Writing fiction is like dreaming; the recognizable and the unthinkable, the mundane and the monstrous, coalesce in the least predictable ways, in the end turning into something entirely unlike real life, and yet hopefully relevant in some way to our shared human life. The writing of this book was no less a strange dreamlike process than writing ever is, but unlike most dreamers, I had lots of help. Thank you to Rebecca Lowe, Jason Nodler, and all my classmates and teachers at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, emphatically the right-side-up to my fictional upside-down CAPA, and a place of dreams, not nightmares. Thank you to Seth King and Semi Chellas for their early enthusiasm for the manuscript and for some of the ideas which brought the dream-parts together. Thank you to Lynn Nesbit for early guidance, to Jin Auh for knowing when the story was done and for bringing the manuscript home, to Barbara Jones and everyone at Henry Holt for making that home so welcoming, and to the MacDowell Colony for precious space and time. Last but most, thank you Elliot, Dexter, and Pete.