1. First SightThis was the time of day when I wished I were able to sleep.High school.Or was purgatory the right word? If there was any way to atone for my sins, thisought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was not something I grewused to; every day seemed more impossibly monotonous than the last.I suppose this was my form of sleep—if sleep was defined as the inert statebetween active periods.I stared at the cracks running through the plaster in the far corner of the cafeteria,imagining patterns into them that were not there. It was one way to tune out the voicesthat babbled like the gush of a river