The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed Their Lives (2017)

In “Tumbling,” Slater quotes from Sasha’s Tumblr page, a social media site which encourages long-form entries and attracts quirky or off-beat writing. In the post, Sasha alternates between silly statements, such as “Of course I like hats/anyone who doesn’t is wrong” (11) and more serious comments, such as, “If the whole world was listening, I might just/rant about a bunch of things like gender/wealth inequality/why school is important” (12). Slater presents this section without comment.

“Pronouns” describes Sasha’s early fascination with language, the way they began reading at a young age, and how, at the age of 6, Sasha made her own language: “It was called Astrolinguish and it was the language of Sasha’s home planet, Astrolingua” (14). Slater explains how some languages have the notion of gender, while others do not; Sasha’s invented languages “distinguished between animate and inanimate objects” (14). Slater explains that Sasha prefers the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” and addresses the reader directly: “you’ll get used to it” (15).

“1001 Blank White Cards” starts with Sasha’s wish list for their 16th birthday: “an accordion, a manual typewriter, a Soviet flag, and a new Rubik’s Cube” (16), then segues into a portrait of Sasha, starting with a physical description and then stopping to note that Sasha had been diagnosed with “Asperger’s, a form of autism, which can make them awkward socially” (17).