ISABELLE AND HER mom stop for candy apples dripping with caramel “poison” and calories and I buy one too. We eat, wipe our faces, watch an enchanted pumpkin become a beautiful carriage, then a pumpkin again. We come to a window on a screen that opens with the correct incantation; we come to a secret passage in a wall that leads where? A dungeon, an escape, true love and womanhood. The child practices each spell until she gets it good enough. “Try again,” her mother urges when she fails. Here, she traces the slope of a question mark; here, the shape of a heart. Here, at the end, she follows a pattern—swoop, lift, tap—to unlock the last door.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my agent, Erin Harris, for taking on this novel, going with me when I wanted to make it even weirder and then helping me fight for it. Thank you to Mark Doten, Alexa Wejko, Rachel Kowal, Bronwen Hruska and the whole team at Soho for the wonderful home; it’s an honor to work with you. Thank you Allison Brainard.

Thank you Sarah McColl, Kimberly King Parsons, Chelsea Bieker, Cyrus Simonoff, T Kira Madden, Genevieve Hudson, Dantiel W. Moniz (BAWS forever), Nada Alic, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic, Raegan Bird, Michelle Gutes Guterman and The Drunken Canal, Asher Penn, Zach Sokol, and Sex Magazine, Ashley Wurzbacher, Sarah Gerard, Cristine Brache, Tao Lin, Caroline Calloway, Paige Woolen, Katie Adams, Diana Arterian, Elizabeth Hall, The Forever Girls: Madeline Cash and Anika Jade Levy, Sally Sum, Kahle Buse, Ariella Rojhani, LeeLee Bookwalter, Lara Phillips, Judy Rasmuson, George Rowbottom, Penelope Bodry-Sanders, Cecile Just, Richard Mogavero.

Special thank you to my therapist, Yelena Tokman, who helped me build something that is mine for keeps–this book exists thanks to our work.

And thank you, always and above all, to my love and inspiration, Jon Lindsey.