At night, she fixated, pulverized by her own manic doubt. She tried to remind herself of all the things she hated about Esme. The fact that she didn’t have a sense of humor, too consumed by her own dilemmas to laugh at someone else’s jokes. She was rude to her mother, pushing out her lower jaw and hissing, What? whenever she answered the phone. And the third tooth from the center was shorter than the rest and yellow, like an ugly runt. Mitty pushed herself into anger, the only protected place she could float for a while. And when she finally surrendered to sleep, her dreams were nebulous and agonizing, only to wake up in the morning and face it all again.