Ruta Sepetys

“It belongs to an Uptown attorney. What a horse’s ass. Thinks he’s so smart. He doesn’t know the difference between piss and perfume. I’ll have fun returning that to him. Maybe I’ll drop by his house at dinnertime.”

“Willie said fathers were overrated, that my father could be one of thousands, most likely some rotten crotch creep that loved clip-on ties. She said I should forget about it. But I didn’t forget about it. I couldn’t. So the game continued, and for years I added names to the list, imagining that 50 percent of me was somehow respectable instead of rotten. And creepy was certainly relative. After all, what was creepier, a man who loved clip-on ties or a girl who kept a log of fantasy fathers hidden in her desk drawer?”

“Hello, Josie,” they’d say with a half smile, followed by a sigh and sometimes a shake of the head. They acted like they felt sorry for me, but as soon as they were ten steps away, I’d hear one of the words, along with my mother’s name. The wealthy women pretended it singed their tongue to say whore. They’d whisper it and raise their eyebrows. Then they’d fake an expression of shock, like the word itself had crawled into their pants with a case of the clap. They didn’t need to feel sorry for me. I was nothing like Mother.”

“There was no ‘Miss Woodley.’ There was Willie. Willie was about life, and she grabbed it by the balls. Y’all know that. She loved a stiff drink, a stiff hundred, and she loved her business. And she didn’t judge nobody. She loved everyone equal—accountants, queers, musicians, she welcomed us all, said we were all idiots just the same.”

“You’ll have champagne. All girls like champagne.” All girls didn’t like champagne. I preferred root beer. Willie preferred anything that smelled like gasoline and burned her throat. She could hold her liquor better than any man, and I wished she was there to help me navigate John Lockwell.”

“The fact that Cincinnati thought I resembled him in any way sickened me. It made me want to run and hide. When I was a child in Detroit and terrors chased me, I would run to my hiding spot, a crawl space under the front porch of the boardinghouse we lived in. I’d wedge my small body into the cool brown earth and lie there, escaping the ugliness that was inevitably going on above me. I’d plug my ears with my fingers and hum to block out the remnants of Mother’s toxic tongue or sharp backhand. It became a habit, humming, and a decade later, I was still doing it. Life had turned cold again, the safety of the cocoon under the porch was gone, and lying in the dirt had become a metaphor for my life.”

“I wished I had a friend in the Quarter, someone like Charlotte. Someone I could share secrets with, collapse on her bedroom floor, and spill my guts about Patrick to. I saw so many girls walking arm in arm, laughing, an inexplicable closeness and comfort that they had a protector and confidante. They had someone they could count on.”

“We all laced together—a brothel madam, an English professor, a mute cook, a quadroon cabbie, and me, the girl carrying a bucket of lies and throwing them like confetti.”

“The words tasted sour. I agreed with Patrick. In New Orleans, sometimes death did feel more like socializing. And he knew better than anyone else. He frequented postmortem parties daily, trolling for books.”

“That’s a good hustle,” I told him. “We both got a little hustle, don’t we?” He pulled on his jacket. “But I like to think we got more heart.”

“Massachusetts has no idea what’s coming for them. I bet you’ll be the first Mae West they’ve ever had.”

“Man, you’re a regular Bonnie Parker.” “A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.” Jesse found that hysterical. “Did Willie say that?” “Nope, Mae West. Now, how do I get on this thing in a skirt?”

“Jesse motioned to my hair. “Looks like you’ve been in the bath yourself.” He settled into a chair on the front porch. “I had just washed my hair, but then I had to go shoot someone. Do you want a cold drink?”

“Look at you, locked and loaded, like Mae West of the Motor City.”

“You got to get outta here, Josie. New Orleans is fine for some people, real good for a few. But not for you. Too much baggage that’ll pull you down. You got dreams and the potential to make ’em real.”

“They were certainly a pair. Cincinnati in a dead man’s suit, Mother in a dead man’s wallet.”

“Willie appeared completely calm about the news of Mother. She always said she could make tea in a tornado.”

