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The first memory she has is of her fourth birthday party. Her Grandma Bonnie bought her a pink dress trimmed with lace, socks with lace cuffs, and sparkly pink Jelly shoes. Alison remembers with perfect clarity sitting on the tiny white bench of her vanity table while her mother curled her hair, the scent of her mother’s hairspray choking her but knowing it was unacceptable to complain about it.

It is always unacceptable to complain.

This is the first lesson Alison learns.

When she is in kindergarten, they are given a worksheet for homework. They are to have their parents help them fill in the boxes of the family tree and then color the entire thing. As with all things school related, Alison takes it very seriously. She tucks it into her Gem and the Holograms folder, making certain nothing in her backpack crushes it, and immediately informs her mother of it when she climbs into the car after school.

While her little brother naps, Alison dutifully copies the names her mother writes down on a yellow legal pad, her fingers wrapped around her pencil just the way Miss Calhoun taught her to hold it. When she finishes copying the names, she presents it to her mother for approval.

She wrinkles her nose, grabs Alison’s pencil, and promptly erases half of the names on the worksheet.

“Do it again and do it right,” her mother orders, this time sitting at the table to supervise Alison as she does just that.

You do it until it is perfect, and it must always be perfect.

This is the second lesson Alison learns.

Of all the lessons Alison takes, ballet is her favorite. She practices the piano because her father complains about spending money when she hits the wrong key, she works on her French because every time her grandfather visits from Quebec he mocks her poor pronunciation, and she practices her tennis because she’ll be damned if Brittany Rogers beats her at the next tournament held at the country club. But she practices her ballet because she loves it, because it makes her feel beautiful, but especially because Madame Mariska does not allow parents in the studio.

“Beautiful, Alison!” Madame will call as Alison goes across the floor, making certain to keep her posture, to extend all the way through, to move more gracefully than anyone else in the class. When it comes time for Madame to pick a student to demonstrate, she always selects Alison, and Alison will not lose that honor.

The day she gets her first pair of pointe shoes, Alison feels buoyant with happiness. She has been waiting years for this moment, and as she ties the ribbons around her leg, she knows she is that much closer to her dream of dancing professionally.

There are auditions for the senior company, who will perform Romeo and Juliet in the spring. Alison dons her best black leotard, buys new pink tights, and damn near glues her hair into the perfect ballerina bun. At thirteen, she is one of the youngest auditioning, but she refuses to let herself be intimidated by any of the older girls. She enters the studio and performs the steps perfectly, and though she is only selected to dance in the corps, she is also the only girl from her class to be selected to join the senior company.

That night as she helps her mother get dinner on the table, her mother says, “You probably would have gotten a bigger part if you were in better shape. No one wants to watch a fat ballerina outside Fantasia.”

If you want to get the things you want, you must always have perfect control of yourself.

This is the third lesson Alison learns.

She collapses during rehearsals, and Madame calls the ambulance. By the time Alison comes to in the back of the ambulance, she knows her mother is going to kill her, but even worse she knows they are going to discover her secret.

The nurse in the emergency room records her weight as 78 pounds. An examination by the attending physician reveals she has bald spots hidden beneath her ballerina bun, that she is suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition, and that her kidneys are in danger of failing.

As the doctor diagnoses her with anorexia nervosa, Alison thinks about how her mother commended her for making healthier eating choices lately.

They send her to a hospital ninety minutes from home for “girls like her.” That is the way her mother refers to her condition, as if saying the name of it will somehow make it real. Alison quickly learns that “girls like her” look like they’re dying; they are waifs, some attached to IV stands, some forcibly taken to a different wing to be fed by tubes, and they are all as equally good or even better at controlling themselves.

For the first time in her life, Alison has found people like her, and they terrify her.

