monk001

It was a pain to write these college application essays. Talking about herself was always so awkward, and Teri was sure that every admissions officer knew that there was no such thing as a sincere essay written simply from the heart. Then again, if everyone was writing essays like that, what did Teri have to worry about? She could be just as fake and calculated as the rest of them. I live in the South Pacific island nation of Nomau, she typed. Most people haven’t heard of it, but even if they have, they assume the most stereotypical things about it. That we were colonized (we weren’t--there were French missionaries here, but we were always independent). That we’ve always been fat, that our culture valued obesity (sure, we appreciated curves, but Pacific Islanders didn’t start getting obese until multinational corporations started dumping cheap junk food on our islands). That we’re primitive pagans (my family, like 70% of Nomau, is Christian, and we all work at the local