I knew from my best friend’s right eyebrow that something was wrong. You know how that is? How you can know a person’s face so well that a brow scrunch is a bullhorn to your soul? We need to talk, Alison’s was saying, and I slid into high alert, ready to slay childhood demons or smack-talk her enemies or grapple with the generational trauma of low-rise jeans making a comeback.
“You okay?” I asked. It was a dumb question. When was the last time anyone on planet Earth had really been okay? Fifteen months of the pandemic had tucked us so deeply inside our own heads that just leaving our apartments meant slipping into a
