All about me

Hi, I’m Stefanie Knoll; I’m 5’10 and 120 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones. For the last 17 years I have lived in the shadow of my older sister. I came to Princess Margaret when I was 14, I was scared beyond belief and I never actually expected to finish high school. Now at 17 I am preparing to leave it all behind. In 79 days, I am moving to a place that I have been to once, and that was only for orientation. For the first time in my life no one will know my name, or should I say know of my name. Throughout high school I have been refereed to as Rachel more times than I can count. I have felt as if I was always on the outside looking in. Following in the foot steps of Rachel was not an easy task, and in the end it was not a task that I could complete. I became the opposite of her. She was outgoing and popular, I am reserved and only have a few close friends. You see I was never cut out to be a part of the Knoll family, I have always felt like the black sheep. My mom is over the top and gaudy, her favorite color is glitter. Oh, and my dad, well he is a character, city slicker turned redneck, has never really been around much due to work, and when he is all we really talk about is hockey, but deep down I know he regrets not being able to see me grow up. Both of my parents came from interesting families. Dad was adopted when he was 2 weeks old, and from the stories he used to tell us he had an amazing childhood, but after his parents died and his brother, he pretty much lost all contact with the rest of them. My Mom grew up watching countless soccer games and on Robson Street, her family owned a few shops, her childhood was romanticized, but it made her the person she is today. Most things about me are hard to explain, I guess, like how I am mostly delusional and live in a half imaginary world but I am also a realist to the core. I am just a bunch of contradictions most of the time and I do not like it, but I also do.

If I could bring Alaska home

Full of spoiler alerts.....

If I could bring one of the characters home to meet my family, I would bring Alaska Young strictly because I. Want. Answers. I've read a lot of books, and this is the only one that has kept me guessing from the first page. And that bugs me. So. I. Want. Answers. Just in case you didn't pick up what I was putting down.

From the start of the book Alaska has pretty much been a mystery to the main character 'Pudge'. Since Alaska got that phone call from her boyfriend and got in the car accident the Colonel and Pudge have been full of questions on what that phone call was about. Bringing Alaska home I would ask her three specific questions. 1) What was the phone call about? 2) Why is she so closely guarded and keeps herself such a secret? 3) What does she think of Pudge?

Ever since Pudge first met Alaska, he has had an infatuation with her. She is a mystery to everyone around her and she likes it that way. Pudge once told her that he doesn't understand her, and she replied "you never will". I wonder if she keeps herself a secret because she is such a deeply unhappy person or she just does it for her own entertainment. Finding out about the phone call would make the story make much more sense. But if she never got that phone call, the story would have surely had a different outcome. Maybe she did in fact break up with her boyfriend and want to be with Pudge? Or maybe the phone call reminded her that it was the anniversary of her mother's death and she had completely forgotten about it?

Question #3 is the one that has kept me awake a night. As a tangent I wasn't accepted into college yet, and and that didn't help the sleep situation any....

When it comes to Alaska, you can't pick up vibes. There is no foreshadowing on what comes next, or what she is thinking about. The girl can be high strung and full of life, or depressed and wanting to die. There is no middle ground. There is a strict line in between happy and sad for her. On the night of her death, she finally hooks up with Pudge, and at that point my immediate reaction was 'fan girling'. I immediately thought she was going to dump her boyfriend, get together with Pudge, have babies and all of that. But. When that phone call came, and Alaska never returned to Culver it was like getting my heart ran over.

In my experiences I have read a few John Green books. And in every one, you end up crying and reevaluating your life. In looking for Alaska, I am 'happy' to report that so far this book is looking no different.

June 2nd 2025

“And I present your president of the United States, Damien Williams!” I said in a muffled yet strong voice. Damien has been the president since mid January. Somehow, the people of America thought it would be a wonderful idea that, the little Asian boy I grew up with, was fit to be their president. It seems like yesterday that we were in grade nine, making a scrapbook on Romeo and Juliet. When he was elected president, it was no surprise to me that I was chosen to be his vice-president. He would make bad decisions, blow up a few countries, and maybe start a war with Canada. Like always, I would be there, once again, cleaning up his mess. Surely, he kept me around for other things, but cleaning up his little slip ups was my forte. When I was informed he wanted to “nuke” North Korea, I knew he had lost it...

