MEET THE CHARACTERS.

This is my mother. She’s the assistant manager of a bike shop and plays a mean drum set. She makes an excellent pasta e fagioli and always leaves the meat out, despite my father and sister’s complaints, because she loves her little vegetarian. She’s as smart as the day is long and bestows her wisdom with grace. She calls me her favorite grad student. I call her my favorite mom.

This is my father. He edits academic texts for seminaries and knows all kinds of ancient biblical languages. In the last few years, he’s taken to devouring books about witches and werewolves and vampires and can always be counted on to have no fewer than five flavors of gum floating around in his shirt pocket. He’s brilliant and kind and quirky and our family wouldn’t be the same without him.

This is my sister, Amy. I’m four years older and she’s a brand new student at the University of Michigan. She loves singing and dancing and acting and always sports earrings shaped like bacon strips or zippers or the like.

This is my best friend, Bee. We met on the first Thursday night of our sophomore year of college and have been falling in friend-love ever since. She’s from Phoenix but now goes to grad school in Provo, Utah. She’s got the biggest, prettiest brown eyes I ever did see, loves adventures, and makes the best Southwest scramble I’ve ever had the pleasure of putting in my belly. She thinks I’m pretty cool. I think she’s pretty keen, too.