Or at least I used to. Until things around me actually started blowing up on a more or less regular basis. Now I like to see movies about cartoon aliens that come to live with little girls in Hawaii, or fish that are lost. That sort of thing.

Other than those few, minor details, though, I’m normal as apple pie. It took a long time, but I did it. Seriously. I have what, by any standards, could be called a normal life. I live in a normal apartment, with a normal roommate. Well, okay, Ruth, my best friend since forever, isn’t exactly normal. But she’s normal enough. We do normal things, like shop for groceries together, and order in Chinese food, and watch the dumb TV shows she likes so much.

And okay, Ruth tries to get me to go out all the time, like to concerts in the park, or whatever. And me, I’d rather stay home and practice my flute. So maybe that’s not so normal.

But hey, she got me my summer job. And it’s a pretty normal summer job, in that it pays hardly anything. Isn’t that what a normal nineteen-year-old pretty much expects? A summer job that pays hardly anything?

So that’s normal. Fortunately, with my pension from the FBI—yeah, I was on salary. I wasn’t an agent, or anything. But they had to pay me. Are you kidding? Like I was going to work for them for free?—and the interest from my investments from the TV show, plus what Mom and Dad send from home, I get by fine.

Plus, you know, it’s not like I’m out here on my own. Ruth and I split everything, the cost of groceries, the rent—which is pretty high, even though we only have a one bedroom, which we also split. Still, it’s in Hell’s Kitchen, which, in case you didn’t know, is in New York City, the most expensive place to live in the world—everything, down the middle.