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PROLOGUE

I MET ADDISON STONE only once She had enrolled as a fresh workshop at Pratt Institute There were only six other students ininstructor, I was happy we’d be such a tight group Fifteen ured this “A Stone” person wasn’t attending So when a girl skittered in, late and unapologetic, I was annoyed

She was striking: tall yet delicate, with pale skin and dark eyes and two braids like a pair of flat black ropes past her shoulders The scars on her wrists caught ize for being late Perhaps , she scraped back the only eed When she sat, her paint-spattered arms dropped at her sides as if she had no use of them

We’d beenintroductions, so I started over for her benefit We went around the circle again: a few sentences each about ere and where we’d coot to Addison, she shook her head

“I’m not here yet,” she said softly Startled, some of the other students looked to irl think she was? I had none I was thinking, Who’d reirl who told them she wasn’t there?

BEFORE THEY LEFT, I gave an assignment: pick a e you lived through it One paragraph or one page—no more Due in my inbox by five o’clock on Friday At 5:13 on Friday, Addison’s essay hit:

I’m last I’m late I pull my chair away for comfort I’m invisible and exposed My words establish my walls My whole life I’m two people I am I, and I am Her I’ve been asked to pin down a moment But do I care aboutforward so fast? I’m mostly scared I can’t catch up with me I am always almost out of time

A ed with Addison’s next email

I’ the class

And that was it

Of course I never forgot her When I heard that Addison had left Pratt after one semester, I was disappointed, but like everyone else on the faculty, I kept an eye on her career I silently cheered when her self-portrait was accepted into the Whitney Biennial; I was fascinated by her prank Project 53 Then by next July, she was dead A brilliant artist, all that potential, erased It was heartbreaking and pointless

I’d been blocked trying to come up with my next book idea, and as I learned more about my former student, I couldn’t shake the fact that Addison Stone’s life had all the ingredients of a perfect novel Ultian’s explosive Art & Artist azine cover story “Who Broke Our Butterfly?: The Last Days of Addison Stone” for kick-startingfor a deeper truth—as it hinted that either one of two fa men to whom she’d been linked roht be culpable

Every tiraph Addison had dashed off forfor

I decided to go looking With a year off fro, I threw myself into my research I taped hundreds of interviews from people whose lives were connected to Addison’s Her story tookHarbor to California, from Europe to Nepal, and of course to Peacedale, Rhode Island, where Addison spent her childhood She began to obsess allery and café, on every street corner it seeer

Addison doppelgänger, New York City, courtesy of Adele Griffin