The first memory I had was of a gray line on the horizon. From being swallowed by coats and coughing. More than the memory, it was the feeling when she tried to remember those early years. I spent my entire childhood coughing, losing breath, using firecrackers and going to the emergency room. The memory of the gray sky was almost always accompanied by a hospital window. That was Cleveland, Ohio. The steel industry. It was so close to Canada that I could see the cities across the border from afar. And feel the chill down your spine mixed with the polluted air. It was difficult to breathe. I spent the first eleven years of my life aware of this, going from home to the hospital, suffering from severe asthma that suffered with every change in climate and immunity. I didn't know what existed beyond that, until one day my parents announced that we were moving to my grandmother's house. Riverville, Texas. It was so far from everything I knew, and I remembered the feeling of the hours inside the car crammed with boxes. The landscape changing as we advanced along the road, my parents taking turns at the wheel. The heat coming in meeting me for the first time in my life. There was no gray sky in that place. Texas won my affection at that moment, the warm air, the sun rays... And I would learn to love many other things, like the people, the boots, the hats and the small town atmosphere. I, Abigail Rose McAlister, became a Texan at heart at that moment. The differences between that city and Ohio were enormous, and yet I was happy. The feeling of the chest tightening, the lack of air and the firecrackers were left behind. It was a new life for all of us. I knew that my parents decided to move for my health. In Ohio, they worked in the construction industry and took their knowledge to their new home. Between their own business and my grandmother's bookstore, they began to rebuild a life for all of us. All summer, it seemed like we were trying to figure out the rough edges to make a home after so long in Cleveland. When classes started, I had to worry about other things. I wasn't the most popular girl in Ohio. I missed many classes, I hid in many others. But that first week at school, something very important happened: Grace. There I was, from eleven to twelve years old, starting Junior High in a strange city and afraid that no one would like me. We studied in San Angelo, the closest city, because Riverville was so small that it didn't even have its own school. Thirty minutes from home on a school bus full of strangers. I got into the yellow vehicle trying to sink into my backpack. I adjusted my glasses and sighed loudly, wishing it would end soon. I felt the eyes on me. I walked down the aisle to find an empty seat next to a little red-haired girl, her huge hair falling everywhere. She gave me a curious smile. But there were no judgments there. She wasn't staring at the "new stranger", but rather curious about who wanted that empty seat. - Can... can I sit down? - I asked, more quietly than I should have, in a crisis of shyness that would be neither the first nor the last in my life. - Clear! I'm Grace, you're new... I've never seen you around here... She assumed at that moment. Grace started babbling, a twenty-plus minute monologue about her vacations at home, helping her brother and Colin with horses, and how she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. She had this soft, sing-song Texan accent, and it was fun to have someone as open as her by my side. - They don't like me, they say I smell like horses - she confided, vulnerable, looking around the bus to add in a louder tone: - As if everyone here wasn't a farmer's son and had never been near an animal. . Cowards! I smiled, trying to hide my teeth through my shirt sleeve. She laughed in response, squeezing my arms as she tried to force me to say something else.