Pieces of Her

by Karin Slaughter

knew she was talented and smart. The problem was that in New York, everyone else had been talented and smart, too. Even the guy working the counter at the bodega was funnier, quicker, more clever than she was.

“The question isn’t what else can I do. It’s what else am I going to fuck up?”

It was a truth universally acknowledged that your mother was the only person in the world who could say, “Your hair looks nice,” but what you heard was, “Your hair always looks awful except for this one, brief moment in time.”

“Personality shots,” her roommates used to call the first drinks of the night. Liquid courage. Whatever you called it, the point was to turn off the voice in your head that reminded you of everything wrong in your life.