The wisest, most sensible response to a troubled and risky situation is to remove yourself from it any way you can. In “The Last Days of School,” one of my CNF memoir pieces, I try to recreate what it felt like for a child who fears she’ll be left alone after all her siblings find ways to leave what is becoming an increasingly dangerous household. Her two oldest sisters have each married at sixteen; her brother is threatening to join the Navy. Worst of all, she suspects her closest sibling—the sister who is both her playmate and protector—will soon find her own way to escape.
You can read the essay in The Argyle Literary Magazine.
