If you were a teacher or student in San Diego Unified school district during what is sneeringly referred to as “The Bersin Years,” you don’t need an explanation for the title. For the rest of you, here’s a little tutorial. It’s actually a wonderful reading strategy. The implementation may have been a smidge heavy-handed and Gestapo-like.

Also, this post contains a spoiler--although I really think you’d still love the book even if you do read this post.

I have spent the last 13.25 hours or so that I’ve been alone in the car fully absorbed in Laura Moriarty’s The Center of Everything. To say I have loved this book on tape would be a bit of an understatement.

The protagonist is five years younger than me, so all the cultural references to the Reagan years resonate deeply with me. Fawn Hall anyone? While the kids in Kansas were wearing OP sweatshirts and dreaming of California I was wearing OP sweatshirts and living in California. Her smart, sassy but beleaguered young mother with bad taste in men bears more than a passing resemblance to my own mother.

Lots of text to self connections that I was thoroughly enjoying as I sat through three cycles of lights a mere two miles away from my destination on my daily commute.

Then Ms. Moriarty hit me with the big one. Evelyn Bucknow is the main character and near the end of the book her nemesis, Tracy Carmichael, dies in a car crash.

How long has it been since I thought about fifth-grade and Andrea? A long time. She was my elementary school and Girl Scout nemesis. A thorn in my side. Her very presence grated upon me. She was bossy and competitive and utterly lacking in tact.

Strangely, she had plenty of friends. Which annoyed the hell out of me; didn’t anyone else notice that she was bossy and competitive and utterly lacking in tact? To add insult to injury she disliked me just as much as I disliked her.

From an adult perspective I have to wonder if we didn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to one another and that was the problem. Bossy and competitive. I suppose there might be times when I fit the bill there. Like Evelyn and Tracy there was also the poor girl/rich girl dynamic going on. I was the poor girl.

The point is I hated  her and she hated me. I wished her ill on more than one occasion and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. In spring of our fifth-grade year, when she was a mere three blocks from home, a car ran a stoplight and broadsided the car she was in, killing her instantly.

My guilt was tremendous. Like Evelyn Bucknow I knew I didn’t have the power to cause car accidents and yet . . ..I could not, would not go to the funeral—the hypocrisy would have been too much.

All of this happened 35 years ago, but this book had the power to bring it back to me, the feelings as fresh and raw as if it had just transpired.

I read for many reasons and a powerful text to self connection is one of those reasons. Thanks for delivering, Ms. Moriarty.

Jenn is a regular WC contributor. You can read more of her here.