Once upon a time, in a cul-de-sac realm, not far from a freeway exchange and an outlet mall, there lived a monarch, his queen, and their three daughters.

Theirs was a normal, functional family, for its time: the monarch was a male in his 40s, the queen was a like-aged female at the end of her fertility, and the three princesses were teenagers. Their kingdom included a bearded collie, comical and rambunctious, and a yellow cat who was introduced as a kitten to a household with a mature dog, so Yanther thought he was a pooch. Yanther’s name came from “yellow panther,” an idea voiced by the youngest girl. The dog’s name was Magic, and her namer, the oldest daughter, meant it for mage-wisdom and not for the tricks she never managed to perfect.

The family was like an anti-myth: the father bold and insecure, the mother severely opinionated, the dog a spayed bitch and the cat a neutered male. The princesses all bore “L” names, to match the family handle, and no one was selfish or envious or as good as she was beautiful.

Linda, then almost 17, was intelligent, nervous, and attractive enough for all practical purposes. Lana was almost two years younger, better looking, graceful and friendly. She wasn’t as bright as Linda, and she was more affectionate. The baby Lola had just turned 14. Her hair was the prettiest in that brunette family: almost dark blonde, and curly. She seemed to have inherited her mother’s impatience. Yet she was the easiest-going of the daughters; offenses and insults just rolled off her back.

The girls were teenagers, so they had friends outside their home and they dieted most days. Each considered herself fat, and sister time seemed to reinforce their opinions. They got along fairly well together, compatible even when alone and not bothered by parents or teachers or other authorities, although they did argue about the diets. Linda was a classic calorie counter and scientist about the issue. Lana was the one who tried herbal supplements and OTC pills. Lola fasted about one day a week; absolute refusal to eat was more successful with her parents than trying to reduce what she ate from her plate.

The diets didn’t work. The girls put on normal adolescent female fat and also added a layer from the breaks they took in their diet routines, breaks which of course were saturated with salty-fatty-sweet treats until they forced themselves, again, into deprivation.

The princesses were full siblings but they had different traits. Some of their differences were genetic, but most were situational. They concerned birth order and geography.

For Linda was as serious as any first-born. It’s an overlooked trait, but the fact is that first-borns have rookie parents. No matter how much babysitting or aunt/uncling they’ve experienced, the mother and father of a first child are profoundly insecure. And the baby, especially if it’s female and thus programmed to read the emotions of others, picks up on the parental insecurity and steps up to take some of the parental load. A first daughter may be modest and can exhibit a sense of humor, but she’s deadly serious about most things.

Lana had the middle child position. She was the only one in the family with an older sibling and a younger one, and that encouraged two qualities in her: a cooperative ability to get along with others and an elusive ability to get away from the rest of the family. Even when Lana was physically present she was often emotionally not there.

Little Lola didn’t care. The family was formed when she arrived; she had to find a way to fit in. She was agreeable and she wanted those around her to be happy. She liked pairing people up and she was uncomfortable around disagreement. She was the daughter who gave the best hugs, but she also wore a pin that Linda gave her – I’m number 3 and I don’t try at all – and it was appropriate.

Then there was location. Some kingdoms are on islands, some are on cliffs, some are desert fortresses, some are walled municipalities. Theirs was suburban, with twisting streets and roads that went nowhere. It was built to be safe and peaceful. It was called a bedroom community.

And so it was. The Love kingdom was a quiet place to sleep in. That appealed to busy grownups. Its yards and playgrounds were built for children. But teenagers aren’t grownups or children. Adolescents are young enough for their time to move slowly but old enough to decide. They want their lives to matter. They burn for significance.

Teenagers need the bustle of the city or the freedom of rural or wilderness areas. At best, suburbs drive them to drive cars, and kill them off faster than any urban gangs. At worst suburbs drive them crazy.

Linda seemed to get this early on. By the time she was eight she knew she didn’t want a subordinate life like her mother’s. She decided when she was eleven that she wouldn’t be a virgin bride or even college student. At twelve she began modeling her future self on beloved characters in her favorite books, and she used those books to escape the boredom of her own suburban existence.

