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The next morning, Margo went to Dr. Sharp’s office for her interview. The home observation visit would be in a couple weeks,

and while nervous, Margo was feeling optimistic. She sat on Dr. Sharp’s couch, the scratchy kilim of the pillows itchy on

her back where her shirt was riding up.

“How have you been?” Dr. Sharp began.

“All right,” Margo said. There was no way she could or should tell Dr. Sharp about what had happened with JB, but how else

to explain her good mood? “I mean, this whole process is scary, but I’m glad that Mark was even willing to do it instead of

continuing to pursue full custody.”

“Mark is a good starting point. Why don’t you just tell me about Mark, how you two met, the whole narrative arc.”

And so she did. Ward had warned her not to make Mark look like a total bad guy, so she tried to be evenhanded and generous

in the way she told the story, even though he was a morally bankrupt, navel-gazing little troll. Dr. Sharp asked questions,

a couple of them pointed.

“And what exactly was your financial plan after the birth of the baby?”

Margo paused. Tell the truth, she thought. “I was incredibly naive about what would be involved. I didn’t know finding childcare

would be so hard. I wasn’t thinking about that when I decided to keep the baby.”

“What were you thinking about?” Dr. Sharp asked.

“I mean, I think I thought I was being a good person. There’s a lot of cultural messaging about what the ‘right’ thing to

do is when you find yourself with an unwanted pregnancy. And I thought if I did the right thing and was a good person, then

it would all turn out okay.”

“Do you no longer think that’s true?” Dr. Sharp asked. She was star ing down at her pad of yellow paper, her hand moving rapidly as she took notes.

“I think being a good person is important, but my landlord doesn’t care if I’m a good person, he just cares if I can pay.

My old boss, I think she really liked me, even loved me, but what mattered in the end was whether I could work when she needed

me. That’s kind of how the world works.” She hoped this was not news to Dr. Sharp. She thought again about the way the test

seemed designed for Kenny, who no doubt believed that if you were virtuous, God would provide, and hoped this wasn’t the wrong

answer.

“Let’s talk a little bit about your dad,” Dr. Sharp said.

“Okay,” Margo said, relieved they were moving on. “I love talking about my dad.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” Margo said. “I know he’s a pretty unconventional guy. I guess he wasn’t around a lot when I was younger, but

this time living with him has been really good for us. He went from feeling like someone I was sort of pretending was my dad

to being my real dad, if that makes sense. Like, he’s taken care of us when Bodhi and I got a stomach virus. I’ve taken care

of him when his back has gone out. We’ve gotten to do a lot of that bonding and building trust that we didn’t do when I was

little, and it’s been a really positive thing for me.”

She thought of Becca saying, “You think he picked you because you were special? He picked you because he knew you had fucking

daddy issues.” She didn’t think she should mention this to Dr. Sharp.

“How did you feel when you found out he’d threatened Mark?”

“I mean, I felt upset that it was resulting in this custody dispute and the restraining order and all this scary stuff. But I also felt—you know, some people would say that for Mark to start the relationship with me was an abuse of power. I never felt super comfortable with that. I didn’t want to admit I’d been...” She struggled for the word, then found it. “Tricked. And I still think it was more complicated than that. The further removed from it I am, though, the more I can see how young I was and how much I didn’t know, and how much Mark, as an older man with a wife and kids, did know. And I can see now that it was not an even playing field. So for my dad to stick up for me, on some level it felt good.

I would have preferred he not threaten Mark with physical harm, obviously. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel good

to have someone on my side.”

I had been the one to suggest JB and I play Fortnite together. He was flying out in two weeks, and it felt like the days couldn’t pass fast enough. The moment he agreed, I wished

I’d never asked. For one thing, I was a terrible player. For another, while lots of people spent tons of money on different

skins and had dozens of options, I had bought only one. It was a blond male Christmas elf. I didn’t know what this said about

me, but I doubted it was good. When he teleported into my squad, JB was a breathtakingly hot Little Red Riding Hood wearing

thigh-high black boots. We had our mics on so we could talk, and I was having a hard time adjusting to the thrill of his low,

raspy voice. “We don’t even have to try to win,” he said, as we entered the lobby and waited for the Battle Bus, “we can hide

in the bushes.”

“Okay,” I said. We got lit up almost as soon as we dropped, and JB had to carry my unconscious body slung over his shoulder

as he killed the last of them. He was honestly pretty cracked. He got me healed up, and then we scavenged through chests,

collecting as many heals as we could before setting off.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Into the storm,” he said, like it was obvious.

“What are we going to do in the storm?”

