I Have Some Questions For You: 'A perfect crime' NEW YORKER

The term rabbit hole makes us think of Alice plummeting straight down, but what I mean is an actual rabbit warren, the kind with endless looping tunnels, branching paths, all the accompanying claustrophobia.

The need to keep busy is both a symptom of high-functioning anxiety and the key to my success.

He asked if I taught at Granby. I was startled, for a moment, that he hadn’t taken me for a student. But here was my reflection in his rear-view: a put-together adult with lines around her eyes.

And my God, we knew we weren’t great, but we weren’t even as good as we thought we were.

Fran had offered me her couch, but the way she said it—“I mean, there’s the dog, and Jacob’s always at volume eleven, and Max still doesn’t sleep through the night”—made it seem more gesture than invitation.

What’s as perfect as a girl stopped dead, midformation? Girl as blank slate. Girl as reflection of your desires, unmarred by her own.

“That one,” because what is she now but a story, a story to know or not know, a story with a limited set of details, a story to master by memorizing maps and timelines.