Thank you to Justin Goodfellow for always letting me ask questions, and to the entirety of the Penguin sales team for helping my books find their readers.
Thank you to all the bookstores around the world who have chosen to have my books on their shelves. I understand more than ever what it means to have a book in stock, taking up precious real estate, and it is an honor that I do not take for granted.
Thank you to everyone with whom I ever smoked a cigarette, sat on a stoop, ate at a diner, drank too much, and stayed awake all night. I can close my eyes and be there, electric with the excitement of being a teenager.
Thank you to my Mikey, for always making sure there was time （no easy feat this year）， for being my tireless cheerleader, and for keeping the bookstore up and running in these uncertain and scary times. Thank you to my children, my constant companions, for being such wild, amazing creatures.
Thank you to my mom, for still putting small bowls of snacks within reach.
Thank you to Killer, to whom I have granted much deserved immortality in this book.
Thank you to the doctors, nurses, and staff at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for their vital work, which was made so much harder in 2020, when this book was written.
Most of all, thank you to my dad, for showing me what fiction could do, and for knowing that the real story is both here and not here, that we are both here and not here, and for receiving this book as it was intended, as a gift.
About the Author
Emma Straub is the New York Times–bestselling author of four other novels—All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures—and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.