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on the vinyl, staring off at who knows what, smoking. That was why she hated the smell of cigarette smoke so much.
    “Living with him is the worst thing you can do. He’s going to hurt you bad. And don’t you dare get pregnant. That will be the end of your life.”
    Then Martha told Emily that she wasn’t going to pay for school unless Dean found his own place. Emily didn’t understand that. If her mother was so sure Dean was going to ruin her life, why did she want to take away Emily’s chance for an education, which her mother always said was the key to success? “I won’t have that money going to him.”
    It was true that last semester Emily had dropped a class and then given the tuition reimbursement to Dean. Yes, she had done that. Martha had found out about it because the bursar’s office had sent her the receipt. Emily should have known they’d do that. But she’d never been good about thinking things through. Dean had needed that money; she still wasn’t sure for what. But he’d seemed so desperate at the time. And it was a film class, an elective, not important at all to her degree in early childhood education.
    Her last visit with her mother had ended with Emily screaming, “ He loves me! ” There was a part of her that had stood above it all, disbelieving the level of her own rage. Emily wasn’t one who normally resorted to shrieking. But she felt like something was going to come bursting out of her chest.
    “You’re jealous because no one ever loved you like he loves me.”
    Her mother had just sat there, staring at the wallpaper, cigarette dangling between her fingers. She looked so old and tired, used up. It was Emily’s worst nightmare to wind up at a kitchen table, looking like that—as if she’d been ground down by life and couldn’t even be bothered to care.
    The old lady sitting next to Emily on the bus patted her on the leg and handed her a tissue, which Emily took without thinking. Then she realized that she was crying.
    “Thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes.
    “It’s hard to be young,” said the woman. She wore a neat blueraincoat and had silvery-white hair. There was the slightest tremor to her hands. “I remember. You want so much.”
    “Does it get easier?”
    The other woman chuckled a little and put a dry, soft hand on Emily’s. “Not really, dear.”
    Great , thought Emily. That’s just great .

chapter two
    H ow do things start? How does your life begin? How do you go from being a child shuttled from school to soccer to playdates to the mall, then on to college and your first job? How do you go from the first job, to your first date with your future spouse, to whatever it is you wind up doing with your life, to being a mom with two kids, paying bills on your laptop at the kitchen counter? Is it that one event or choice connects to another until the next thing you know, you’re looking at the chain of your life? How do things start? Chelsea wondered, looking at her mother. How do they end?
    “You are not wearing that.”
    Her mother hadn’t even looked at her when Chelsea came down the stairs, hadn’t even glanced up from her papers spread out across the kitchen island. How did her mom even know what Chelsea was wearing—a black mini and knee-high boots, a purple knit sweater that failed to cover her navel? But her mother knew. Though there was no anger or heat to her sentence, it was unwavering in its tone. No discussion. Chelsea understood on a cellular level that there would be no whining, weeping, or begging her way around that sentence.
    “Fine,” Chelsea said. Not a “fine” with attitude, just a regular “fine.” She spun around and walked back up the stairs.
    Chelsea didn’t want to wear the sweater anyway. Not really. She didn’t feel that great about her middle. It was fleshy, doughy. She’d just be folding her arms around her belly all afternoon, self-conscious.Not like Lulu, whose body was OMG perfect; not an ounce of fat anywhere on that