“I thought of a friend in La who’d said recently of her own daughter, “It feels wrong to give her all this happiness and confidence when we know what is coming. Seventh grade is going to hit like a wall. It feels like fattening a pig for slaughter.” But what was the alternative? Starving the pig?”

“I thought of a friend in La who’d said recently of her own daughter, “It feels wrong to give her all this happiness and confidence when we know what is coming. Seventh grade is going to hit like a wall. It feels like fattening a pig for slaughter.” But what was the alternative? Starving the pig?”

— Rebecca Makkai