Content Warning: The stories in this book contain explicit descriptions of sex work, drug use, thoughts of suicide, mental health conditions, and interpersonal violence.

Ms. Mooney teaches on the first floor of the Ukrainian Catholic School in New York City. She is frequently hungover in the mornings, and drinks at a nearby Indian restaurant on her lunch break. Her classroom is the school’s old library, a disheveled, noisy space filled with out-of-date textbooks and hidden stashes of pornography. Mooney is not an effective teacher, and fabricates her students’ standardized test scores when she knows they will fail. She often shares inappropriate information about her life—including her sex life—with her students.

Mooney’s addiction to alcohol defines her life away from work. She buys two or three 40-ounce bottles of beer on her way home, and then more in the evening. At 10:00pm she moves from beer to vodka. Feeling guilty, she tries to “better herself” by reading or listening to music, “as though God were checking up on [her]” (6). Occasionally, she’ll go to a bar and order drinks she doesn’t like in an attempt to force herself to drink more slowly.