the boy will do things he doesn’t believe in or doesn’t care about or doesn’t think about because at twenty-two, at twenty-six, at thirty-six, it will seem to him that doing these things isn’t actually doing them, that this is a trial run and not the real thing. And before Nathaniel knows it, this life that is practice for his life will become his life, the chasm between who Nathaniel understands himself to be and who he is so vast as to seem unimaginable, which is why he won’t imagine it.