Her roommate’s name is Claudia; she is a musical theater major at an arts school. Whereas Alison managed her weight by only eating lettuce and cucumbers, Claudia supplemented her non-existent meals with heroin. The second week Alison shares a room with her, she gets caught hiding her food deep inside her mattress, and she is taken away to the medical wing. She doesn’t return.

She misses the production of Romeo and Juliet. During one of the family therapy sessions, her therapist suggests she find a different activity when she goes home, one that doesn’t revolve around maintaining an ideal body type. She starts to cry but her father barks out her name, looking deeply uncomfortable, and her mother apologizes for Alison’s outburst.

They release her 30 days after she is admitted; she will have to see a nutritionist, a therapist, and her doctor weekly for the next two years. But as her mother pulls the family minivan onto the highway, she says, “We told everyone you had mono and were staying with your grandparents in Quebec so you wouldn’t get Robbie sick. No one needs to know our dirty laundry, Alison.”

If something is wrong, it is shameful and you hide it away.

This is the fourth lesson Alison learns.

Her parents forbid her from doing any physical extracurricular for fear of relapse and further potential embarrassment, but they also refuse to let her “sit around doing nothing.” The very suggestion offends Alison to her core because she is not the sort of person who has ever just sat around doing nothing, but she dutifully signs up for yearbook committee and French club as well as running and being elected as sophomore class president.

But her favorite activity, the one she excels at, is debate.

Her parents don’t understand why she enjoys it. They are the type of people who strenuously avoid conflict whenever possible, particularly about contentious topics, but Alison loves it. The structure, the research, the time limits, the memorization, they are all things Alison is just plain better at than the other debaters, and when she wins a regional competition, qualifying for a national one, Alison thinks she may have just found her calling.

It is at the reception after the competition when the debaters get the chance to mingle and eat rubber chicken that Donnie Hendrix first talks to her.

He is also on their debate team, albeit only as an alternate. When it comes time to improvise, Donnie always fumbles, and his habit of substituting words with “um,” “uh,” and “you know,” guarantee he’ll never be a true contender, let alone competition for Alison. But he is funny and friendly, quick to help anyone with research, and he is also the only member of the team who actually speaks to Alison.

“Everyone else thinks I’m a total bitch,” Alison informs him matter-of-factly over mushy green beans, and Donnie makes a snorting sound.

“It’s because they’re jealous of how good you are. And you’re not a bitch; you just know what you want.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. I like that about you. You’re strong.” Donnie grins. “I wouldn’t want to fight you.”

There’s nothing wrong with being strong.

That’s the fifth lesson Alison learns.

Donnie proposes their junior year of college with all the bumbling Alison has come to expect from him. She stares at his sweaty, expectant face, the small diamond in the black velvet box, and her own bare left ring finger, and she is suddenly overcome with the sensation of being smothered.

“Can I think about it?”

Donnie looks so devastated she forces herself to fake a laugh and then says, “Yes, of course!”

Her mother squeals with delight when they announce their engagement, jumping up and down like she is the one who has gotten engaged. She just loves Donnie, and though he’s never voiced his opinion, Alison assumes her father does too because he always believes what her mother tells him to believe.

Only Robbie thinks to ask her, “You sure?” and though Alison has never felt particularly close to her little brother, she hugs him and hides her uncertainty in his shoulder.

“This might be the only smart decision you’ve ever made,” her mother tells her when they sit down to start discussing the wedding plans, and Alison bites her tongue bloody to keep from screaming.

She loses twenty pounds in the six weeks after she gets engaged, a drop so drastic she calls her old therapist to stop her slow slide back into anorexia. Her sessions primarily revolve around her frustrations with her mother and the wedding, occasionally with a side helping of stress because of classes, and one day her therapist asks, “Why don’t you ever tell your mother you’re angry with her?”

“That isn’t really how my family does things.”

“Sometimes the ways we’re taught to do things aren’t healthy.”

Just because someone loves you doesn’t mean they love you right.

This is the sixth lesson Alison learns.

