Every time an American Girl catalog would arrive at the house, I’d spend a week making lists of every item by type for absolutely no reason other than to spend more time with images of expensive things I could never own; I would feverishly tally up $20 calico hair-bows by flashlight, after my bedtime, like some kind of child spy whose fieldwork consisted only of accounting. When I got caught, that would earn me a wuliao, or what?! Once, I convinced my next-door neighbour that we should give ourselves mud masks like the ladies we saw on TV. We were both too chicken to put the pond scum we dug up on our faces, so we lay out on her driveway, our legs caked in grey grime, as my mother drove by on her way to pick up groceries. Wuliao! Her voice echoed down the street after me, as I ran home to scrub my legs clean, so by the time she came back, I’d be sitting in front of the piano, diligently practicing a scherzo.