17

After 2 months of freshmen year, I came home sick. I was a mess. Unimaginable shivering. Then sweating through five layers.

The freakiest feeling, though, was how much I already felt like a stranger, a tourist, in my own home. My bed wasn’t my bed. The murmurs of the house were unfamiliar. Apparently we now had a mouse.

I felt like that mouse: an outsider creeping in.

New Jersey, October 2022
Daniel B.