Pamela Todd

“There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling down a path, and the next thing she knew, the wind would take hold of her, like a hand pushing against her back. Her feet would start running without her even willing it, even knowing it. And she would run faster and faster across the prairie, until her heart jumped like a rabbit and her breath came in deep gasps and her feet barely skimmed the ground.It felt good to spend herself this way. The air tasted fresh and delicious; it smelled like damp earth, grass, and flowers. And her body felt strong, supple, and hungry for more of everything life could serve up.She ran and felt like one of the animals, as though her feet were growing up out of the earth. And she knew what they knew, that sometimes you ran just because you could, because of the way the rush of air felt on your face and how your legs reached out, eating up longer and longer patches of ground.She ran until the blood pounded in her ears, so loud that she couldn't hear the voices that said, You're not good enough, You're not old enough, You're not beautiful or smart or loveable, and you will always be alone.She ran because there were ghosts chasing her, shadows that pursued her, heartaches she was leaving behind. She was running for her life, and those phantoms couldn't catch her, not here, not anywhere. She would outrun fear and sadness and worry and shame and all those losses that had lined up against her like a column of soldiers with their guns shouldered and ready to fire. If she had to, she would outrun death itself.She would keep on running until she dropped, exhausted. Then she would roll over onto her back and breathe in the endless sky above her, sun glinting off her face.To be an animal, to have a body like this that could taste, see hear, and fly through space, to lie down and smell the earth and feel the heat of the sun on your face was enough for her. She did not need anything else but this: just to be alive, cool air caressing her skin, dreaming of Ivy and what might be ahead.”

“Ephemerals: That's what Hub called them; flowers that bloomed and died in a matter of weeks, before the trees leafed out and shaded them. She liked the way the word sounded in her head. I am an ephemeral. It made her feel like something passing and precious.”

“It was this little troublemaker named Ralph Waldo Duffy. Ralph Waldo is the one who really ruined the pageant. He picked up the baby Jesus by the feet, and your mother stood up in front of God and everybody and yelled, 'Joseph, put Jesus down before I smack you.' Even then she had the makings of a good mother.”

“What part did she give you?" Zoe asked her mother."Mary, the mother of God.""Talk about miscasting," Nelia said.”

“It was an ugly flower, pink with yellow-tipped stamens sticking out of the center. It deserved to die. Zoe pulled the hammer back in a slow motion and snapped it forward. There was a delicious sound of cracking plaster as the flower dissolved into rubble. White dust rose all around here."I hate that wallpaper," she said”

“You can't hold on, Zoe. Not to hate. Not even to love. You kill things that way. There's only one freedom. Forgiveness. And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to forgive yourself.”

“The things is," she said at last, " sometimes people can come back and still be lost.”

“She looked at him and realized that she loved him, out of nowhere, pure and simple. She loved him: this boy who fit so naturally in the water, the wild, and in everything else. She loved him: this boy who seemed to grow up out of the ground itself. There was a part of her that had known this from the first time she had seen him. This was what love was: a landslide in your heart.”

“They like bright colors," she said. He smiled at her, those dark tameless eyes, half-bold and half-shy. "They like beautiful things," he said.”

“Boobs are like boyfriends. You go around wishing for them and trying to figure out what you have to do to get them, and worrying about all the things you're probably doing wrong, and then one day, who knows why, you wake up and find you've got more than you wanted.”

“But she found herself drawn to Ivy because he wasn't like her at all, wasn't like anyone, really. Most people were different because they wanted to be noticed. ivy was different because he couldn't be anyone else”

“I love you, Zo. That's yours to keep. No matter what.”