1.

I was 16 years old when I learned to pretend, and alcohol was my first teacher. In 2002, I was a senior in high school and the youngest in my friend group—a burden more than a badge of honor. I had entered kindergarten early, skipped a semester of first grade, and spent my adolescence trying to keep up with friends and classmates who were always one to two years older than I was.

It was the same sort of thing that night: I was at a friend’s lake house in Conroe, Texas, for a sleepover. I had neglected to give my parents all the details—that it would be co-ed, that my friend’s own parents were not around, and that there would be alcohol. I took my first sip surrounded by laughter and the kind of reckless confidence characteristic of teens in the middle-class Texan suburbs where I was r

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