Florence and I grew closer when she approached adolescence. Like me, she always felt like she was ready to be a grown-up. She wanted her own identity and independence. She was weary of her peers. She escaped into books and films and music. She was an obsessive; always tracking down every word ever written by her new favorite writers, watching every film ever made by her favorite directors back-to-back. Like me, she found being a teenager at an all-girls school tough and I always wanted to reassure her that the best was yet to come; that being an adult, no matter how difficult or boring at
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