Lana and Lola were different. Neither minded life-at-home the way Linda did. The younger daughters were more cheerful. And they joined their parents in mocking Linda’s seriousness. They weren’t mean, and they didn’t intend any cruelty, but they followed the parental example of making light about Linda’s theories and proclamations, and then they outdid their parents in furthering the mockery when they saw how much it bothered Linda.

For it didn’t matter how wisely Linda’s father counseled her, once he understood her pain, to just ignore the sibling jibes – the more you react to their teasing, the more you’ll egg them on – because Linda didn’t see the harassment as teasing; she interpreted it as a failure to understand ideas that she thought were important.

The girls maintained their differences as they grew. Linda developed a successful sense of humor – often getting into trouble as the class clown – but everyone assessed her as serious anyway. School was easy for her (and boring); she had no trouble obtaining good grades without studying. She spent a lot of time alone, reading and writing and considering the world’s problems. She was something of a nerd magnet; she attracted the geeky marginal individuals in her class.

Lana was the good sport in the family. She had the best physical coordination, enjoyed team games, was almost as good at losing as winning, although she mostly won. She was capable of strong emotions but she hid that quality behind an easy-going attitude. She had numerous friends and attracted boys easily. Lana would end up being the one who left the family of origin, moving as soon as she was old enough to the other coast, but she was always considered the prettiest and most popular of the sisters.

Lola was a sweetheart. She wanted those around her to be happy. She had a ready smile and didn’t easily cry. She never matched Linda’s academic achievements or Lana’s athletic ones, but she got along with almost everyone (even Linda, although she was the most weary of the family with her big sister’s philosophy and theories). She had a comfortable group of friends from her own class but also befriended and often hung with Lana’s crowd.

So it was Linda who noticed Curtis. He was a quiet, hoodie-clad boy who shared most of her classes and always sat near the back of the room. That’s where Linda liked to be too; distance from the front of the class retarded her tendency to dominate the discussion.

Curtis was not cute. Stricken with acne and frizzy brown hair, he had prominent ears and a bony body. He was below average height and his pigeon-toed walk was one of the several qualities for which he was mocked. He appeared to have no friends. He usually wore his hood up over his bad hair, and he spent most of his class time drawing noir-ish cartoons in his textbook.

He was not stupid. The few times he participated in class revealed that he was bright and even well-read. Linda couldn’t say she liked him, but she found him interesting and thought he could be a model for a short story character she might someday write.

They became acquainted not in class, but in walking to and from school. They may have been the only seniors that year without cars. That’s one of the dangerous conditions about suburbs: all the cars. True, the houses are hermetically sealed, so the fire retardants in the upholstery and the other domestic toxins have an opportunity to accumulate and concentrate inside. And the extra money spent on playground safety just encourages kids to take more risks, so those without helicopter parents watching and playing with them are likely to break bones and heads. But the biggest problem, statistically, is all the cars. They are the only place a teen can have privacy, so adolescents spend extra time in them. That custom at worst increases the number of collisions; at the least it sends kids through drive-thru fast food concessions. Neither course will build well minds and bodies.

Lana and Lola weren’t old enough to drive, but they had driver friends. Each spent a normal amount of time in cars with other teens. Linda tended to walk. She encountered Curtis and sometimes they walked together a little, talked together a bit. When he first shared his violent fantasies with her, Linda viewed them as creative. They matched his class doodles. He seemed able to distinguish his fantasies from reality. But the fourth time he launched into a dark story about revenge, with surprising details about bomb making and assault weaponry, alarms rang in her head. She tried to make light of his words. He scowled at her and stopped speaking. More alarms.

Linda was no fan of authority. She didn’t feel comfortable talking about Curtis to a teacher. She surprised herself when she brought it up to her father. And he surprised Linda by taking her seriously and stepping up, with her, to visit Child Protective Services.

They didn’t know where else to go. And Curtis was not yet an adult.

No one lived happily ever after, but everyone lived. When Curtis was taken into custody, a cache of bought and built weaponry was found in his room. His private journals suggested that, without intervention, he and who knew how many students wouldn’t have made it.

Curtis’s prognosis is not rosy. But at least he got some mental health attention. The whole episode solidified Linda’s determination to get herself out of the suburbs as soon as possible.