Games and Rituals

It wasn’t accurate to say she lost weight—it was more like she chased the weight off her body the way a farmer would chase a stray dog off his property. And like a suspicious farmer, Fawn still patrols the borders of her body, a shotgun propped in the crook of her elbow, ready to shoot any fattening food that tries to sneak back in.

BY THE TIME YOU GO to bed that night, you have acquired an unexpected companion: your teenage self. She has a tendency to show up around your father. She’s the one who argues with him about immigration. She’s the one who gets back out of bed to finish the Oreos. She’s the one who says under her breath, I can’t take so much fucking Fox News.

In other occupations, people could announce new career paths and have their friends congratulate them. But an actor giving up acting was always greeted with pity and scorn and a quick pulling away of friends. Failure might be catching; no one really knows.

In twenty years, Joel has never been able to figure out why Fawn had liked him when she was overweight and awkward, and why she dislikes him now that she’s slender and pretty. He doesn’t seem to understand everyone has standards—some people just hardly ever get to apply theirs.

Sometimes Colette thinks that Vic becoming a driving examiner had been like an artist picking up a paintbrush for the first time: that rush of exhilaration that comes from finding your calling. As a driving examiner, Vic can intimidate people full-time—and in the privacy of their cars. He breaks people down and enjoys doing it, like a professional

Finally I sent him an emoji of a penguin waving hello and he texts right back and says he has a girlfriend and can’t be talking to me. Says ‘I’m sorry if that wasn’t made clear to you.’ Those were his exact words. Like, you know, someone else should have made it clear to me. Like ‘Oh, I thought the Department of Girlfriends had informed you.’

To Michelle Kane. I can never thank you enough for introducing me to the term “refresh blister” and for caring as much about this book as I do.

And off you went on a hair-raising road test with someone who could barely see past the hood. They straddled lanes, ignored stop signs, braked abruptly (without cause), accelerated suddenly (also without cause), pressed simultaneously on the brake and gas pedals, drove over curbs, nearly drove over people. All of them—every single one—remarked with

She said the wedding photography was strictly temporary, but Oscar wondered. He thought maybe wedding photography was like organized crime, or tax evasion, or adultery—you got into it without really meaning to and the rewards were so great you stayed and the years rolled by and suddenly, there you were, not the person you’d intended to be at all. (