“The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.”

“This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.”

“I sit at a table close to his desk. Ivy is in this class. She sits by the door. I keep staring at her, trying to make her look at me. That happens in movies--people can feel it when oother people stare at them and they just have to turn around and say something. Either Ivy has a great force field, or my lazer vision isn't very strong....”

“I keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am.“ She nods her head slowly. „What do you think you‘d look like?” “Smaller, for a start.”

“I just do what I'm told. If I felt like talking, I would explain that she couldn't pay me enough to play on her basketball team. All that running? Sweating? Getting knocked around by genetic mutants? I don't think so.”

“I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?”

“Emma hears me come up the stairs and asks me to watch a movie with her. I stick Band-Aids on my weeping cuts, put on pink pajamas so we match, and snuggle with her under her rainbow comforter. She arranges all of her stuffed animals around us in a circle, everyone facing the TV, then presses play...Ghosts dare not enter here.”