Lie With Me

by Philippe Besson

I’m seventeen years old. I don’t know then that one day I won’t be seventeen. I don’t know that youth doesn’t last, that it’s only a moment, and then it disappears and by the time you finally realize it, it’s too late. It’s finished, vanished,

In later years, I will often write about the unthinkable, the element of unpredictability that determines outcomes. And game-changing encounters, the unexpected juxtapositions that can shift the course of a life.