On the Bowery, in the ornate carcass of a formerly grand vaudeville theater, a dance marathon limps along. The contestants, young girls and their fellas, hold one another up, determined to make their mark, to bite back at the dreams sold to them in newspaper advertisements and on the radio. They have sores on their feet but stars in their eyes.

Hot off the presses, today’s headlines: The love of your life does not approve of my wanton flapper ways,” Evie said in a voice of affected mystery. “Really, Mabesie. You might want to reconsider—he is a bit of a killjoy.

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.

With each shimmy, the bugle beads on their scandalously revealing costumes swung and shook. It was the sort of display Evie knew her mother would have found appalling—an example of the moral decay of the young generation. It was sexual and dangerous and thrilling, and Evie wanted more of it.

They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea but who isn't really here.

The uncertainty of our future is nothing more than a fog of breath on a windowpane.

The key holds the truth