I wouldn’t find out until years later that it was not alopecia that was making Penny go bald. My parents didn’t tell me when they discovered she was shaving her hair off, and the revelation never spread. Either the kids at CDA High were credulous enough to believe she’d had a miraculous recovery, or they just moved on to something else. Penny’s half-bald head: a harbinger of everything. Later, my mom would tell me that she’d tried to get Penny into counseling, but she was seventeen by then and resistant. And their friends had problems with their own daughters—cutting and eating disorders, underage drinking and boys—maybe it was all on a spectrum. A girl shaving her hair off—for attention? In an act of rage? Self-harm?—was a strange thing to do, but it wasn’t so serious, was it?

I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had my parents and I resisted the wealthy and formidable Tad Duncan. What if I’d been there that next year, living at home with my sister? Would I have seen other signs of her illness picking up speed? Do I blame Tad Duncan for intervening? I don’t know. Some days I blame everyone, some days I blame no one. But always I blame myself.

Liz Learns Tango

WHEN I wake up for the second time around noon on New Year’s Day, I expect to be devoured by shame. Sadly, drinking myself into oblivion and hooking up with strangers has become fairly routine and so has the spiral that follows. The last time I saw Blair he was in CDA for the weekend seeing his sister, but I’d left his messages unreturned. He’d spotted me at one of the local dives, surrounded by a true group of creepers, and nearly dragged me out.

“You never called me back, Katie, and what are you doing here?”

“Blowing off steam,” I said, wrenching my arm out of his.

“This isn’t like you.”

“And it’s not like you to be so patronizing. Since when are you my babysitter?”

“Since you started trying to annihilate yourself.”

But this is different. No one knows me here, there’s no one to hurt, no one to disappoint. The night will be just another secret swallowed by this sprawling city that has soaked up the lust and longing of so many before me. And it hadn’t been a waste. I’d met Gemma and Edward; perhaps they’d become my friends. And then there was Gianluca. That dance.