If it had ever been a place to notice, Merced could have become a template for middle-class suburbia in the U.S. Nobody walks, nobody bikes -unless you are destitute or not yet 16. Cloned rows of houses and carbon-copied arrays of rows press against the malls, the Starbucks, and the fast-food joints. Roads seem always new; they shine dark blue with mulish will and crisscross flooded, fluorescent-green lawns. Merced is suburbia but out of context, a bland experience, an insular place still hesitant between driveways and stables.

I will be somewhere else by June. For once, I will not miss the place I am leaving behind.