Excerpt: A Girl Shaped Thing

Aniaina has been my best friend since I was seven years old and closest neighbor to me, her house being only half a mile east of mine. We had originally met shortly after she had moved into her aforementioned home, which had previously only contained her grandmother and forty seven cats (I counted one summer). I would later be rather thankful that the occupancy had gone up to forty nine that hot summer. We had upon chance come across each other both wading in the pond between my house and the ruins of widow Johannes house. I was instantly impressed by her. Not only did her bright, bold blue waist length ringlets draw my envy but she was the first person adult or child to actually ponder my favorite question, having had recently read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass I promptly spent a year asking everyone I met "How is a raven like a writing desk" Aniaina instantly pondered my question ina familiar gesture that I would soon know meant she was thinking she crooked her head slightly to the left crossed her eyes just a touch and tapped her nose with both of her pinkies. With a twist she whipped into a tall and proud stance she exclaimed "because Poe wrote on both of them!" Now I had yet to wander upon the works of Edgar Allan Poe even though my reading level was already rather advanced, but I knew that she was going to be a great friend and asked her if she wanted to come pretend to be dead in the woods with me, to which she agreed.