On evenings like this, when the breeze spreads upward and lifts the hood of my jacket off my eyes, when the air holds the crisp promise of spring just above my head, with the blue dusk slowly creeping upon me, I think of all the paths open to me–all of the possibilities of my life, all of the places I will go.

For most of my life, I wanted nothing more than to move to California. My parents moved to Delaware before my older sister Hannah was born, from California by way of Mexico, and we, not just them but the whole family, never seemed to fit in. Everyone else in Delaware had loads of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and we had no one, just one great aunt a few hours away in Maryland.

My parents would tell us stories about California, and it seemed like the Promised Land. Everything was better in California: the people were friendlier, the food tastier, the water warmer, the sky bluer.

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