Before We Were Innocent

by Ella Berman

I remember wondering for the first time whether Ev was as insecure and hungry for attention as the rest of us, but where Joni was loud and brash, and I was primed and calculated, Ev just hid it behind acts of servitude and got to disguise it as selflessness.

“That woman is like a hurricane, Bess,” he says. “She breezes through the world entirely on her own terms, not caring when she leaves mass destruction in her goddamn wake.”