For a moment, they hesitate in the dark hallway. After hours, the entire high school feels like a set to Tiffany, insisting on the fraudulence of everything that occurs there. The sports, the calculations, the dissections, the assemblies on drunk driving, the fire drills, the chicken tenders, the virginity gossip, the imitation friendships. Nothing counts. It’s all sudoku, a controlled experiment, a relentless series of practice tests. Tiffany conceives of her peers as baby predators, biting and scratching in the den while their mother hunts. She wants something—anything—to count but is also
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