QUOTE : She was smiling at me again, the way she had when we’d first arrived at the prom, but now more challenging, not quite playful. “I see you, the way he talks to you. He runs your life.”Her voice dropped into a cruelly accurate imitation of my dad’s stentorian tone. “Perry, you need to work harder. This is not acceptable. You will never get into Columbia with grades like these. How will you succeed in life?”I felt my internal temperature rise past my lips, cheeks, and forehead. “That’s not true.”“He tells you to do something, you do it. You spend your whole life afraid you will somehow disappoint him. And that is no way to live.”“Look,”I said, “I’m sorry, but you don’t know me that well. I mean, maybe you’ve lived in our house for a while, but you don’t know anything about how it really is with us.