really needs to access what's normally in there. And then there are the boxes. Closets are a great place to put boxes of things you probably don't need anymore but would rather keep, although I've made progress in reducing the number of boxes.

The reason I have no closet is because my closet contains the portal to the attic, and the attic is the site of my father's painstaking campaign to decrease our energy bills. It was great when he took out the old insulation, and then it was winter, and everything was cold. But, eventually, he filled it. He built walkways to access the huge fan in our attic. The huge fan in our attic, whose motor is broken. That's the reason that he almost didn't give me back my closet two weeks ago, when I realized it was summer and demanded it back. He wasn't going to finish that last bit of insulating until the fall, when it cooled down again. But the fan! The fan! The fan is broken! Oh well. I'll empty out my closet again if you ever get around to getting it fixed. It's a gamble I'm willing to take.

I banished the ladder from my closet, and then hours later he returned, reluctantly, to help me put the shelves back in—I'm not tall enough for that to be easy. "The closet won't solve your problems!" he told me, in a last attempt to keep his way to the attic clear. "No, it will," I told him. "I'll wager a large sum that it won't," he replied. I laughed forever in my head, but for some reason, I didn't take him up on this, even though it will definitely solve my problems. He was just referring to the clutter sprawl all over our house, not my problems in general—whatever they are—and having a closet definitely makes my room being clear easier. That is my biggest concern. It will improve my quality of life drastically when I can walk from my bed to the door without stepping over things and then swinging my hip in to the doorknob. Okay, that's impossible to avoid. I will always walk into doorknobs.

Although I don't think he was talking about problems in general, there is a pretty big part of me that thinks a clean room will improve most aspects of my life. It's easier to think when there are clear surfaces. It's nice to not always sit in the same place. The internet works better at the other end of my room. I can't do yoga on top of five boxes. This room is driving me crazy, and to return to the start of this post, I think it's also making me sick. I don't usually get sick with the same sore throat twice in one month. But when I was little, I would have an irritating cold for the entire winter, and my mom came to the conclusion that it was because my room was too dusty. I don't even know that this makes sense, but I'm going to run with it, because I need to finish this. I was reading on the Diag the other day in the late afternoon, and it was beautiful—

 look at it be beautiful—

and I was happy, and it hit me, as keeps happening lately: THIS IS MY LIFE. And it can be like that, reading intelligent books in fresh air and thinking constructively about things—which is easy to do, it turns out—or it can be like this. Now. Pajamas at one in the afternoon, I haven't had breakfast yet because nothing sounds remotely appealing, and the only thing I can actually fathom doing is playing the Sims. This is my life. And no matter how insane it sounds, I can't get anywhere with it until my room is clean, and so I have to clean it.

It's not even that hard. Two weeks ago, I thought I was one day of hard work away from a presentable room. Not organized, because there are so many books to deal with, but satisfactory. And it's not that hard. Things aren't hard. Building momentum is what is hard. Being pretty much alone all day is hard. Cleaning my room is not. I will do this. Sore throat and all.

*Rebecca Dew is a character in Anne of Windy Poplars. She says this all the time, often complaining about "That Cat." You may have thought my renewed obsession with the Anne books was short-lived, but you were wrong. It's lying in wait. I just can't bring myself to start Anne's House of Dreams because I have issues with growing up right now and I don't want her to stop being understandable. I don't want her to become distant and secondary. Soon, though. Soon I will probably make the leap. Or else I'll just reread the Emily books. They stop before children start swarming. I'm actually back to Dorothy Dunnett's The House of Niccolò right now, though. I think I might devour the last two books as soon as my room is clean.

Time Is Scary: A Valuable Life Lesson, Brought to You By Moi

Do you ever have those moments where you go, "Wait, what.* What was I thinking?" Of course you do. You're human, right? Even my cat Isabel has these moments. I can see it on her face sometimes after she has bit me ferociously on the wrist, when my only crime was catering to her lovey-whims. There's this look of shame, although it passes quickly, and then she often clomps away. Yes. This is also a cat who clomps. How did we manage that?

