Wilde Lake

Thirty-five years ago, I would have had no chance to have children with a biological link to their father; Penelope and Justin would not exist. How can I long for that world? Thirty-five years ago, people I loved made disastrous decisions that made perfect sense within the context of the world they knew, the moment in which they had to act. They we

with the ease of someone who knows he has transcended the foibles of his past, a trick I’ll never master.

The present is swollen with self-regard for itself, but soon enough the present becomes the past. This present, this day, this very moment we inhabit—it all will be held accountable for the things it didn’t know, didn’t understand.

“Had they had the surgery?” my father asked and I tried to explain that the question is no longer allowed, that we accept people as they see themselves.

“Lu, don’t you have any friends your own age to hang out with?” That was cruel. AJ knew I didn’t. Although I did have a plan to take care of that, a strategy for transformation that would make me the most popular girl in the third grade.

I knew then that Randy had fallen for AJ, that the friend he really craved was that golden high school boy who had saved him. But he would settle for me.

“Even pie?” I asked. I always liked to spell out all the terms. “With Reddi-wip and ice cream if I want?”

information about this strange world that awaited me. Grown-ups were forever saying, “If you’re like this now, imagine when you’re a teenager.” Even my father said it. He and Teensy made my still far-off adolescence sound as if I were on the verge of becoming a werewolf.

the one about the girl with moonlight in her eyes.