Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams.

But it's a big ocean. It's an even bigger world. And maybe we've gotten as close as we're supposed to get.

I’ve blamed her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And I’m the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it.I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. I’ve done that. All by myself. All to myself.

Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life. Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes at a price.

It doesn't rain every day. Just every other day.

He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people's capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I'm floored every time.

And this is the truth. Because I may be only eighteen, but it already seems pretty obvious that the world is divided into two groups: the doers and the watchers. The people things happen to and the rest of us, who just sort of plod on with things. The Lulus and the Allysons. It never occurred to me that by pretending to be Lulu, I might slip into that other column, even for just a day.