1991–1992

1. Summer

In the summer when you were a teenager, you’d climb out your bedroom window.

It went like this: Someone, almost always a boy, would come to the window, tap, tap, tap. You’d sit up from the bed, where you waited fully clothed under your blue-and-green floral Laura Ashley bedspread, and arrange the pillows into a five-foot-six lump that vaguely resembled a sleeping person, her body and face covered by blankets.

Using your arms, which were strong from gymnastics, you’d boost yourself up to the windowsill, bringing one foot, then the other, to meet it. A few feet below, an air-conditioning…