A List Of Cages Quotes

Hate ricochets, but kindness does too.

It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered

Why is time like that? Why does it slow down in the places you don’t want it to, but it speeds away when you’re happy?

Because people heal a whole lot faster when they're with someone who loves them

If I really had powers, I could turn off pain the way I can shut my eyes. But I can’t. I feel it. Skin doesn’t get thicker. Instead, it remembers.

As an animal lover, I don’t like zoos. I feel the only creatures that should be caged behind bars are politicians, lobbyists, and lawyers. And rapists, but I’ve already listed that three times.

when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.

I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should have been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won't let you grow.

She said no one is evil, only unhappy, and unhappiness festers inside like sores.

I know what I think, but people don't want you to say what you think. They want you to say what they think. And knowing what that is isn't easy.

Getting smacked in the face with a Harry Potter book does not qualify as a fight," Charlie says. "First of all, it wasn't just any Harry Potter book. It was Order of the Phoenix." Matt gasps. He knows that Order of the Phoenix is the longest and most potentially dangerous of all the Harry Potter books when used as a weapon.

It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.

And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.” Emerald wipes her wet face again. “There are different ways to help people, Adam. There are different ways to do good.

I'm dizzy. I'm here. I'm alive.

You don’t really know people when your back is turned.

This part is hardest. A billion years of evolution tells your cells to run. But you can’t run. You have to turn around and face the desert wall.

When you know you’re going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they’re living it alongside you. But when you don’t, it isn’t only not seeing double—it’s not seeing at all. Because if they aren’t there, you aren’t either.

What keeps you trapped?...What keeps you from living the life you want? What keeps you from being free?

I wasted so much time living in fear that I thought I was comfortable, but I was writing in a cage that I didn't know existed, making lists of all my worries with no intent to do anything about them.

Superheroes aren't real, and even if they were, they come too late.

Their eyes like safety nets, I can’t fall.

There was nowhere to go that me and the pain didn’t follow.

It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.... When you know you're going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they're living it alongside you. But when you don't, it isn't only not seeing double--it's not seeing at all. Because if they aren't there, you aren't either.

I want my body to be mine again.

And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.

Next time you have to hand something in, just tell me. I can proofread it or whatever." I nod, but I know I won't. If he's being nice enough to offer, I should be nice enough to never do it.

Because when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.

I should be afraid, but I feel empty. I remember my father’s hands. My mother’s hands. What hands are meant to do.

But wanting isn't the same as having.

Monday is like all Mondays. Like I’m sitting at the bottom of a pool, listening underwater to people living up above.

But whenever I would imagine leaving, I’d see the blue sky like the ocean—no walls or shore or end in sight. And I’d see myself disappear.

He was so stubborn, but maybe that's a good thing to be--a force of will that doesn't die no matter how many horrible things happen to you.

People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.

Lovers, forget your love, And list to the love of these, She a window flower, And he a winter breeze. When the frosty window veil Was melted down at noon, And the caged yellow bird Hung over her in tune, He marked her through the pane, He could not help but mark, And only passed her by, To come again at dark. He was a winter wind, Concerned with ice and snow, Dead weeds and unmated birds, And little of love could know. But he sighed upon the sill, He gave the sash a shake, As witness all within Who lay that night awake. Perchance he half prevailed To win her for the flight From the firelit looking-glass And warm stove-window light. But the flower leaned aside And thought of naught to say, And morning found the breeze A hundred miles away.

When someone says something, they automatically know what to say back. But for me it's as if the pathway between my brain and mouth is damaged, like a rare form of paralysis.

My mother once said that the planet was like an enormous womb, and every single one of us was a fetus. Death was nothing to be afraid of. It was just birth to another world, and someone would be waiting for us there. Sometimes I try to see this, my mother and father as two newborns holding hands and ejected into this other world. There they are just beginning.

He sounds so tired. "I know if there was any choice at all, they wouldn't have left me alone. They would have made sure I was taken care of." In a heartbeat, a thousand memories at once. All the times I knew things I couldn't have known. All the times he was assigned to me. "Julian," I say, "maybe they did.

I have this ache inside, like how you might feel if you slept through Christmas.

I'm happy. And I see no reason to pretend I'm not.

His proposal had been thorough, listing the benefits of their union to her father. In short, she’d have a beautiful cage and all the time in the world to admire herself in the bars.

She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass

Sometimes when I can't sleep and I'm trying to think good thoughts, I imagine the magical place between worlds, the place in the flash where Elian's ship disappears before to reappears again. In that split second maybe time slows down, and he can see all the invisible places. And maybe, sometimes, he sees them.

Then as he's tucking me into bed, he's supposed to ask, How many stars? On a great day I'm supposed to say nine or ten. But if it was amazing, the best day I ever had, I'm supposed to cheat and say something like ten thousand stars.

