when we pull into the driveway. I have never been in a real snowstorm before, but I am not very excited.

The house is empty because the moving truck cannot get up the hill in the snow. It snows for three weeks, and I spend those three weeks wearing the same set of clothes, throwing a tennis ball I find in the car at the wall, and sitting on the only piece of furniture in my room, a mattress with no sheets. And I do not even know how that got here in the first place. I am always getting yelled at because these walls are more expensive than our old ones, and because everyone is tired and since it is very hard to sleep with no sheets.

I do not even go to school, because the schedule in Arizona is different than in Reno, which is the name of this town. It seems pretty boring to me. The semester does not start until the end of January.

Eventually the truck makes it up the hill, and I have my things again, which does not make me very happy like I thought it would. School starts a week later, and I am so happy to have somewhere to go that I do not hate it there until at least the second week.

Swope Middle School. In Phoenix we call it Junior High. Everyone here is always using expressions I don?t understand, and I can?t even tell if they mean that they think the thing they are talking about is great or if they don?t like it. Kids don?t just talk to you like they do in Arizona, and they all come to school in the same car, their mom driving, and she wears really big sunglasses and a lot of makeup, and it seems to me like you wouldn?t need to wear sunglasses in winter.

After I have been here for so long that I can?t stand it, I start talking to a few kids. They are mostly nice, but I don?t really want to be any of their friends. I wish they would just stop talking like that and wear something normal, like everyone else.

But the truth is that I am the one who is different. They talk like everyone else and wear clothes like everyone else here. They can do what their teachers ask them, and they are not amazed by the snow, and they have things to do on the weekends, just like everyone else. And they are happy here, just like everyone is in Reno. It is really quite a nice place. I do not think I am very much like anyone else around here.

I will only be at Swope Middle School for one semester, but that is far too much Swope Middle School for me.