They Forgot to Invite Me to Christmas—So I Bought a Mountain. When They Came to Take It, the Deputy Was Already Waiting.

my throat on the way down, but I ate it alone while my mother flipped that elaborate pancake and my father read the sports section and Julian scrolled through his phone, all of us in the same room but existing in completely separate realities.

The pattern refined itself as I grew older. As a teenager, I won a regional writing competition and brought continue reading …