Kelly Luce, Age 9

Kelly Luce is the author of the collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail, winner of the IndieFab Awards Editor’s Prize in Fiction, and the novel Pull Me Under, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This essay was written when she was in the fourth grade.

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— Kelly Luce, Age 9

“Here’s me in fourth grade with Rusty, our new puppy, the one who ate the cherry dandy + box. According to my diary from that year, my major life goals were to become an interior decorator and/or professional rollerblader, and marry Tom Cruise.”