“Just hang out and drink heals until we die,” he said.

I’d been caught in the storm plenty. I had never entered it on purpose before, and the sensation was a little strange. Every second you were inside lowered your health, and it made everything look purple and swirly with fog. We found a campfire and lit it, which would give us some health, though not enough to survive. I was aware of trying to speak quietly so Bodhi wouldn’t wake up in his crib. I had all the lights off in my room. There was only the purple glow of my laptop screen.

“Here.” JB tossed me a med kit and I used it, watched my health bar surge green. There was something weirdly compelling about

hearing his husky male voice coming out of this cartoonishly hot female fairy-tale character.

“How long do you think we can keep living like this?” I asked, using one of the bandages in my inventory, which made my elf

body kneel as he wrapped up his arm.

“I don’t know,” JB said, cutting down a nearby bush for more wood to feed the fire. “I haven’t done this before. But there’s

only ten people left. We might even win.”

“From inside the storm?”

JB murmured, and I could tell he was clicking through his inventory because different weapons and objects kept appearing in

Little Red’s hands. The fire was making amazing shadows on her epic honkers. “You look hot in that skin,” I said.

“So do you,” JB said.

In real life I snorted, then froze, but Bodhi didn’t wake up.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “This Will Ferrell bod getting you all hot?” I didn’t have a lot of emotes, so I put one on that made

me play an extended, highly sexual saxophone solo. Little Red stood stock-still, watching my weird elf body humping the air.

“My wires are real crossed right now for sure,” JB said.

“I don’t even think I have wires anymore,” I said. “That’s how crossed they are. I think I have, like, veins.”

There are certain things I’ve had to lie to you about. I want you to close your eyes and actually remember what it was like to be twenty. I want you to remember your house or apartment or dorm room. Whom did you have a crush on? How did it feel to be inside your body, letting your legs flop over watching TV? Think of how ridiculously, insanely, terrifyingly stupid you were, how many things you just did not know. I have tried to hide as best I can the fact that I was young and, by virtue of being young, a fucking idiot, but there are some moments in which you can’t understand it any other way: an idiot comes against the hard surface of the world as it is.

The next morning Jinx was taking forever in the bathroom. Suzie was desperate to pee. “Dude, your dad has been in there for

nine years,” she said.

Bodhi was still asleep, and Margo had been hoping to drink her coffee unmolested. She’d help Suzie, of course. She knocked

on the bathroom door. “Dad?”

There was no response.

“Dad, are you okay?”

If Jinx’s back had gone out and he was in pain, he would still answer. The fact that he wasn’t seemed to imply he was unconscious.

“Hold on,” Suzie said, going and getting her Ralphs grocery discount card. She slid it in the crack of the door, weaseling

it back and forth, until suddenly there was a click and the door swung open. Margo stepped inside, and as soon as she saw

him, she slammed the bathroom door shut so Suzie couldn’t see. He was in the dry bathtub in his pajamas, unconscious, a needle

still hanging out of his arm. It made her sick, the way it stayed in his skin. He had used her velvet scrunchie as a tie-off.

She reached out to feel his face, terrified he would be cold. When she finally let her fingers graze his cheek, he was warm,

and she could breathe again. She grabbed him by the chin and gave him a shake. His eyes peeled open. His pupils looked small

like a snake’s.

“Hey,” he said, dreamy, happy. He raised his eyebrows, amazed to see her.

All Margo’s terror turned to disgust so quickly she could barely parse it, and her hand flashed out to the shower knob and

turned the cold water full on him before she’d even planned to do so. Jinx sat up sputtering. “Stop! Margo, stop!” She turned

it off.

“Get the needle out of your arm,” she said as quietly as she could, close to his ear so Suzie wouldn’t hear. He reached over and patted his arm until he found the needle and took it out. “Why the fuck,” she whispered. “I mean, how long... ?”

“I’m so sorry, Margo,” Jinx whispered back. “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Are you kidding me?”

They stared at each other. He was soaking wet, and his face was puffy. He looked stupid, like an animal, the muscles around

his mouth slack. While she tried to think of what to say, what to do next, he fell asleep again and she slapped him hard across

the face. He snapped awake.

“Are you OD’ing?” she hissed. “Should I take you to the ER?”

Jinx laughed. “No, I’m not OD’ing. I’d be having the time of my life if you’d stop slapping me in the face. And it’s cold.

Why is it so cold?”

“Because you’re all wet.”

Jinx looked down at his completely soaked pajamas, totally mystified. “How’d I do that?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m bringing you dry clothes, you change into them, and then I’m putting you in your room, and you’re staying

in there. Do you understand?”

