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 Contents  Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Acknowledgments About the Author Newsletter Sign-up Copyright    Guide  Cover Title Page Dedication Chapter 1 Acknowledgments Contents Copyright    Pagebreaks of the print version  Cover Page iii vii ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 iv           Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page  Thank you for buying this Henry Holt and Company ebook.  To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.   Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup  For email updates on the author, click here.   The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.    For my mother, who taught me about beauty, and my father, who taught me to tell stories    In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later, but perhaps you will see that as we go along. Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That”    1  IT’S hard to say how I ended up in Zev Neman’s dorm room the night before winter break. It was a bitter night—December in New Hampshire—and on our way back from the library we’d been arguing, this time about whether windchill was a legitimate meteorological phenomenon, as Zev believed, or a ruse cooked up by weather executives to distract us from the threat of global warming. “Weather executives?” Zev said. He had a light Israeli accent. “Isabel. That’s not even a thing.” “It is so,” I said, stepping over a pile of dirty snow. Zev stopped under a streetlight in front of his dorm and crossed his arms; his face was craggy in the shadows. “I never took you for a conspiracy theorist. A left-wing agitator maybe, but conspiracy theorist?” He shook his head. “But it’s worth considering, right?” I tried to read his expression, but Zev was forever inscrutable. Wind blew my coat open, bit through my jeans to the skin. “Either way, it’s pretty fucking cold.” He jerked his head. “Want to come in?” I shrugged and followed him into the squat cinderblock building. So I guess that’s how I ended up in Zev Neman’s room: he invited me and I didn’t say no. Zev’s room, a single overlooking the river, was neat. Bed made, no clothes on the floor; it even smelled clean. Nothing like the other boy bedrooms I’d visited in my nearly four years at Wilder College. I attributed the cleanliness to Zev’s two years in the Israeli army defending the Jewish homeland—my homeland, as he liked to remind me. He threw off his parka and flopped on the bed. Books were piled on the only chair so I walked over and studied his bookshelf: economics textbooks, books in Hebrew, a couple of paperback thrillers thick as doorstops. I wanted to skip this part, the part where you wondered when the thing you’d come to a boy’s bedroom to do would start happening, when you could stop making small talk that only revealed all the ways this boy, any boy, would never understand you. To pass beyond language straight into touch. I picked up a dog-eared copy of The Executioner’s Song. Next to it was a framed picture of a girl standing on a beach wearing a black bikini and mirrored sunglasses. “Who’s that?” Zev was tossing a Nerf basketball back and forth between his hands. “My girlfriend, Yael,” he said as if we’d just been speaking about her when in fact he’d never mentioned her, never mentioned having a girlfriend at