The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

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WHEN SOPHIE FIRST SAW ME, I WAS ONSTAGE. THIS GIRL IRINA who I lived with at the time had organized a storytelling series at a bar in Bushwick, and after a couple weeks of watching I decided I wanted to tell a story too. I wasn’t like the other kids in the house; I’d never assumed I’d be an actor or a writer or anything creative. When I was growing up, everybody figured I’d stay in Burnsville, West Virginia, and have some kids. But there I was in New York and for ten minutes I could make people listen to me and treat me like I was important. The theme that week was “scary camping stories.” I was wearing my only pretty dress, a blue halter with a full skirt that I’d bought for seven dollars at a vintage store, and I got up onstage after some girl talked for twenty minutes about seeing a possum. Here’s the story I told, the one that started everything for Sophie and me.

My school had some good kids, Christian kids, kids who got married at eighteen before they started popping out babies. But my family was one hundred percent trash for five generations back, and I didn’t fit in real well with the church crowd. Instead I used to hang out with this guy named Bean.

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