“The lie came out so easily it frightened me. I used to feel sick to my stomach when I heard Mother tell a lie. How can you do it? How do you live with yourself? I used to wonder. But here I was, lying to Miss Paulsen and smiling while doing it.”

“If I poured all the lies I had told into the Mississippi, the river would rise and flood the city.”

“My biggest fear was that the old Charlie was in there somewhere trying to communicate, but a synaptic disconnect made his behavior erratic.”

“It went on. Each lie I told required another to thicken the paste over the previous. It was useless, like when I learned to crochet and made a long string of loops. Being useless builds character, Miss Paulsen had said. Perhaps she was home now, drinking a weak Earl Grey from last night’s tea bag, massaging her taffied scalp.”

“Futile. She was telling me it was useless. That I was useless.”

“Somehow I had to turn the salted peanuts in the cigar box into petits fours.”

“This town will eat you up if you’re not careful. But I won’t be here forever.”

“Be in control of your piece, Jo. The minute it takes control of you, you’re dead,” Willie would tell me.”

“I didn’t agree with Cokie. It wasn’t just rich folks. Mother was soul broke, too.”

“Tragedy was a big social event, and everyone wanted in on it.”

“Willie said normal was boring and that I should be grateful that I had a touch of spice. She said no one cared about boring people, and when they died, they were forgotten, like something that slips behind the dresser.”

“It amazed me how some people could touch an instrument and create something so beautiful, and when others tried, like me, it just sounded like mangled noise.”

“One day when I was fourteen, I told Charlie that I hated Mother. “Don’t hate her, Jo,” he told me. “Feel sorry for her. She’s not near as smart as you. She wasn’t born with your compass, so she wanders around, bumping into all sorts of walls. That’s sad.” I understood what he meant, and it made me see Mother differently. But wasn’t there some sort of rule that said parents had to be smarter than their kids? It didn’t seem fair.”

“Some things just won’t go away, no matter how hard you scrub.”

“I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.”

“Engrave your pieces, Jo, and they’ll always find their way back to you,” said Willie.”

“I had said too much. He was giving me the look. I hated the look. It was the “You’ve had it tough, huh, kid?” look. It made me feel pathetic.”

“What do you do with all this bank, Josie? Be a lot easier if you just lifted your skirt.” “The only reason I’d lift my skirt is to pull out my pistol and plug you in the head.”

“You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.”

“Writers of historical fiction would be lost without libraries and archives.”

“Decisions, they shape our destiny.”

“Krasivaya. It means beautiful, but with strength. Unique.”

“...we're dealing with two devils who both want to rule hell.”

“Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin' we're goin' one place and we end up another. But that's okay. The important thing is to start.”

“I wasn't certain of anything anymore, except that New Orleans was a faithless friend and I wanted to leave her.”

“Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.”

“They drink like fish and ask the most probing questions.""Welcome to the South." Patrick laughed.”

“I've got a business to run. Elmo's bringing over a new bed frame. Dora broke her's last night. That girl should be in a side show, not a whorehouse.”

“The scent of Havana tobacco draped thick from the magnolia trees in the front yard. Ice cubes mingled and clinked against the sides of crystal tumblers. Patrick said hello to a group of men sitting on the veranda. I heard the pop of a champagne cork and laughter from inside.”

“Let me tell you something 'bout these rich Uptown folk," said Cokie. "They got everything that money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gone be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir.”

“Why you frettin', Jo? You not sure?"I inhaled my tears in order to speak. "I'm sure I want to go, but I'm not sure it's possible.Why would they accept me? And if they did, how would I pay for it? I don't want to get my hopes up only to be disappointed. I'm always disappointed.""Now don't let fear keep you in New Orleans. Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin' we're goin' one place and we end up another. But that's okay. The important thing is to start. I know you can do it. Come on, Josie girl, give those ol' wings a try.""Willie doesn't want me to.""So what, you gonna stay here just so you can clean her house and run around with all the naked crazies in the Quarter? You got a bigger story than that.”

“People I didn't know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn't ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.”

“Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.”