For thirty years, I hated my birthday.
Her name was Lily.
We were seventeen, the kind of close that adults watch with slightly worried expressions and describe as a “phase.”
We let them think that.
We had plans that felt more real than anything the adults around us were doing. A college acceptance I was giddy about. An apartment we’d picked out from a classified ad: third-floor, big windows, a fire escape that faced west.
A life that existed so completely in my head that even now I can describe the furniture we never bought.
Her name was Lily.
Whenever I worried about the future, Lily would laugh and say:
