Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open.

No one is who they pretend to be

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.

She said if she couldn't play, she had nothing left. What about me?

You?' is all I can manage to choke out. 'Always me,' she replies softly, bashfully. 'Who else?

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.

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.