Didn’t help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.
I am not going to think about it. It was ugly, but it’s over, and I’m not going to think about it.
Be careful what you wish for. There’s always a catch.
I am locked into the mirror and there is no door out.
I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them.
So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.
The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up.
I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.
I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I’ll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I’ll think about a career path.
He doesn’t see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare.
Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.
I’m learning how to taste everything.
I look at my homely sketch. It doesn’t need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn’t perfect and that makes it just right.
There’s no point in asking why, even though everybody will. I know why. The harder question is “why not?” I can’t believe she ran out of answers before I did.
IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.
You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl.
I would never be popular. I didn’t want to be; I liked being shy. I’d never be the smartest or the hottest or the happiest. By eighth grade you start to figure out your limits.
They’re on their way to the foreign-language wing. That’s no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they’ll choke to death on too much American.
There is no safer. There’s not even safe, never has been.
I am almost a real girl the entire drive home. I went to a diner. I drank hot chocolate and ate french fries. Talked to a guy for a while. Laughed a couple of times. A little like ice-skating for the first time, wobbly, but I did it.