When I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in everyone's heaven there were soccer
goalposts in the distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like
suburban northeast high schools built in the 1960s. Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped
sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to make them feel modern. My favorite part was how the colored
blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax High. Sometimes, on Earth, I had made my
father drive me by Fairfax High so I could imagine myself there.
Following the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades of middle school, high school would have been a fresh start.
When I got to Fairfax High I would insist on being called Suzanne. I would wear my hair feathered or up in a
bun. I would have a body that the boys wanted and the girls envied, but I'd be so nice on top of it all that they
would feel too guilty to do anything but worship me. I liked to think of myself – having reached a sort of
queenly status – as protecting misfit kids in the cafeteria. When someone taunted Clive Saunders for walking
like a girl, I would deliver swift vengeance with my foot to the taunter's less-protected parts. When the boys
teased Phoebe Hart for her sizable breasts, I would give a speech on why boob jokes weren't funny. I had to
forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook when Phoebe walked by: Winnebagos,
Hoo-has, Johnny Yellows. At the end of my reveries, I sat in the back of the car as my father drove. I was
beyond reproach. I would overtake high school in a matter of days, not years, or, inexplicably, earn an Oscar
for Best Actress during my junior year.
These were my dreams on Earth.
After a few days in heaven, I realized that the javelin-throwers and the shot-putters and the boys who played
basketball on the cracked blacktop were all in their own version of heaven. Theirs just fit with mine – didn't
duplicate it precisely, but had a lot of the same things going on inside.
I met Holly, who became my roommate, on the third day. She was sitting on the swing set. (I didn't question
that a high school had swing sets: that's what made it heaven. And no flat-benched swings – only bucket
seats made out of hard black rubber that cradled you and that you could bounce in a bit before swinging.)
Holly sat reading a book in a weird alphabet that I associated with the pork-fried rice my father brought home
from Hop Fat Kitchen, a place Buckley loved the name of, loved so much he yelled "Hop Fat!" at the top of
his lungs. Now I know Vietnamese, and I know that Vietnamese is not what Herman Jade, who owned Hop
Fat, was, and that Herman Jade was not Herman Jade's real name but one he adopted when he came to the
U.S. from China. Holly taught me all this.
"Hi," I said. "My name is Susie."
Later she would tell me she picked her name from a movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. But that day it rolled right
