The Sierra Nevada mountains loomed large over central California, peaks topped with snow, foothills lined with evergreens. Our cramped car curved around the narrow highway, up and up and over, then down and around and down into the Yosemite Valley. We were greeted by chipmunks and bluebirds and deer. Like Snow White.

My dad put up the tent while my mom organized the food. Matty and I tossed bits of crackers at the chipmunks, trying to get them to come closer. I loved the color of their fur, like melted chocolate or toasted graham cracker. The stripes and circles patterned over their backs, bright and white and crisp like a marshmallow. I loved their little black ears, like the burnt edges of a marshmallow, fresh out of a campfire. I loved the way they stood up on their hind legs to watch us.

"Maddie," my dad said, "you like the chipmunks?" I nodded my head, my chubby fingers reaching out toward them. He laughed, lifting me into his arms. "We'll get you your own chipmunk." His eyes crinkled at the corners.

I was so excited. I thought for a whole day that my father was going to adopt one of these little critters from the national park. I was only a little disappointed when I got a stuffed animal instead. Advantages of stuffed over real: it was bigger, it didn't run away, I didn't have to worry about it stealing my food off the picnic table. It had little brown felt triangles for ears. I named him Chippie.

While my dad and Matty went fishing that day, my mom and I stayed back at camp and read. I dug through her bag, finding a pair of glittery earrings. Yes. I punched holes in Chippie's ears with the posts and clicked the backs in place. I showed my mom. She frowned at first, then said how pretty he was.

"Do you have paper?" I asked her, resting my fat fingers on her bare knee.

"Why?"

"I want to write a book." She was always reading. She would read my book.

She found a yellow legal notepad in the car and handed it to me with a blue ballpoint pen. I tore out and folded the set of papers into book format. Chippie Gets His Ears Pierced, I scrawled across the front. I had to ask her how to spell pierced. I drew a fat chipmunk with tiny stick arms and legs and little triangle ears with dangly earrings.

Then I opened the pages and wrote the story of Chippie... how he got adopted, how he was so happy. How he got his ears pierced. The next day I added how he fell in the lake, how Matty rescued him and my mom had to wash him, hanging him by his ears from the white rope stretched across our camp. When we got home I added how I threw up purple vomit on him after eating grape candy and reading in the car.

My mom bragged to her friends that I wrote a book. She read it over and over and showed it to her friends. My father took a picture to show his parents, telling me I was just like him. Matty kept the book in his room, pinned to his board.

The best thing I ever did, my whole childhood, was write that stupid book.