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Seventh grade was supposed to be set in a brand-new school. Instead, we were sent to attend school in the National Guard Armory. I'm not sure where the National Guard was. After the Kent State shootings, it seemed like everyone was either an anti-war protester or a soldier. That year, the US Selective Service started the first draft lottery date for the Vietnam War. On December 1, 1969, men aged nineteen to twenty-six would be drafted based on their birthdates. The National Guard kept getting photographed looking overwhelmed and miserable at the prospect of beating up more college students.

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I think the library saved my life. I sat on the floor looking at books about nudist colonies filled with black-and-white pictures of naked people in sneakers, playing volleyball, practicing archery, grilling hamburgers, and generally being naked, which I found bizarre but also helpful since there were no boys in our family and my father was not a naked person ever. Also, I read all of Jane Austen, Dickens, the Brontës, Louisa May Alcott, piles and piles of books. I read magazines about teenage life, girls who gave cute parties with refreshments that looked like doll food, crustless sandwiches, heart-shaped cookies, and sherbet punch. These girls had long, shiny, brushed hair, small, oval faces, and huge eyes. They stood gracefully, knees jutted out at attractive angles; they seemed like space creatures, but they were just models.

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I had already almost died a number of times. When we visited our glamorous Welsh friends in Mumbles, where Dylan Thomas had once lived, we swam in a tidal river that evidently had a killer current. Apparently, my sisters, one six, the other nine, were meant to serve as lifeguards. I was three. My mother described me as “bouncy,” which might have meant floaty. I had also been lost on Fire Island for twelve hours, and my father convinced drowned. Waking up to a house full of hungover adults and my sleeping cousins and sisters, I decided to go for a walk on the beach. As the evening approached, I found myself sitting on the counter of a man who had walked up to me and said, “Is your name Molly Moynahan?” He had called the police, who called my hysterical parents. He gave me Pecan Sandies and forbidden orange soda.

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