I have never known loss. No one I care about has ever died. I don't care for any of my relatives... if any were to die I wouldn't know it. Nor have I lost a friend in that way. I lose friends when I chase them away or lose interest in them. When Lee decided he didn't want to be my friend anymore, I was pretty broken up about that, but not for long, and I later decided it was to my benefit, that he had been dragging me down. I was hurt when Erica decided she didn't want me, although she was never really mine. Usually I'm the one who breaks up a relationship. I left my pet cat behind for my mother to take care of; I don't know what happened to the cat and don't really care.

When I was 11 years old, I became inconsolably upset because an imaginary person died. I was reading 'A Wind in the Door.' For whatever reason I became attached to Proginoskes, an extradimensional creature that looked like a ghastly agglomeration of birdwings and eyes and tongues of flame. I cared relatively little for the human protagonists. Progo dies in the end of the book in an act of self-sacrifice. I cried for most of an evening and made my pillow snotty. My parents didn't know what to make of it. My mother tried to say something to me, while my grandmother thought it was stupid and told me to stop it. But at this time most of my friends were imaginary, since we had just moved to Florida.