Second of all, I think that’s advice for people who are afraid of being too much. And on that day, I was by myself, skating, and happy to be too much.

I wasn’t in school. There was no Principal Lynde, no Tanner or Sarah, around to say otherwise.

So I was going to be Very Anne that day.

And I was happy about it.

Millie has a theory that if you think about someone not being there, it kind of summons them into existence. Like if you’re waiting for the bus and you realize you need to grab something at home and you think, Oh, I hope the bus doesn’t come yet, it’s sure to arrive.

And so, it was not surprising that just after I had that thought, I heard, under the amazing beats of music in my ears, a horn blasting behind me.

I looked over my shoulder and spotted a blue pickup truck, its chrome nose blinking in the sun, a cloud of dust kicking up beneath its wheels. I was about to slow down when I saw the head of the person in the passenger’s side, leaning out the window.

Even from a distance I could see it was Tanner, his hands cupped around his mouth, like he was yelling something.

At me.

What he was yelling I couldn’t hear over the music, but I could guess.

I pushed my headphones off my ears and the roar of the truck’s engine got much, much louder. The road stretched out in front of me, with nothing but empty fields on either side, except for a ways ahead where there was a tree line.

I bent my knees, feeling the wobble of my wheels as I tried to pick up as much speed as I could on Greenville’s pothole-ridden roads. All I could hear now was the pop of stones under rubber, the scratch and grate of my vinyl wheels on the road.

Unfortunately a truck is always going to beat roller skates in the rock-paper-scissors of who’s faster.

Before I could catch my breath, the truck blasted past me so close I felt the spray sting of gravel on my legs, and the whoosh of something else sailing past my ears. What felt like it could have been a hand, reaching toward me.

Without thinking, I dove off the side of the road, into a set of what I suppose were bushes—very prickly green things that were more stick than leaf. I rolled, I would say athletically (but maybe not), onto my side and scrambled to unlace my skates as I heard the burning noise of a truck screeching to a stop on the road.

I picked up a skate in each hand and, carrying them like boxing mitts, tore off in my stockinged feet into the trees.