I'm a Wild Banshee from the Isle of Mull. My mother's grandfather was a human, so that's why I have human blood. My father was an Aolani from the Hebrides, the most magical place on Earth. He loved to dance under the light of the full moon. His name was Brian. I'm not proud of the tears in my eyes. I've been working so hard to keep them in. They're not for the world. I'd never share my feelings with anyone. But if I was going to go out, I'd go out like this. To die like this would be a good way to die. I look to my right, to the ocean, and see three large waves coming toward me. But then the waves vanish into thin air. It's really just one wave, and it starts surging toward me. I scream in fear, but then it passes through me, and I don't feel a thing. My lungs were filled with water, so I'm breathing water. I tread water for a bit, then I get up, gasp, and swim back to shore. The sea is calm now. I crawl onto the sand, then I stand up. I stand there for a long time, staring at the ocean. Then I close my eyes and start to pray. _God, I love you. Thank you for everything._ Then I sit on the sand and stare at the ocean one more time. I don't know if the beach is covered in plastic. I don't know if that's why it's so calm. There's nothing to say about what comes next. I have no regrets. My mother's mother was the daughter of a Scottish fisherman. Her great-grandmother was a Celtic woman from the village of Oban. When she married a fisherman, she gave her birth name to her daughter and her children. She named them all in Scottish Gaelic, and not in Gaelic with a Scots accent, but in Scottish Gaelic with a very Scottish accent. To me, she's always been "Mammy" or "Auntie." Mammy and my mother lived for many years in Glasgow, but when I was born, they had to move back to Oban to be near her sisters and her mother. My mom and me, the day of the storm. It was only natural for me to pick up a Gaelic name when I was born. She found out her mother wasn't talking to her and had grown extremely distant. Mammy blamed herself for that. My mom never went back to Scotland. We moved to Canada when I was young. I spoke Gaelic in school for a while, but it only lasted a few months. I didn't study music in school, just art and foreign languages. I was born in Scotland, but I lived in Canada. I was taught nothing about the culture, no language, nothing. And she didn't know anything about the island, or even about Gaelic culture. She was ashamed of her country, so I didn't want to make her feel bad about that. I didn't speak about it. That's all I'm going to say about it. My mom didn't have much of a relationship with my dad, either. But he loved me. He played the guitar and piano, and he knew every word of every folk song in Canada. He made my life miserable. But he was always there. He tried to be there for me in the way a child needs a parent to be. I thought I was all right. I thought my life would be fine. I knew things would be hard for a little while, but I thought I could manage that. I didn't know it was just going to get harder, and I didn't know it was all going to end this way. When I was twelve, a year and a half before the storm, we moved from the city of Montreal to a little town in Ontario. At the end of the school year, my dad packed up his truck and we moved to a new place, a tiny village called Picton. My dad was so sad and disappointed. He'd given up his good career in Quebec for this new life, and it didn't look like it was going to work. We moved to this town that he hated because it was too far away from where he had grown up. When my mom first saw the place, she said she hated it. It wasn't for us. That place was for the birds. There were fields of chickens and pigs and cows behind our house. We didn't know any of our neighbors. There was a park for soccer and baseball and basketball. We started playing baseball in the park. I played fast and hard, so I got picked up by the city's youth team. We went to the city all the time, to play baseball or soccer. The next spring, I went to a tryout for a school baseball team. I thought I was all right. I could catch the ball and hit it, but I was too little and too small. The coaches didn't even take me. I started playing softball in the summer with the neighbor kids. I would sometimes go into their house to use their computer to look at NHL hockey scores on NHL.com. But for a while, there were no NHL teams. Montreal was still there, but they hadn't made the playoffs yet. I learned to skate on a new patch of ice in the park. We had the neighbor's boat, so we could go to other villages and islands. My mom took pictures of me skating, always. The day before the storm, a terrible storm started in Quebec, but we didn't hear about it until we went out to watch the lightning over the lake on the computer. We took pictures of me in the boat. That next week, I left for another summer job. I started living with my older sister, who lived in my dad's old apartment. We didn't have a car and didn't own a computer, but we made do. In the second week of August, I got a new job at McDonald's. I got a raise that month too. That's why I saved the money from my summer jobs to buy a new laptop with my paycheck. I figured I'd give it to my sister at Christmas. The first time I went out to see her, we rode the bus to town and bought the laptop from Best Buy. It was a beautiful laptop, one of the few times we ever bought new technology. I bought her a really nice sweater and shoes to go with it. I went to the school that day, just like normal. I had my laptop and workbooks in my backpack. That night, I went to the local library to try out my laptop for the first time. The Internet worked perfectly. I signed on to my friends' sites. We didn't even have electricity for three more weeks. I spent that time doing homework, watching movies with my brother, taking long walks to see the lake, and playing softball in the park. The lake had no ice, but my brother said he knew how to skate in the snow. He was so excited to try it for the first time. We had a dog, and we spent a lot of time with her too. She was our best friend. She was still alive when it started snowing, and my brother took her for a walk. We played outside. I took photos of them all day. The next day was August 29, my birthday. My mom would have celebrated her birthday with me that day too, but she had no idea it was my birthday. The sun was out that day and we had some nice weather. I went to work at McDonald's that day, just like normal. I got a big order at the drive-thru, and then I went back and did the kitchen. I'd helped out in the kitchen before. My boss always let me leave early so I could get in a few hours of homework. It was my last night there, so I was pretty tired. Before going to bed, I logged on to my friends' sites on my laptop. I didn't have any homework to do for school, so I played with my friends for a while. I thought I was spending the night with my brother, since my friends were at my house for sleepovers. But when I looked at the clock, it was already past midnight. I wasn't worried at all. My brother was probably asleep in his room. My dad was in the basement. There was an air vent above my head. I could hear the furnace going, making some strange sounds. I couldn't hear the music coming from the computer. There was no power in the house except for the electricity for my computer, because the lights in the house were connected to the generator. I went to bed. Then I woke up and realized I didn't have my laptop. My brother went downstairs and I heard the generator turn off, and I realized the power had been turned off. I called out to my dad. He was lying on his mattress on the floor in his room. The sun had come up while he was sleeping, and his face was red and hot. He had no idea we lost power. He was cold and woke up quickly. I told him we had no power, but he just shook his head and said he didn't know what I was talking about. He fell back to sleep. I called my mom, but her phone was disconnected, which was strange because she always