" was a miracle or due to the lucky ministrations of a doddering old doctor, I had no place in this reality. All I should have been by now was a name on a headstone, lost in rows of other headstones stretching as far as the eye could see in some faraway cemetery. That first morning, my mother dropped me off at Willowbrook High. That, like many other things these days, didn’t feel right. I should have walked. I should have ridden a bike, like so many other kids, pedaling along the roadside, their backpacks giving them a happy hunchbacked look. But my mother had "

― Tom Upton , Plague House