Chapter 1: Never Sticking Out

In the fifteen years since I landed in this world, I’ve always been careful—never making a scene, never sticking out.

Even when questions threatened to bubble over or curiosity tugged at my sleeve when something felt off, I kept my head down—like a squirrel eyeing a backyard full of barking retrievers. I watched folks in our small Ohio town, picked up on their rhythms—the flags lining porches for Memorial Day, the lazy clang of church bells on Sunday afternoons, the slow swirl of gossip that could sink a girl in a week. It was easier to blend in than to risk sticking out.

But on my eighteenth birthday, Mom pulled out a slim notebook and told me a daughter had to be even more level-headed.

She sat me down in the kitchen, where morning sun filtered through checkered curtains. Her voice was gentle, but there was a gravity to it. The smell of brewing coffee mingled in the air, and the scrape of her chair on the linoleum made the moment feel rooted, solid, in our American home. She talked about independent thinking, women’s rights, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. She quoted lines she said I needed to remember—'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,' she recited, her eyes locked on mine—as if she were packing my mind for a journey I couldn’t yet see.

The longer I stared at those black words, the more they seemed to glow red.

It felt as if they were burning themselves into me, every word pulsing like a live ember. The names, the ideals—they were both familiar and strangely distant, a déjà vu that sent chills up my spine.

Oh, Mom—are you a time traveler too?

Sometimes I wonder if you see the world the way I do, if you’ve carried secrets behind your smile all this time.