I used to believe that autumn held new beginnings. Seventeen Magazine promised I’d look like Jennifer Connelly if I bought the right corduroy jacket and loafers. My school schedule would open new friendships and a school year where I wasn’t a misfit. Instead of longing for recess to be recess again, I’d understand how to traverse the coquettishness of the girls and their lunging toward the unknown that smelled of sweat and Irish Spring. I believed in it all, year after year, of it not being true. I’d walk to school, and the crispy leaves that had framed the magazine spreads were, in my reality, sopping layers of soil and yard waste piled like dirty laundry in corners of the sidewalk. The back-to-school outfit…

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