We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.

I have watched lives change. I have seen women gain confidence.

Friendships that don't fit my life anymore have faded away, and new ones have come in.

In my version of paradise, the air was always cold and the rivers ran with candy.

Because that’s the thing about the exact moment when you get somewhere that has required effort: There’s a freeze-frame instant of total fulfillment, when every expectation has been met and the world is perfect.

I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.

I used my captors names every chance I had. It was intentional, a way of reminding them that I saw them, of pegging them, of making them see me in return.