Maile Meloy is a writer and novelist living in Los Angeles. Her fiction regularly appears in both The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her latest novel, The Apothecary, is also her first Young Adult book.
 

"We walked that night to Musso and Frank's, which was my favorite restaurant, but it didn't feel like a treat. My parents tried to pretend everything was just fine, but we took back alleys, and they watched the corners at every street. My father walked so fast that my mother and I had to walk double-time just to keep up. We took a booth, and I ordered the thin pancakes called flannel cakes for dinner. I wanted my parents to object and make me order chicken and vegetables - I wanted things to be normal — but they didn't even notice."

— The Apothecary