Her smile is pinched and dutiful. She performed the required motions, walking to the stage and curtsying again. But by the end of the night, drunk on champagne, she was sobbing so hard that her escort had to put her in a cab. She felt “pure and unadulterated loneliness,” she said. In the morning, she told her family that she didn’t want to be alive. She took literally the symbolism of the parties, meant to mark her entry into adulthood. But she didn’t believe in the adult she was supposed to become. She told me, “I was trapped in the life of a stranger.”
masking
