That winter, Fran pulled out the previous year’s Dragon Tales and showed Carlotta, in the freshman section, how I used to dress, and Carlotta let out her most frog-like laugh. “Were you kidnapped into a cult? It’s like—if JCPenney was a cult!” And I was able to laugh with her, grateful she saw the girl in the picture as the fake me, the one who’d gotten something terribly wrong.