I have these moments a lot, living in my parents' house again after three years away. Regularly, I wonder what I was thinking to move back to what my father actually referred to last month as "the Napping House," this house where we eat our pathetic dinners amid piles of mail, and our good dinners often next to the growing mail mountain, which, if I am lazy about the table-"clearing" process, threatens to avalanche upon me and my well-buttered mashed potatoes. Then Isabel jumps up to attack the aloe plant through its space-age protection pod and line the rim of my water glass with her fur. No, that last bit's a lie. We don't put up with that shit, not while we're eating.

I wonder what I was thinking coming back here, knowing that the last time I lived here was so close to unbearable that I sometimes don't know how that May ever actually became August. August was okay, though, I think. The light at the end of the tunnel and all. I do know why I'm at home this time, when I stop to think, but knowing doesn't always help.

Another thing that brings this on is seriously cleaning my room—a task I avoided for at least as many years as I've been living elsewhere, but which feels essential considering I hope to make a clean break for my future one of these days, and I shouldn't leave a horrible path of fourth-tier half-rejected socks and unopened bank statements I never wanted my parents to give me anyway because that is what the internet is for, guys across my floor when I leave. Cleaning your room, at least when it is as densely packed as mine, reintroduces you to so many parts of your life you'd forgotten about. Or tried to forget about. Why did I used to wear this bizarre stripey no-button button-up-shirt (it had invisible hooks and eyes)? How come I kept so many ugly fabric scraps in a box in my closet since middle school? How could I allow myself to sing along to the Corrs playing on my long-ago abandoned stereo when other people could probably hear me? The Corrs. What was I thinking?

Everything I do reminds me that things were years ago and now I'm old. I know that I'm not actually old. But even looking back just three years, I see this girl. This girl is so much younger than I am. And I feel sorry for her, but I have this feeling that I can only barely understand her. There are wisps of things she said, and thought, and meant, and I remember them. But I couldn't say them or think them or mean them now.

It's like this photo I come across almost every time I interact with my bookshelves. Yes, interaction. These are some sentient bookshelves. (Lies.) It's sitting on a pile of classics my dad brought up from the basement for me one year, to this day still unread by me. It's in a frame. Today, I even picked it up when I was standing at that end of the shelf, and I noticed the glass was covered in dust. I took it apart and cleaned it off. I thought about taking the picture out of the frame, so I could put something else in it. But I noticed that the photo seemed to be sticking to the glass. And I don't really want to take that frame with me. It's not quite my style. I put the frame back together. And then I looked at myself, seventeen, standing at the edge of Lake Huron and smiling. The smile is so real. There are two of us, with the sunset behind, so our faces are shadowy. I think that's one of the reasons it's such a good picture. He wasn't very good at photos, or smiles.

I remember that this evening on the beach happened. There are photos. One of them is even on Facebook, so I click by it a few times a year. I remember that it happened. But I don't remember this photo. I can remember a month earlier, a little. I can remember what followed it, though I'd rather not. I can remember vague stretches of neurotic, stupid misery and also surges of happiness. I couldn't tell you why they happened, besides that I was young. And I was dumb. But this moment, this photo? I have no idea what I was thinking.

*I am not referring to the tumblr of the same name, of which I read more of the archives than I care to admit for days at a time.

Escapism, I Know You Too Well; or, How My Dad Killed the Internet

Over the last few days, I was going to write a number of blog posts, but I just couldn't focus. So, resolutions made over the weekend in Ohio aside, I went back to doing what I seem to do best: sacrificing my days, my evenings, my brain cells and my vision to the Sims (2, if you wondered). The habit has been degrading, though. I promise. You can only watch so many Sims have the same wants and fears and lifetime goals (and noses—their parents' genes don't meld well) before you get a little bored. You can try to give each one a different career, her own style of dress and decorating, her own approach to life. But in the end, they're just Sims, and the progression of their lives and the stories you've built for them in your head are not reflected in the game, let alone in the real world. If you look at ancient matriarch Brianna Conaghy now, there's nothing to tell you she was once a redhead in a cute denim pencil skirt who struggled to make a living in politics so she could move to a house that was proper for raising children. No one knows that her daughter Fiona used to have lavender hair that looked absolutely perfect on her, or that her mother, sick of these brown-haired kids, found a lover to father Fiona, her third child. I won't go on. I realize these details are boring when I try to relate them.

