Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to live in New York City. She spent her childhood winding pearls around her neck and sneaking her mother's clothes from the closet. There was a tube of bright red lipstick hidden beneath her socks, and at night she dreamed of high heels clacking against shiny marble floors. She tried to hide her country accent, polishing away any word that couldn't be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, and spent hours tugging at her naturally curling hair in an attempt to make it hang long as straight like the hair of the glossy girls in magazines. She wanted the world she saw in books and on television: glimmering skyscrapers, roaring traffic, foreign foods, never-ending bottles of deep red wine, and, most of all, to be always surrounded by a crowd.