He seemed to grasp that he was high and this should be a secret, even if he was hazy on the exact situation. A familiar paradigm

to his blasted mind, maybe. He nodded. “You get my clothes, and I’ll knock ’em dead,” he said. Margo didn’t know what that

meant. She went to get his clothes.

“His back went out in the shower,” she told Suzie, who was waiting outside the bathroom door. “He’s incredibly embarrassed.

So I’m gonna help him get dressed and move him to his room. He’ll be fine in a few hours when his meds kick in.”

Suzie nodded sympathetically and remained by the door waiting to pee.

Margo had hoped Jinx would be able to dress himself, but when she returned to the bathroom, he was asleep again. She woke

him and turned away while he changed, but he had trouble with the pants, and she wound up having to guide his foot for him

as he clung to the shower bar. Jinx kept giggling.

“Stop laughing,” she said. “This is not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” he said.

“Head,” she said, and he bowed his head so she could jam his shirt on. “Come,” she said, taking him by the hand. It occurred

to her to look for the needle, which he’d left on the side of the tub. She snatched it up and rolled it into the ball of his

wet clothes, led him out and to his room.

Jinx immediately went to his sleeping bag and climbed into it. “Paradise,” he said.

Margo unrolled the wet bundle and tossed the clothes in his hamper, not sure what to do with the needle. “Where’s your stash?”

Margo whispered.

“What?”

“Where’s your stash? What do I do with this needle?”

“Oh,” Jinx said. “There’s an eensy-weensy Allen wrench in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cabinet, and you can use it to

unscrew the towel bar. And, you know, it’s hollow.” For some reason this cracked him up. “The tube thingy.”

“Wait, inside the towel bar?” Margo said. Really it was ingenious. “You stay in here. Okay? Stay in your room. Do you understand?”

“Who am I hiding from?”

“Suzie.”

“Oh God, I wouldn’t want Suzie to know.” This seemed to genuinely scare him.

“Stay,” she said, and slipped out, the needle hidden up the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She went in the bathroom, recently vacated

by a grateful Suzie, and locked herself in and took apart the towel bar, found in its metal tube three more needles and a

small baggie of brown paste. She emptied the brown paste into the toilet and flushed, then wrapped the needles in toilet paper

until they were a big, soft wad. She put the towel bar back together, her hands shaking. She was sweating.

“Um, Margo,” Suzie called through the bathroom door, “Bodhi woke up and I grabbed him, but he’s fussy. I think he needs to

nurse.”

“Okay,” Margo said, and shoved the bundle of needles in her hoodie front pocket, opened the door, and took Bodhi from Suzie, holding him out from her body as she rushed to her room. She set Bodhi, by now bawling, on her bed, and hid the bundle of syringes in her closet behind her shoes, feeling both like she’d successfully defused a bomb and that she was a naive idiot who had no idea what she was doing.

Margo,

Do you have time for a phone call to go over the depo later? I have 2–3 free. Short version: We didn’t get anything great.

He is, it turns out, an awful husband but a pretty great dad.

Talk soon,

Ward

Margo read the email numbly later that day as she sat with Jinx on the pink velvet couch, Bodhi asleep on her chest. The main

point of the depo, Ward had explained, was to prove Mark wasn’t a great father to the kids he already had. Who made the kids

dinner, who bought their clothes? Whom did the kids go to when they got hurt? What books was he reading with them? What was

their pediatrician’s name? “Most dads have no clue who their kids’ doctor is,” Ward told her. Margo had also given him enough

details to ask damning questions about the chronic infidelity. Ward was hesitant to use moral fiber arguments, though, lest

they be turned against Margo. Sex work cheating, sin-wise, at least in the minds of most.

She had allowed Jinx out of his room once Suzie went off to class. He was more awake now, though all he wanted to do was watch

wrestling and doze and endlessly itch his nose. She’d already tired of interrogating him. How long had this been going on,

where did he score, why had he done it?

His answers had been frustrating, if, she thought, fairly honest. He had found the medication in her closet almost immediately,

the day after she’d hidden it, and zipped through it in less than a week. After that he’d called a guy he knew in L.A. Of

course he had known a guy in L.A. Margo felt incredibly stupid. Jinx had been stealing medication from the hidden stash from

the beginning, and she hadn’t even noticed.

“Yeah,” he said, and laughed. “I started telling you I didn’t need them because if I asked for one you would go look at the bottle and see how many were missing.”

She had never hated him before, not even as a child when he’d wounded her the most, not like this, not this hot dark fury

in her lungs. The worst part, really, was how dopey and slack his face looked as he told her all this, scratching his nose

with the back of his hand.

