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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 father, briefly, found life in Lila. My mother embraced, with the passion and tenderness of an ingenue, the slow death of life alone in bed. I found life in Liev. He found life in me. One of us thought very bad things, something we could go to jail for. One of us thought something the world could never ever understand, but excused because of youth, because they could not bring themselves to believe that the very young could want such a thing.

The world cannot bring itself to believe that the very young can want. Like that. With full tummies and eyes half closed.

The physical image, which my mother had so often encouraged me to pretend did not matter, did matter. It may have been her greatest failing as a parent. Things would have been very different if it weren’t for the distance between my eyes and the fullness of my mouth. In time my eyes would move closer together and my lips lose their cushioning, like air from an inflatable sofa.

If I hadn’t been so beautiful, I wonder if he might not have left. After he did leave, after he stopped writing cards and we never heard from him again, that’s when I started to wish I were ugly. But it wasn’t until after my mother died, and I legally emancipated myself from my father, that I started putting my wish into action.

Twelve

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Out of Cash

I was lying in bed, dropping ash on myself, crying because I didn’t have enough money for a new roll of toilet paper. I had just spent $60 on Percocet and another $50 on a bunch of quaaludes. My drug dealer surveyed the room, littered with new clothes I hadn’t even taken out of their wrapping, clothes I hadn’t even liked when I unhooked them from the boutique rod and dropped them at the register. Items I felt such indifference toward that I hadn’t bothered to pretend to the salesgirl that I wasn’t going to treat them like shit.

Strapless sequined tops labeled “dry clean only,” peach suede hipster pants, a gossamer bra that tied at the front with electric blue ribbon. No one could wear such a bra under clothes, because it bulged and bulked beneath the fabric. And it didn’t look good by itself either, anathema to the contours and curves of my body, which oozed above and beneath the cups like Play-Doh. The only place that bra looked good was on the floor. I had pulled up the carpeting because I felt the shiny wood surface better framed the clothes I dumped there.