The point is that the Sims is losing its charm, but it's still an easy diversion. I sit there, my fingers darting between speeds one, three, and pause. When it's on three, I hold the key down, willing my people to go faster, faster, faster. When I stop playing and leave the PC to check my email on my Mac or wander aimlessly through the house, I realize my heart is racing. It seems I may have become the lamest of adrenaline junkies, although 'junkie' is probably going way too far. I don't jump off of tall things. No, I speed through simulated life.

When I'm not playing the Sims but am engaged in something and not just staring blankly at nothing, I've been rereading the Anne books. I don't remember what she was talking about, but my mom alluded to them when she brought up Anne's term "scope for imagination," and suddenly, all I wanted to do was reacquaint myself with Avonlea. The second night in Athens, OH visiting Rachel, I had to finish Anne of Green Gables before I could go downstairs to join in the late-birthday Riesling and horrible horrible limited release Woodchuck spring cider—no, seriously, the hint of honey or whatever actually means that this cider smells like perfume and as far as I know, tastes like it too. Avoid it. Brief research has revealed there will be a summer cider too, starting in June, with hints of blueberry. Talk about gross. Although probably not as gross, because blueberries are food and perfume is not.

Anyway, even though I'd read it at least twice before, I needed to see exactly how Anne of Green Gables ended. I was so excited for Anne and Gilbert to finally reconcile and become friends. (It was bound to happen, so this is not a spoiler...for all those people out there who are dying to read L.M. Montgomery but haven't gotten around to it yet.) At the back of my mind the rest of the weekend, I was excited to get home, pull book two off my top shelf, and find out what happened next. I think I had read most of the other books only once. I also think the Anne books are better this time around. I'm older, and more cynical, so it's more likely I would look at their prim sensibilities and Anne's bubbling enthusiasm and laugh a little meanly, then stop reading, but I don't. It's refreshing to be pulled into this sincere, simple, beautiful world. One reason that I appreciate them more now is that I've been paying attention to all the description. As a third grader, I doubt I did that too well. I spent most of my life as a fast reader, something which changed when piles of nonfiction were dumped upon me in college but which I can return to as soon as what I'm reading is both compelling and doesn't have a response paper at the end of it.

The description—flowery it might be, but so good:

The "Avenue," so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.  – Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 2

I didn't even know what a rose window was last time I read this. And the old-fashioned speech, the inverted word order, the words L.M. Montgomery combines: the friendliness and tenderness of 'the Sarah-cat' and 'Anne-girl,' 'fireshine,' and "eyes shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations." 'Love-rapture' is silly, right? I could never write it. But it's perfect in its place. These books have renewed my faith in my ability to be earnest, somehow. At the same time, they've reminded me that descriptive passages can be like this. It's a sort of a downer, because I know I could never write like L.M. Montgomery. Which is okay, probably. It's not like I've spent my life in picturesque, unspoiled Prince Edward Island. I do think I should learn more plant names, however unlikely that may be.

While I tried to savor the first three books, my impatient nature got the better of me, and in three days I was done with Anne of Avonlea and of the Island. I'm a sucker for a love story, even—or especially?—such a subtle one as this. It's just so sweet, without being annoying. So, like the Sims, I raced through all of the Anne books in my house, and now I have to venture to the library to continue.

So now we get to the part where my dad kills the internet. The Sims has lost its luster. I've exhausted the reading options I'm interested in—because all I want to read is the next step in Anne's life, and I can't without making the two-block trek to the library I used to work in. I actually want to get some things done in real life, things that require the internet, like writing blog posts and dealing with my student loans and writing important emails, so I'm not going to allow myself to be sucked into fiction yet. Late Wednesday night, the internet flickers out, as it does rather frequently (apparently only since I've moved home, so it's my fault? do you believe that?). It doesn't flicker back on. I get pissed off—I was in the middle of an AIM conversation, I was writing something in Blogger. I go downstairs in the complete darkness (both parents are in bed) and hit reset on the router.

