“I grab a chair. "I don't mean to pry," I say, "but we're in a hospital. You sure you're fine?"She sighs heavily. "No getting anything past you, huh?""I also often notice when water is wet. I have a keen detective's mind like that.”

“Why don't you grab a chair," I joked, "and sit down!"And then, like she so often did, Mary smiled.”

“I'm sure I look like a drowned cat.""You look fine. The wet look works for you."I scowled. "Now I know you're lying.”

“People say that rape is not sex, that it's violence," Lucy says, bitterly. "But it's also sex. You can't get around that," she says. "he didn't run me over with a car. He had sex with me. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to have sex with an eighth-grader. You're not supposed to have sex when you're in eighth grade. It was very intimate. You can't get around it. This part of the body," she says, gesturing from her heart to her lower abdomen, though I understand she means to indicate her vagina. "If you're sitting around with a group of women, talking about various traumas, someone will say, I got beaten by my mother. But if you say, I got raped, it's a different thing."I wonder if that is true. Is rape really the worst sort of violation? I'm not sure. I often wonder why it matters whether we're penetrated or not. There is the pain, but the pain doesn't last. The shame does.”

“If you're new, then perhaps you've seen it. Have you seen it, by chance?”I frowned. “It?”“Yes. It.”“It...what?” I asked cautiously, facing the old faery again. “What are you looking for?”“I don't know.” She sighed heavily, seeming to shrink in on herself. “I don't remember. I just know I lost it. You haven't seen it, have you?”“No,” I told her firmly. “I haven't seen it.”“Oh.” The old creature sighed again, shrinking down a little more. “Are you sure? I thought you might have seen it.”“So, anyway,” Puck broke in, before the conversation could go in another circle.”

“Are you sure you're okay?" she asks. "Should I call 911 or something?""I'm totally fine," says Rob. "It's going to take a little while to recover, I think. It was like ... an orgasm... times a hundred." He sighs again, and continues to lie on the table."Really?" says Jael. "Like a ..." she isn't sure how she feels about that at all.”