“Why are you crying?” he asked, slurring a little. “Hey, why are you crying?”

“Because I don’t know what to do!” she said, trying to wipe away her tears without waking Bodhi. Being with her dad high was

like having to deal with another person while still being totally alone. It was almost like having a baby in that sense.

“Margo,” Jinx said, “the thing is it’s not as big a deal as you think. Like, I’m not saying it wasn’t a huge betrayal on my

part—it was. But heroin is a drug. It’s not, like, the symbiote or something—it doesn’t turn you evil.”

Margo did not know what the symbiote was, and this involved a whole discussion about Spider-Man and Venom and some Google

Image searching of the living black goo in question.

“I’m just saying,” Jinx said, seeming slightly more lucid now, “when you’re lost in the deep dark forest, the thing to do

isn’t to get scared of the trees. You have to find your way out again. And if you treat it as this big terrible thing, like

every time I relapse it’s the end of the world—well, then I’m just gonna hide it from you more and then I’ll be in a worse

spot to fight it.”

She stared at him, trying to understand if he was manipulating her.

“Margo, I’ve been fighting this battle my entire adult life, it’s pretty normal to me.” He laughed, looked up at the ceiling.

“I mean, God, what a sad thing to say. What a waste of a life.”

“It wasn’t a waste,” Margo said. “Look at your children and your career. I mean, you’re literally in the WWE Hall of Fame.

Nothing was a waste.”

“But all that time,” Jinx said, still not looking at her, “I was secretly here. And all my energy has gone into this . I feel like I never really ex perienced the other stuff at all, it was kind of reflected on the surface around me.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Margo said.

“But that’s the thing,” Jinx said. “The tragedy isn’t brown paste you buy from some guy in a Lexus outside a donut shop; the

tragedy is that I was a shitty dad.” He reached out his huge hand and carefully, softly ran the knuckles down her cheek.

“You weren’t,” she told him.

But they both knew he was. And not only to her.

“And I’m sorry for calling Mark,” Jinx said.

“Wait, were you high when you called Mark?”

Jinx nodded. Margo closed her eyes. Bodhi was heavy and sweating on her chest, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Of

course that was it. He had just been high. She thought of herself shyly telling Dr. Sharp how good it had secretly felt, her

father protecting her like that, defending her.

“Are you going to kick me out?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Margo said. There was a sour taste in her mouth. It honestly hadn’t occurred to her to kick him out, though

she could see that maybe it was the reasonable thing to do. She suddenly remembered JB was coming and wondered if she should

tell him not to. “What would you do if I kicked you out?”

“I don’t know,” Jinx said. “I mean, honestly probably use for a few months and then go back to rehab.”

“Oh God,” Margo said. She was glad he was being honest. It was also alarming.

She would be so sad if Jinx left, if this was how it all ended. But he couldn’t stay, he couldn’t be around Bodhi like this.

And he’d lied to her, had been lying to her, this whole time.

“Margo,” Jinx asked, “I have a really, really big favor to ask you.”

“I’m not going to kick you out right this second,” she said.

“No,” he said, “I was going to ask if there was any chance you could go to the gas station and buy me a Milky Way.”

She stared at him.

“Okay!” He held up his hands. “Or not!”

She did go buy him a Milky Way at the gas station, partly to get away from him, but also because she wanted a Milky Way herself. The walk there with Bodhi strapped to her chest made her feel normal again, no longer a part of a sticky nightmare, just her sturdy, regular little self. She bought the Milky Ways and also two Orange Meals, one for her and one for Jinx.

The email from Ward was depressing, but she would talk to him at two o’clock and find out the whole deal. What she couldn’t

imagine was getting through the rest of this custody battle without Jinx. Yet she also felt used by Jinx, tricked and manipulated.

It felt like the only right thing to do was kick him out.

She didn’t even wait to get home to open her Milky Way, peeling open the wrapper on the walk back to the apartment. When she’d

first told Jinx about the OnlyFans, he’d turned away from her, just like Shyanne. But in less than an hour he had come back.

He’d chosen to be on her side, told her she wasn’t a car, taught her how to pay taxes and build heat. He had bounced her baby

and soothed his cries and turned to look at her when Bodhi did something new or cute.

Yes, she was naive and an idiot. Too young and too stupid. Capable of completely mishandling serious things like drug addiction

and taxes. But she was strong. And determined. If there was anything she’d learned, it was that strength and stubbornness

were not nothing. The way Jinx had said it, when you’re lost in the deep dark woods, the thing to do isn’t to get scared of

the trees—it made sense. It reminded her of the way the OnlyFans seemed to scare Mark, as though Margo wouldn’t be Margo anymore

once people had seen her vagina. Maybe Jinx was still Jinx even if he was on drugs.

