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Show m my father',s house/352 LaVona , Aunt . A and Aunt Rachel/included - and that everything was serene and orderly, with wonderful smells drifting to the rafters. And in my daydream, I would go to my father who would be sitting beside a kerosene lamp, reading. He would look up, his face glowing as it had when I was small, and he would smile and kiss me and we would talk. But at night, my dreams were full of shadows, of dark caverns in mountainsides, of alleyways and abandoned buildings, of people with dark faces and greedy smiles. Sometimes their mouths would elongate, their teeth would sharpen and drip, and they would howl at a lilac-scented moon. And so I was ripe for what happened the June I turned seventeen, steeped in self-disapproval and dark thoughts leavened only with a measure of stubborn pride. I had been rejected and was now rejecting: First my father, then my mother, my brothers, and Brian. It would have taken a keen sensibility to pierce the facade I had created for myself, however. During my junior year of high school, I got high grades and was active in student clubs. Toward the end of the year, I ran for a studentbody office and won. I would be in the school play, the marching troupe and our annual musical. My school friends and teachers saw me as the epitome of the well-adjusted teenager: Active, friendly, hard-working and dependable. But inside I was the epitome of the alienated individual. Every avenue of my life seemed to dead-end. Every achievement was empty. I resented those I loved, and those I loved seemed to dislike me. The schism between my interior and exterior life seemed |