“I wanted to have nightmares about monsters or mass shootings. It was too embarrassing — in the midst of global catastrophe — to be concerned with something as frivolous as high school.”

On family, memory, scar tissue, a 1999 Red Sox game, unreliable narrators, and setting the story straight.

Was it a nightmare and you just thought you were waking up? It lasted for two hours, you could’ve been dreaming. But you were awake.