The sun was strong, and she squinted, her mouth filled with melting chocolate and caramel and nougat. Fuck it, she thought.

If Jinx had been fighting this battle his whole life, then Margo would fight with him.

“Come at me, bitch!” she said, and laughed, chocolate all over her teeth.

The methadone clinic was on Commonwealth Avenue, a large cube of ’80s paneled mirror glass, a building remarkable only for its complete lack of signage. Jinx and Margo showed up at eight a.m. the next morning, not understanding how busy it would be. It took them three and a half hours to fill out all the paperwork,

complete the blood and urine tests, and see the doctor (who was honestly super nice). But they did it all, and in the end,

they got Jinx his first dose.

When they drove home, Jinx sat in the back seat with Bodhi to help him through his car seat sadness, and Bodhi was all happy

coos and grabbing at the ring toy Jinx dangled in front of him.

“Thank you, Margo,” Jinx said.

Margo wasn’t sure what to say. It had taken her only a couple of hours of googling to decide methadone would be the best thing.

It had taken much longer to convince Jinx to try it. Her arguments: he wouldn’t have to leave, he could get treatment while

continuing to live with her; it would also treat his chronic pain, since it was an opiate, thus keeping them out of situations

like this in the future; they could go tomorrow and be on a new course. He wouldn’t have to go through the agony of detox.

He could just be done, done with the whole thing.

Jinx’s argument was that methadone was heroin, it wasn’t any different, a drug is a drug, and an addict is an addict, plus

you have to go there every single day, what a drag, and he wouldn’t be done, he would never be done, he would be putting off

actually getting clean because eventually he’d have to get off the methadone. Also it immediately made people think less of

you.

She had won only when she told him he had to go or she was kicking him out.

“You’re welcome,” she said, her eyes on the road.

“No, I mean, I already feel better.”

“You do?”

Jinx had gone through the roof when he found out Margo had flushed his stash. He’d spent the whole night sweating and having

diarrhea.

“Yeah, I mean, not just the stomach cramping, but my back. I noticed it when I got in the car. And it’s only been, what, like half an hour?”

She could hear the hope in his voice. What if it worked? What if he didn’t have to choose between being in constant pain or

being the scum of the earth? What if there were more than just those two choices?

“Well, we’ll see,” Margo said. They had to start the methadone at a low dose because the whole point of it was that it stayed

in your system for an incredibly long time. If you titrated up too fast, you might accidentally OD. The doctor had explained

that Jinx would probably start feeling withdrawal symptoms that evening. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad as the night before,

though. And he could come at five a.m. when they opened for his next dose. It would take at least a few weeks before they

titrated up to a perfect dose, enough to keep cravings at bay and manage Jinx’s pain without making him a zombie.

But it was hope. They were both underslept and exhausted, but it was hope.

“You know what I wanna do?” Jinx asked, as they climbed out of the car. He was smiling, and his skin looked normal, and Margo

could not stop herself from smiling back at him.

“What?”

“I want to get really into making bread. Like aggressively into it.”

“Okay, now you’re just trying to make yourself indispensable,” Margo said, reaching to take Bodhi from him.

“No, it’s okay,” Jinx said, “my back feels good right now.”

Margo looked at him. He didn’t seem high and was steady on his feet. In that moment, Margo could not think of a single price

she wouldn’t be willing to pay for her dad to smile at her like that on the sidewalk, Bodhi perched in the crook of his arm,

looking around the dazzling morning like a somber little owl. She tried not to think about the weeks and weeks that Jinx had

been lying to her, getting high, and she hadn’t even noticed. She tried not to think about what that meant, those dark air

bubbles in the past.

“After you, my sweet,” he said, gesturing her to the door of their building.

She stepped forward and opened it, then held it for him, “After you, my meat!”

There is a desperation to a novel that is unsettling. The world so painstakingly re-created in miniature; this tiny diorama

made of words. Why go to all this trouble, to create me, to seduce you, to enumerate so many different breakfast cereals?

To make the cunning tiny apartment, the itsy-bitsy Jinx? It’s like going to meet your new boyfriend’s family for the first

time and discovering they are all paid actors. It’s almost easier to believe I’m real than to understand what’s actually going

on. The desperation that could have caused anyone to invent me in the first place. The urgency and need that would require

creating an imaginary space of this size and level of detail.

And it really makes you wonder: What kind of truth would require this many lies to tell?