They have been married for 18 months when they see the fertility specialist. Despite her regular periods, she has never once gotten pregnant, never once even been a day late, and she sits on the table in her paper gown and wonders if starving herself ten years earlier means she will never have children.

“You have what we call unexplained infertility,” the doctor informs her, calm as could be, as if he isn’t blowing up all her hopes and dreams of a family of her own. “Medically there’s no reason you can’t conceive, but because of that, we also can’t recommend a specific course of treatment. We can try medications or – “

“My parents did in-vitro to have my brother and me,” Alison cuts in, trying to ignore Donnie with his face in his hands. “Would that be an option?”

As the doctor explains, detailing all it would require, Alison nods, stating without even asking Donnie that this will be the next course of action. Her parents loan them $20,000 for the first round, and they take out a second mortgage on their house for a second round, but still she does not conceive.

“I could cash out my retirement – “

“No,” Alison interrupts after another small fortune is wasted, wiping at the few tears that have escaped her eyes, “we should adopt.”

Donnie hugs her, kisses the crown of her head. “Whatever you want, Allie.”

They put themselves on every possible list for a child, become licensed as foster parents, and even begin pricing international adoptions. Alison has just finished a Pilates class one day when her cell phone rings.

“Mrs. Hendrix?” a woman on the other end asks.

“Yes?”

“I’m Camilla Thompson from Children’s Services. I’m calling because you and your husband are on our list of possible placements for sibling groups.”

“Yes, yes, we are.”

She shows up at Donnie’s office still in her workout clothes, talking a mile a minute about what she has gotten them into while he worked. They go to the nearest department store, buy a toddler bed and a crib, stocking up on everything they can possibly think of, before meeting Camilla Thompson at five o’clock at the Children’s Services building.

The little boy is playing on the floor with a toy car, his little sister dozing in a pack-and-play. Alison immediately tears up when the little boy looks at her and grins, and Donnie releases a shaky laugh.

Their names, Camilla tells them, are Oscar and Gemma. They were found abandoned in an apartment, their mother nowhere to be found. Unless family can be located, they will be free for adoption.

“I can’t guarantee an adoption,” she begins, but Alison doesn’t hear the rest, lifting a fussing Gemma from the playpen, the weight of her in her arms familiar and wonderful.

Just because she did not carry them inside her body does not mean Oscar and Gemma are not her children. Blood does not determine family.

This is the seventh lesson Alison learns.

She quits her job, devoting herself to being a wife and mother. One afternoon while Gemma sings along with a video and Oscar colors at the kitchen table, Alison finds herself correcting Oscar’s picture, telling him he needs to stay in the lines. His face falls before nodding, and Alison realizes with sudden horror she has become her mother.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. You’re doing just fine,” she hurries to assure him, but the image of Oscar’s face falling doesn’t leave her mind.

That is the first night she drinks until the edges of the world blur, the first night she pops a Xanax and an Ambien to forget what she did, to forget the stress of trying to be the woman she wants to be.

Sobriety means feeling things she doesn’t want to feel, but wine makes it go away.

This is the eighth lesson Alison learns.

She comes home from PTA to find a card tucked beneath her windshield wiper. Immediately she starts checking out her van to see if someone hit it and left a note, but instead it is a business card from a police detective named Beth Childs.

Please meet me in the parking lot of the park near your house at 9PM is written in neat cursive on the back, and Alison wonders if this is a joke. Then she remembers the complaint she filed about the teenage boys selling marijuana there and decides Detective Childs must want Alison to show her where the sales happen.

Detective Childs is facing a streetlight when Alison arrives, calling her name. She needs to get back soon; Wednesdays are the day she and Donnie agreed they will have their intimate time, and Alison likes her schedule.

And then Beth Childs turns around to reveal a face identical to Alison’s own, and the world stops.

Everything Alison has ever known is wrong.

This is the worst lesson Alison learns.