Book excerpt: Left to their own devices by their alcoholic mother, Ada and Sam cultivate an insular world into which they soon draw a third wheel—a pockmarked, limping wallflower named Dorrie. In the years spanning childhood to young adulthood, these three troubled girls learn to lean on each other completely, finding ways to fill each other up and tear each other down. But when a horrible accident upends their reality, they find they must decide whether to continue to foster their codependent cycle, or to break free, with or without each other’s aid.