We are having a war on the playground, and the boys are fighting against the girls. Rachel decided she wanted to be on the boys' side, and she is the oldest in the class so I want to be like her. She is bossy and I don't always agree with her, but I say I want to fight with the boys too. Bobby is the second-oldest and I want to be like him as well. I am the third-oldest and I always wish I hadn't been born two weeks late, because then I would have been older than Rachel. We play tag through the play structures, though, and hide in the log cabin. The girls aren't fast enough, and the boys win. Rachel and I want to have a march with signs, like they do in the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories. I can write my name in cursive.

I tell everyone that I was born in Scotland, but that I don't have an accent because I moved here when I was two, just before I started school. But I'm a Scottish citizen and that's why I wear plaid skirts all the time, even when I play upside-down on the monkey bars. I've got a locket around my neck where an invisible elf lives, and sometimes I let him out to exercise. I feel guilty for misleading my friends, though, and I sit them down with pomp and circumstance and tell them the truth. They refuse to speak to me for days.

We decide that we are going to make a timeline of human history, starting with the Sumerians. There are three of us doing it and a roll of butcher paper that stretches across the room. We do the good bits first (like the invention of braziers) and then dissolve into fighting. There is screaming and crying and we are in for mediation every lunch. The teachers hide the timeline over winter break and I resent that we have been robbed of our project.

I read the first of Brian Jacques' Redwall books, then the second, then the rest, and everyone is a rodent now. Suddenly I am powerful, because I am the most heroic squirrel of them all, and I am in charge of our religion, Warriorism. Putting together my favourite characters' names, I give myself a sacred title: Russa Matthias the Warrior. Our symbol is a fancy, curly S. There are two novices and we eat honeysuckles and disrupt the soccer games and we are holy. I own all the books in the series, and when the author comes to town I get them signed. I think I am the youngest person there. My glasses cover my entire face.

A big girl at summer camp tells me that if you don't build houses for the fairies, you will have bad luck. My life has a purpose when I spend weeks anxiously constructing houses from leaves and twigs and acorns. I dare Bobby to eat an acorn, and he throws up.

I play House with my sister and I am always the mommy or the teacher, when she is the daughter or the student. When I play House with Bobby he is always the daddy, and wants us to all be his children. He wants to come home from work and see us all ready for his inspection. I want to be the mommy. I won't let him put me in time-out, and I cry and storm off, making as much noise as possible.

When we move to a new town, I walk around the school, saying goodbye to each play structure and each classroom. When the movers pack up our furniture, I play in the sandbox we are leaving behind, and my mother takes us to get hamburgers. At my new school I walk around the basketball courts with Allen, but I don't really want to tell him about Warriorism. The carpet in my classroom smells bad. There aren't trees to build homes for fairies in. But I learn the violin, and I still wear plaid skirts. I crave order and I tell on rule-breakers. When we have a fire drill I cry because I am afraid the school is burning down.

It is dark in my bedroom, and it is late - maybe 9:00 - and of course, I cannot sleep. I try standing on my head to relieve the boredom, but don't get any farther than all fours. I try lying in bed backwards, or with my head hanging off the side. But at long last, I end up mummifying myself in my quilt with the big teddy bear on it, the edges tucked under me so that I cannot move. I clutch Pajama Bunny in my arms and smile as I tell myself a story about a boarding school where I am a student.