This is all you need to know: at the age of ten, I broke my hip after flipping off my bike while showing off for a young man who wasn’t watching. He drove a Bug and lived in our apartment complex. I sure liked that Bug. Nobody saw me tumble down the hill. A half-hour later, my friend discovered me alongside the ravine, lying beneath my bike. Ants crawled up my bare, unshaven legs. My father was summoned; he carried me home. X-rays were inconclusive. I couldn’t walk. At one point it was determined, not unreasonably, that I was faking. Of all the wolf-criers, I was the young queen. Three days later, a second X-ray revealed the hairline break. My mother still feels guilt, which I love her for. Not the guilt. All that feeling.

Events in my life, besides the above example, that provoke the response, that explains a lot: My sister teaching me to play softball and accidentally hitting me in the face with the bat. Falling headfirst over my bike and onto a cement driveway, while assisting the conniving-but-cute paperboy. (A redhead.) Misspelling “healthy” as the fifth-grade representative in the all-school spelling bee. You really want to know? Heathly. In eighth grade it was “collapsible.” I still spell it wrong, out of spite.

The words “past” and “regret” are not directly interchangeable, though they cohabitate out of practicality. Choose from the following menu. Exhibit A: The man I met on the Internet, who drove two hours to attend one of my volleyball games. He wore a poncho. B: The other man I e-mailed incessantly, drunk, at 3 a.m., who never came to my volleyball games. See also: Exhibits C through Z.   

Sophomore year of college, my first trip to New York City. My friends and I, not of legal drinking age, found the street hustler’s pitch for fake IDs irresistible. We handed him money and our current licenses, which bore our smiling young faces beneath the state names of INDIANA and WISCONSIN. He led tiny, sweet Tricia into a nearby office building “to take her picture,” promising to come back for us. Danielle and I finally remembered to breathe when Tricia returned, unharmed, minus money and ID.

In the bar parking lot in Indiana, I climbed on the back of a motorcycle and rode alongside the other motorcycles to an unfamiliar house. The driver, roughly twice my age, claimed to be a doctor. Maybe he really was a doctor. When he and his friends suggested that I and my friends join them in the hot tub, we demanded to return to the bar. In those years, we spent a lot of time trying to be the kind of girls we weren’t. Failing. The doctors handed us our helmets. We appreciated that they carried spares.

The stars were so bright they made me blink. The end.

This is all you need to know, even if there’s more.

There’s more?

There’s always more.