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Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Cast of Characters
  7. Part One
  8. One
  9. Two
  10. Three
  11. Four
  12. Five
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. Thirteen
  21. Fourteen
  22. Fifteen
  23. Sixteen
  24. Seventeen
  25. Eighteen
  26. Nineteen
  27. Part Two
  28. Twenty
  29. Twenty-one
  30. Twenty-two
  31. Twenty-three
  32. Twenty-four
  33. Twenty-five
  34. Twenty-six
  35. Twenty-seven
  36. Twenty-eight
  37. Twenty-nine
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-one
  40. Thirty-two
  41. Thirty-three
  42. Thirty-four
  43. Thirty-five
  44. Thirty-six
  45. Thirty-seven
  46. Thirty-eight
  47. Thirty-nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-one
  50. Forty-two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-four
  53. Forty-five
  54. Forty-six
  55. A note on the Author

My parents thought that school would stifle my freedom and natural curiosity. They took me out of preschool because I was reprimanded for a drawing I had done of a park. Ripping up my paper, the teacher scoffed that the sky wasn’t green and the trees weren’t blue. It’s like they were trying to keep that from me. My parents were furious. They said that my art had gone over the teacher’s head. From that day on, I stayed at home. My mother taught me how to read and how to write. Then she taught me how to stare, absentminded, out of windows, at nothing. It wasn’t until quite recently that I figured out what we were staring at. The last Russian doll after the smallest one has been revealed: the one so tiny that there is nothing there at all.

Liev has always meant so much to me because young girls remember the first person who tells them they are beautiful. The first person who isn’t your parents. My father didn’t say it. I think my mother didn’t say it because, after the I’m-the-winner incident, she didn’t want it to shape my notion of myself: that I ought to be beautiful. Liev thought I ought not to be so beautiful. He said it would have made things easier. I believed everything he said and for three months I was a glorious knot of arrogance, my preteen body tight with pride, I all but bounced off the walls. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been so beautiful, so fresh and clean stepping out of the bath that night, if he hadn’t been the one to catch me in his arms and wrap me in the towel? He might not have wondered, alone at night after putting me to bed, appalled at himself, dreaming of holding the towel again, until I couldn’t bear it any longer and took things into my own clammy hands, dry champagne in my belly.

But of course it was him. In the preceding weeks it had only been him, more than ever. Before Liev existed in my life it wasn’t really as if my parents were there in his place, dominating my world. I did not look to them for help or understanding. They did not give it to me. Neither did they give me any unkindness or cruelty. We were all just in a different movie, my mother, my father, and me.