I said I’d come to return a book I’d borrowed—not My Secret Garden; I wasn’t about to admit to having taken that one. This was the autobiography of a former Olympic ski racer who’d become a quadriplegic after an accident. Some weeks earlier, on my way to my sweeping job at the police precinct, Jennifer Pollack had given me the book, explaining that she thought the story would inspire me, and remind me that even when things look really hopeless, they can still get better. Look at Jill Kinmont: they turned her book into a movie, and now she makes art with a paintbrush in her mouth. The real reason I had dropped by the Pollacks’ was because they had stopped calling me for babysitting jobs. The new baby was due soon, and I’d been hoping to help out with Karl Jr. and make some money for back-to-school shopping. But they hadn’t called me in weeks now—not since my picture was in the paper in another article about what was now called the “alleged attack”
