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Chapter One

I taped the co had happened, and pro, and suddenly, I was everywhere

On the rows of screens hanging over the ellipticals at the gym On the monitor they have at the post office that's supposed to distract you fro in line And now here, on the TV in ers clenched into et up and leave

"It's that tiain…"

I stared atfor any difference, soh, I was struck by the sheer odd-ness of seeing raph I had never gotten used to it, even after all this time

"Football ga a baby-blue cheerleader unifore aphone, the kind nobody ever used anymore, emblazoned with a K

"Study hall" Cut to me in a serious plaid skirt and brown cropped sweater, which I re just as it was getting warm, finally

"And, of course, social life" I leaned in, staring at the littery tee and seated on a bench, turning to speak this line while a group of other girls chattered silently behind me

The director, fresh-faced and just out of film school, had explained to irl who has everything," he'd said, ht, circularso vast, not to aphone, soht have dwelled on the explicit irony of this last one, but the onscreenon

"It's all happening this year," I said Noas in a pink gown, a sash reading ho queen stretched across myhis ar him a wide smile He was a sophomore at the local university and h later, as I was leaving, he'd asked for otten that?

"The best ti now "The best ht clothes for them all at Kopf's Department Store"

The camera moved in, closer, closer, until all you could see was ht, before everything that had happened with Sophie, before this long, lonely suirl—she was fine You could tell in the way she stared out at me and the world so confidently as she opened her ain

"Make your new year the best one yet," she said, and I feltthe next line, the last line, the one that only this tio back to school"

The shot froze, the Kopf's logo appearing beneath me In moments, it would switch to a frozen waffle co seamlessly into another, but I didn't wait for that Instead, I picked up the remote, turned myself off, and headed out the door