People decide what you’re like before they even get to know you. They think they know all about you. Except, you're never who they think you are.

He found himself daydreaming back to his own teenage years in Hong Kong, sneaking into the botanical gardens with Betsy Choy, those dreamlike afternoons he had never told anyone about, and had not remembered to relive, for many years. The young are always the same, always and everywhere, he thought, and he shifted the car into gear and drove on.

He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him.

She had been brought up to follow rules, to believe that the proper functioning of the world depended upon her compliance, and follow them—and believe—she did.