For about a year, Kaja and I had been filching the occasional midnight cigarette from her mom, puffing once or twice before letting it burn down, but at JHS 23 that kind of dilettante behavior got called out right away. Sucking down a whole cig didn’t stay a hardship for long, though it did mean wanting one more often. This started cutting in to my pocket money, which required fishing for coins behind the sofa cushions or inside Lillian’s purse. Conveniently, my mother was spending every moment outside her job worrying about the Biggest Show of Her Career, the one in which she would Show the World the Photographer She Really Was and not the one Nina Had Made Her Out to Be, so she was oblivious to my new habit and the disappearing coins.

As soon as Kaja learned I’d graduated from the occasional sleepover smoke, she upped her game. Grete instantly caught on, but since she was a dedicated smoker whose whole deal was total honesty and openness, she was okay with our smoking as long as we did it with her. As far as I was concerned, this made Grete the best mom ever. Kaja said her mom’s perceived coolness was a front: Grete was just desperate to win her favor now that she was spending every weekend with her dad.

Meanwhile, Lillian was so darkroom-obsessed that if she noticed I was spending all my time at Grete and Kaja’s, she was either too relieved or too preoccupied to mention it. This lopsided arrangement worked fine until Kaja started hanging out with Jenny Dufresne, who had replaced me as Kaja’s desk partner at Prospect Friends. Kaja and I had always made fun of Jenny for wearing monogrammed sweaters. Now Kaja informed me that Jenny had soul because she was adopted, and that I needed to stop coming over so much on weekday afternoons. However, eating beans from a can while Lillian worked in the darkroom was about as appealing as hanging around after school to see if the Stone Foxes would demand to fight or initiate me, so I kept showing up at Kaja’s.

One day Kaja stormed off with Jenny after an argument with me, and Grete came home to find me burning holes in Kaja’s favorite shirt with a cigarette. Grete called Lillian, who came over after work so we could all “talk.” This didn’t go so well. In addition to my anger-management problems, I’d done nothing to discourage Grete’s belief that Lillian knew about me and cigarettes, an assumption brought to an abrupt end by my mother’s appearance at Grete’s door.

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, NOVEMBER 1967: I waited until we were home to ask Jane how long she’d been smoking. She rolled her eyes and said, “Gee, Mom, I just started,” with such scorn that I’d have crawled under a rock from embarrassment if I weren’t so angry. “Is this how you treat people now?” I asked. Her shoulder twitched in the barest shrug. “Is this how I treat you?” I asked next, which twisted her face into something almost unrecognizable. “You don’t treat me like anything,” she yelled.