"It was midnight and everyone in the house was asleep, but I felt uneasy. Something off-kilter was keeping me awake; a physical sense of apprehension was building in my stomach. I walked down the front steps to the street, skirting the snails that crawl out of the rock wall at night, the stones of the stairs shifting under my feet. One part of me attended to the shadows in alleys, but there was nothing to fear there. Nobody would bother me; nobody would even look twice as I trudged along.

"I walked four blocks over a steep hill to a bluff that stands high above industrial flats, a glittering grid of docks and warehouses far below. Standing on a patch of wet grass I looked west across the inlet toward the outline of the Kitsap Peninsula illuminated by the moonlight, about six miles away in geographical terms but requiring either a long ferry ride or a hundred-mile drive around the inlets. The peninsula is more populated now, but when I lived there it was mostly forest with a few small towns and military installations tucked away behind stands of trees. It was too dark to see the Olympic mountain range beyond.

"I am descended from one of the first pioneer families that homesteaded land on the peninsula, and most of my relatives still live within thirty miles of the original farm. They work in the shipyard, on the ferries, in gas stations, or in wrecking yards. A few of my cousins have joined the military and traveled the world but they almost always move home again when their tour of duty is over. Growing up in our rural enclave, I was always jealous of their certainty, wounded by their casual convictions. My cousins had advantages; they could work with their hands, walk the fields, move forward with an easy familiarity. They knew exactly where they belonged, and I watched them with a hungry desperation. We grew up in the same place, we were connected by blood and history, but I was different, separate, strange. I looked across the water and sighed. My stomach did not feel better and I turned to walk back home."