Oops. Wrong reset-choice. Our network had lost its custom name and reverted to simply 'linksys' and the password was gone. At least I was online again. Come Thursday night, this is a problem. My mom works at home two days a week, and she came home from work needing to finish a project by 10 a.m. the next morning. But she can't access the database if she's not on a secure network. You'd think this wouldn't be that hard to solve, but my dad can't remember how to change the network. He follows the instructions, but it doesn't work. The computer tells him, "Contact the person in charge of your network." "What if that person is me?" he asks, and soon resorts to swearing and yelling and ice cream in the basement with the TV. First he disables the internet entirely. My mom goes to bed, hoping he'll fix it before he goes to bed and she can get back up and work as long as she needs to. He goes to bed.

WHY DID HE KILL MY INTERNET CONNECTION? is all I can think the rest of the night. I don't need a secure network to work. I try to hook up my computer with the ethernet cord, but am unwilling to mess things up further and fail to get online. Every wireless network around our house is protected. I sit out in my car on the street to see if I can get something farther away, but no luck. Just loud, mysterious noises by my house. I rush out of the car and hurry to unlock the front door and get back inside. I seriously consider driving to Ann Arbor, just because I'm so angry. My computer is freezing even though, because it's not online, it's not doing anything. My phone's driving me crazy, too, because the buttons won't stop sticking and I'm trying to text my friends about the situation, and does Emma know if the library's internet is on at night, too? I don't check because I don't think the police would be so into a girl sitting in her car in the middle of the night, glowing conspicuously thanks to the laptop screen. And the police station is right next to the library.

I give up, go to sleep. My parents are up at 5:30 in the morning. I glance at the faint orange glow of dawn out my window and try to sleep. When I get up at 10:30, the internet is back. Without a password. My mom is gone, work incomplete, extension received. We still have to fix the network.

Notes for Emma, Away in Ann Arbor

I'm sitting in my bedroom in my parents' house. I've rearranged the furniture to try to get a new start with this room and this house and summers in this pleasant, pretty, but ultimately absolutely boring suburb. But I can't get the furniture right, and most of my things are still packed up. My dad and I just got back from Chinese food in Ferndale and so I don't want to move. I feel like I'm being sucked into the pillow-top mattress that's been on my bed since the last summer I spent in this house, three years ago—the summer yogurt and some pretzels became a valid dinner to me, the summer I gave up the Sims for at least a year because the computer ate my dynasty of four generations, the summer we were lonely late into the night, even when we weren't alone, the summer the last of my grandparents died. After the funeral we went back to my grandpa's apartment at the assisted living place and packed up the photo albums he'd made for my mom, the chairs from the kitchen table, some flannel sheets my mom had bought him. I had loved my grandparents' couch since they bought it when they moved into their trailer years before, but there was no way we could take it. My grandma's mattress, barely used because she'd spent so long in hospital beds, we did take. It's one and a half times as thick as my previous mattress and now my bed towers above the rest of my room. I don't want to think about that summer, but it's hard not to.

There are sirens to the west of my house, and I can hear traffic over the twilight chirps and calls of the birds. There's a plane somewhere above me. It's still not dark outside, so I don't want to turn on the lights, but what light is left hovers above the treetops and roofs and doesn't really enter my room. The computer screen makes me blind to everything else in my room, as it sort of does to everything, even in full daylight.

My mom wants me to make the brownies I said I'd make for her to take to work tomorrow. I don't want to. I'm supposed to add orange zest and orange juice—the recipe called for Cointreau but my dad concluded it was too old-fashioned for Kroger to carry, although he was so old-fashioned he didn't realize a grocery store would carry liquor, let alone self-serve. The orange juice he buys these days has pulp in it; he's revised his shopping practices to suit just the two of them, because we children don't live here anymore. Except, voilà, here I am again, begging for pulp-less orange juice and rolling my eyes at the skim milk and wondering what on earth these people eat. There's Velveeta in the cheese and meat drawer, which we never used to buy. "Your mother keeps going on these nostalgia-kicks," he told me as we headed to the checkout at the Kroger in St. Clair Shores (ours is undergoing renovations). "She'll never use it, but it's better to buy it so she knows it's there than to listen to her ask for it over and over."

The bells in the church are tolling nine o'clock. When the carillon started up sometime in the afternoon, my dad said, "The torturer's at it again." He can't stand it when they get the music wrong. Or when there are interloper grasses in our lawn. Or when paint is cracking off the house. At least he can happily walk, unlike my mom. It's going to be a long summer.