PART IV
I didn’t run away to come home the same.
— E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Chapter 20November 2019
Christa
Crossing the border had been much easier before 9/11. It certainly wasn’t as easy in 2019 as it had been for me to cross into Quebec. Especially because not only were the border patrol agents on the U.S. side stricter, I no longer possessed a valid passport: the one I’d found in 2001 expired years earlier. Not intending to leave Canada, I’d never renewed it.
Flying was out of the question. Even if I’d had the right ID, my fear of giant metal death traps in the sky only grew stronger after my intended virgin flight wound up killing more than two thousand people, including everyone aboard. I had never set foot on a plane, and I never w