Sure, when we were little kids, we would joke of us one day ruling the world: become supreme dictators and take the world by storm. But in all those stories there was a key difference. I was in charge. Plans were made by myself and he would carry them through, the 'Brains' and the 'Brawn'. Surely if you looked at us side by side, you would never guess that he is remotely athletic, which in actual fact he is not. More or less, he was good at the follow through after I made the master plan; he would perform what was needed for it to work. Such as in grade eleven. I came up with a plan to put chips in cups and then cover the chips with laxatives, then place them on the beach, and watch the hopeless beach comers get covered in seagull poop.

Not that Damien is not good at making plans. Since he was elected there are no more homeless cats and there is a McDonalds on every street. The hospital system has improved greatly and post secondary education is now free. The problem is Damien is quite the loose cannon and isn’t afraid to stand up for what he believes in. His plans are a wee bit darker than mine which can be scary at times. Little Kim, as we like to call him, or Kim Jung-un as the rest of the world knows him, offered Damien a snack when we were there. Cat. In places like Korea, Cat is not a pet, it’s a food. Poor little Kim didn’t know that Damien was obsessed with cats. Obsessed is putting it lightly. Citizens of the States are now required to own at least one cat. Seeing as I don’t want World War Three just yet I had to sweet talk him into a different way of dealing with the “North Korean problem” by sending troops in to rescue all the cats. Seems crazy, I know, but luckily Little Kim and I are now on the same page.

Recently North Korea has joined the UN, becoming buddy buddy with the main members. As for us, the last time we were invited to a summit Damien got dragged out kicking and screaming. If we did follow through with the plan, surely they would get involved. When he was elected I bought him “Running a country for Dummies.” Thinking he read it, I often whisper “Rule number 3” or even “Rule number 17” unaware of him having no idea what any of them are. Six months into his presidency we are already under water. The next three and a half surely will be interesting, but don’t worry, I'll keep you posted.

Super hero assignment

What if you could look at a person and know exactly what they were thinking? For me that is a reality. I don’t know why I can, or how, but I can. I can look at a person and know what’s on their mind at this very moment. You might think this is a blessing, a gift even, but in reality its not. I hate to say that I’m ungrateful for it, but I am. I wish I could have a cool superpower like being able to fly or be invisible but no that’s not the case. I realized when I was ten that not everyone could read each others minds, in grade 5 a boy in my class was thinking some very mean things about me, I wanted to tell him I could hear what he was saying, but then it clicked, he wasn't saying them, he was thinking them. I didn't want to be known as that crazy kid growing up, who thinks he could read peoples minds, so I kept it to myself. Sure, we all go through that stage of thinking we are a superhero, that we have superpowers; I remember my older brother Fernando wore his superman costume everyday for a month, but then one day he realized he’s not so super, that superheroes don’t exist, that in fact he was just a regular human being - nothing special.

Now I’m sitting in class, looking at my paper, wondering what I should write down. Today we have a creative writing assignment on “If you could have any super power, what would it be?” The thing is I already have a superpower, one that doesn't make any sense. You aren't suppose to know what’s going on in peoples heads, and you definitely aren't supposed to think you have a superpower at the age of 16, not if your clear in the mind at least. So I guess if I could have a superpower it would be not to have a super power, to be a normal kid, who has to guess what other people thought of him, or guess what others were thinking. Logically you’d think that being able to read others minds would be great, but in actual fact it sucks. I don’t want to know what is going on in peoples heads anymore, most of the time its pretty messed up. Maybe one day I'll use it for good, become a police officer maybe, and use my so called 'gift' for good, but even then how can you justify to a jury of people that you can tell if a person is lying or not, in all honesty we all know that would be pretty tough. So maybe my best bet in life is to be doing what I've been doing all along, pretend that I’m not special, pretend that I’m just like every other high school student just trying to get by. Lamarck once said, if you don’t use your gift it will go away, and so maybe one day, I'll wake up and it’ll be gone.