The class of '65 breaks out the Upper Dauphin High school yearbook and begins to search for Mr. MacCue, debating whether he was a suicide or had merely died of a heart attack.
     "He was a short little pissant," Marylu tells me. "That's terrible to say," she half-assedly disclaims, still unsure of the circumstances of his death, "but he was really nasty."

     I drove through the front entrance of the college with the express purpose of discovering why these girls were still dancing and why I was not. I had visited the campus and took the obligatory tour. After learning I was a ballerina, the guide made it a point to show me the new performing arts center standing like a gem in the middle of campus. He didn't know anything about the dance program. The real studio was hidden away in the back corner of campus, in a building that looked more suitable for maintenance workers than ballet dancers. I was lucky to find it; they didn't include this one on the tour.

     Here is my first memory of Rachael. We sat on the living room floor of our house in Bangor eating Maraschino cherries. I reached int o the jar as I imagined a robot would, picking the cherries out one by one with what I thought at four years old were mechanical movements, first sucking the red juice off them and then biting down and putting the stems in my sister's hair. My father escorted Rachael into the room. She took the choppy, little girl steps to a few feet past the door and then stopped. It was 1987 and I still remember the stonewashed jeans and matching denim jacket she wore.
     My father kneeled down and took each of us into one of his arms.
     "This is your sister, Rachael."

     My best friend Christine and I were playing Monopoly on the living room floor when we heard a loud bang and the pieces shook on the board. I ran into the hallway where I saw my Dad on the landing above me, bending over to pick up the TV that he'd just hurled into the wall. He heaved it down the second flight and the old wide screen came crashing toward me. I jumped out of its path and stood shaking as I watched him storm down the stairs.

     My brother Ian likes to brag that the only time my family goes to church is on the holidays and when he gets arrested. Each time this happens my mom kneels at the pew and keeps muttering prayers as she takes quick glances at Ian. When I ask Mom why I have to be at church sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew when I could be lying in a comfortable bed she simply responds, "We have to pray for certain people's souls." Ian then nudges me and smirks.