Now that I am sixteen I have realized something. It's not different. I 'grew up' in a single day. But looking back now I am different but from one day to the next to the next, I have not changed. And as I sit here listening to the same songs that I was back then, the same haircut, just shorter, the same face, just new makeup, I realize something. I am older, but by days, not years. I have grown up, but not overnight.

I have no idea how to be sixteen. I had no idea how to be fifteen, but I think that's what you're meant to feel when you're fifteen. But it doesn't matter that I don't know. It doesn't matter that my friends seem to have a better idea of how to be sixteen then I do, did they get a book or something on being sixteen? But that doesn't matter. I am older and younger than them. I play with bubbles and cry at the TV. I sit at my desk and flick my cigarette lighter and watch the sparks fly and I act like a kid but at the same time I am so grown up.

People always asked me, they still do, they all want to know my age.

"One student ticket, please."

"Can I see your ID?" I get it out, I pass it to the person.

"You're not sixteen."

"No, it's lying to you."

"You don't look sixteen."

"Well, I'm sorry, asshole, what is a sixteen year old meant to look like?"

I don't care any more that I don't know how to be what I'm meant to be. What is age but a number? I am who I want to be, you are only as old as you feel. When I was fifteen I worried about being wrong. Now that I'm sixteen, I don't care. I do what I want and I might get some of it "right".

But I'm all set for seventeen. Terry Pratchett worked that out for me. It's like having a permanent red hot vest on under your skin.