My mom had a copy of Salinger's Nine Stories, a mass market paperback of short stories, sitting among her small collection of tomes about reincarnation and the UFO spirituality of The Chariots of the Gods and hypnosis and hypnosis combined with reincarnation in Seth Speaks and John Fowler's The Collector. We were never forbidden to read any book, and that little library, which followed us from place to place in our unending search to find home, was beguiling. For months in sixth grade, I read their back covers, trying to be convinced that anything from the adult realm was ready to nudge its way into my Laura Ingalls and Judy Blume universe. Finally, the Salinger prevailed, and I read A Perfect Day for Bananafish. When I got to the ending, bam! Never had I considered the finality of suicide, or of death, and Seymour had, and did. I hadn't gotten that far on the life experience scale, though a lot of life's biggest disappointments were just around the corner.