My earliest memory is wearing my favorite shirt for an entire month of summer without my mom noticing. I was going into fourth grade and my mom figured since I was now in the public school system, she could leave me alone if needed. There was even a socially acceptable term for it—a latchkey kid.

We lived in an apartment building that was once a motel. The kitchen consisted of a toaster oven and microwave, and Mom worked cleaning rooms at the Chateau, this fancy resort on the shore of Lake George. This was upstate New York, very upstate, with a complicated mix of blue-collar locals and vacationing urban elite. My mom and I, as you’ve probably guessed, were the former.

My mom had lots of formers. Former jobs, former friends, former boyfriends, a former husband, who was also my dad but had never been anything of the kind. Apparently, he’d wanted to make her an honest woman (eye roll), but then a few months after I was born decided he didn’t want honesty that bad.

The shirt, my Tom and Jerry shirt, was white with a cartoon graphic on the front. I loved it. It fit so perfectly that I forgot I was wearing it, which was all I wanted from clothing—for it to disappear. When I wore other shirts, I was always tugging and rearranging, but not this one. Plus, I was wearing it the day this story started—the day I caught the sickness of wanting to eat the world.