“I will be thin and pure like a glass cup. Empty. Pure as light. Music. I move my hands over my body - my shoulders, my collarbone, my rib cage, my hip bones like part of an animal skull, my small thighs. In the mirror my face is pale and my eyes look bruised. My hair is pale and thin and the light comes through. I could be a lot younger than seventeen. I could be a child still, untouched.”

“When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.”

“So what I realized when I was a child was that if I were traveling as fast as light while holding a mirror before me, I would not see my image in the mirror, because as fast as the image of my face in light moved toward the mirror, why, just as fast would the mirror be moving away... It is a rather frightening idea, in fact, that if I moved at the speed of light, I could get no confirmation of my existence from an objective source of reflected light such as a mirror. I would be like a ghost in the universe, materially unverifiable in the stream of time.”

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.”

“During this journey I realized that my robe had fallen open and he could see my nightie. Pale lavender satin, short, hitting me at the upper thighs but there was a three-inch hem of smoky gray lace below that. The same lace was at the bodice over the cups of material covering my breasts. The nightie fit close at my chest and midriff but there was room to move around my hips and thighs. It was nowhere near as risqué as Kenzie’s teddy. It left something to the imagination and that was good, unless you had an imagination.Carefully, I pulled the edges of my robe together and his eyes speeded up to hit mine and I knew the instant they did, without any doubt, he had an imagination.”

“I reach for the napkin, and as I do I catch sight of my hands. They are knobby and crooked, thin-skinned, and—like my ruined face—covered with liver spots.My face. I push the porridge aside and open my vanity mirror. I should know better by now, but somehow I still expect to see myself. Instead, I find an Appalachian apple doll, withered and spotty, with dewlaps and bags and long floppy ears. A few strands of white hair spring absurdly from its spotted skull.I try to brush the hairs flat with my hand and freeze at the sight of my old hand on my old head. I lean close and open my eyes very wide, trying to see beyond the sagging flesh.It's no good. Even when I look straight into the milky blue eyes, I can't find myself anymore. When did I stop being me?”