Your eyes. It’s a day’s worth of work to look into them.
Censorship is the child of fear the father of ignorance and the desperate weapon of fascists everywhere.
When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside – walking through their days with no idea who they are.
Never forget that women are people, not furniture. They aren’t sofas to be jumped around on at your leisure.
This is an uglynasty Momside. She bought a book about it. Tough love. Sour sugar. Barbed velvet. Silent talk.
Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech. – Benjamin Franklin, 1722.
He is hunched over a spinning pot, his hands muddy red. “Welcome to the only class that will teach you how to survive,” he says. “Welcome to Art.
When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside- walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack, or cancer, or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job.
Afraid that my head might burst through the roof, I head for the mall. I have ten bucks in my pocket – what to spend it on? French fries – ten bucks’ worth of french fries, ultimate fantasy.
Of course I want to be a model. I want to paint my eyelids gold. I saw that on a magazine cover and it looked amazing – turned the model into a sexy alien that everyone would look at but nobody dared touch.
I head for my closet after school. I want to take the poster of Maya Angelou home, and I’d like to keep some of my tree pictures and my turkey-bone sculpture. The rest of the stuff can stay, so long as it doesn’t have my name on it. Who knows, some other kids may need a safe place to run to next year.
It means, ‘You are my heart.’” I leaned forward, took her hands in mine, and whispered into her ear. “You have always been my heart, Country.” Before I could kiss her, Isabel kissed me.
Dr. Kerr rose off the bed. “Damned fool,” he growled. “Excuse me?” I said. “Rowley, the imposter. Autumnal fever indeed. Your mother has yellow fever. There’s no doubt at all.
When Heather sees what I have done, she bursts into tears again, sobbing that it isn’t my fault. My stomach is killing me. Her room isn’t big enough for this much emotion. I leave without saying goodbye.
I wake up on time for four days in a row, get on the bus four days in a row, ride home after school. I want to scream. I think I’ll need to take a day off every once in a while.
The playground was a war of girls versus boys and now I feel shame cuz some kids must have wanted to stand with the other team, and some must have wanted new teams entirely, but the world was drawn for us binary in clumsy chalk lines, and we’d try to do better when we were in charge.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strange little girls screaming through their fingers. My patient sisters, always waiting for me. I scroll through our confessions and rants and prayers, desperation eating us one slow bloody bite at a time.
Then Ms. Conners blows her whistle to stop and explain the retarded scoring system in tennis where the numbers don’t make sense and love doesn’t count for anything.
I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else.
The seniors look my way before they leave. One girl, not the cheerleader, nods her head, and says, “Way to go. I hope you’re OK.” With hours left in the school year, I have suddenly become popular. Thanks to the big mouths on the lacrosse team, everybody knew what happened before sundown. Mom took me to the hospital to stitch up the cut on my hand. When we got home, there was a message on the machine from Rachel. She wants me to call her.