I was a different girl once. I suppose we all are like the layers of an onion, and maybe we end up with the brittle skin as we age, a shell from the tender fruit of our youth. But I sometimes like to gently peel back the layers to remember the girl I was. As a child, I was a voracious reader. I would forego the outside play during a snowstorm to huddle by a candle with a mystery, gnawing it like a bone. I was an on the fringe girl, watching the other girls on the playground as they all seemed to inherently understand the ways of the American pre-teen. I was hopelessly boy crazy, falling in love at the drop of a dime- first with a boy in kindergarten who called me Cinderella. Later, an all consuming crush on a neighbor boy who put his books down on a puddle for me to sit on the bus. Despite all of my eager puppy loves, I didn't begin to date until the end of ninth grade, a time when we are all at our most angst ridden, our most self-doubting. He looked at me like I had hung the moo