The Camera Behind the Books
She chose her clothes.
All of them, every day, including combinations that made me physically wince and which I never once commented on.
She chose what went in her lunch, from three options.
She decided who was allowed to hug her, and it was enforced, absolutely, with everybody — with my father, with my friends, with a colleague of mine who said “oh, come on” once and did not get a second chance.
And she was allowed to say no to me, out loud, about anything that was not safety, and I had to take it, and there were about nine occasions in the first year where taking it cost me something real and I took it anyway because Dr.
Park had told me the whole thing lives or dies on whether it is real.