It’s strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.

I’m not sure why people want you to look at them when they’re angry with you. That’s when you want to look away the most.

Some words stay in your head long after they’re spoken.

If I really had powers, I would turn off pain the way I can shut my eyes. But I can’t. I feel it. Skin doesn’t get thicker. Instead, it remembers.

Minutes tick by and I keep sitting on the couch alone and drinking my soda, feeling so awkward I want to leave, but feeling so lonely that I can’t.

Death was nothing to be afraid of. It was just birth to another world, and someone would be waiting for us there.

It’s like we’re back inside the center of the labyrinth and I’m struck with so much regret and so much love, it’s worse than a heart attack.

Nothing they're doing hurts, but it feels as if something is tearing away the center of my chest. The cold is dissolving. Their hands are soft. Everything is quiet except the tears that are climbing from somewhere beneath my ribs. I've cried in pain and I've cried in fear, but these tears are different, deeper, like I'm breaking apart. The noise should drive them away, but Emerald's hand stays, and Adam's hand stays, and he keeps washing my face long after it has to be clean.

I walk the perimeter of the fence, and try to summon what I used to feel back when I thought I could bend time and spoons. I touch the red grains in the wood. I have a vague memory of doing that.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

For everyone else, talking just seems to come naturally. When someone says something, they automatically know what to say back. But for me it's as if the pathway between brain and mouth is damaged, like a rare form of paralysis. I can't speak, so instead I fiddle with the plastic tip of my shoelace.

it’s pointless to make someone a priority  when you're at the bottom of their list We have rib cages To keep our demons From hurting anyone Other than Ourselves

I know what I think, but people don’t want you to say what you think. They want you to say what they think. And knowing what that is isn’t easy.

Afraid of talking. Afraid of trying. Afraid of wanting. Afraid of dreaming.

There are different ways to help people, Adam. There are different ways to do good.

Nothing means anything! People just go. They don’t finish. We don’t die after we complete some mission, we just die.

Beautiful and too many to see all at once. Ten million stars.

She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.

Instead I feel something warm spread through my body. People I love will be watching me. Their eyes like safety nets, I can't fall.

It’s strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them.

Wait, theater kids?” Camila sneers. “Careful, Camila.” Charlie laughs. “Adam was almost a theater kid.” “Yeah, maybe if I wasn’t so lazy.

Hate ricochets, but kindness does too

Why is time like that? Why does it slow down in the places you don't want it to, but it speeds away when you're happy?

The wind picks up, but instead of putting his sweatshirt back on, he just fits the hood over his head. As he walks forward, it billows behind him like a cape.

It seems unfair, the way unhappiness flows out of a person, just to ricochet.

She always wore dresses, and she was pretty like an angel or someone’s mother.

That's another thing. Boys don't smile a lot. I'm not sure if they're unhappy or if they're just pretending to be unhappy. But Adam always looks kind.

He's smiling brightly, but I don't really know what he's thinking, because you can't always believe smiles.

As for Jenner himself? Well, he was a dream. He was sweet and funny, hardworking and thoughtful. An itemization of all the ways in which he was generally wonderful would be even longer than Abi’s to-do list. Gavar was probably the type most girls would go for, but his temper meant his buff physique was more intimidating than appealing. And the Young Master was simply too spooky even to think of in those terms. So, yes, Jenner was the only one of the three she didn’t find scary. By itself this wasn’t a ringing endorsement. But add in all the plus points as well, and Miss Abigail Amanda Hadley had quite a crush going on.

My mother once said that the planet was like an enormous womb, and every single one of us was a fetus. Death was nothing to be afraid of. It was just birth to another world, and someone would be waiting for us there.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Zadie Smith, White Teeth Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column Ali Smith, There But For The These books found me at just the right time in my life. I can remember each of them so vividly, I remember the characters as though they were friends, sometimes even family, I can remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I turned that final page. They’ve stayed with me ever since.

Not long ago, I told my son I love him so much that sometimes my chest fills up like it’s going to burst, and I have to take a deep breath. He responded, “That sounds like a medical condition.” Did I mention he’s a bit of a smart aleck?

I really liked movies and books about people exploring new places. When I was little, I never wondered how I’d do it. I just knew one day I would go everywhere. But when you get older, you realise wanting isn’t the same as having. There are all those places you want to go, but it doesn’t mean you can actually get there.

He was about to pocket a list of local sanitariums when he heard "Traitor," and saw Mickey and Herman Gerstein standing a few feet away. Cohen with a clean shot, but a half dozen witnesses spoiling his chance. Buzz said, "I suppose this means my guard gig's kaput. Huh, Mick?" The man looked hurt as much as he looked mad. "Goyishe shitheel traitor. Cocksucker. Communist. How much money did I give you? How much money did I set up for you that you should do me like you did?" Buzz said, "Too much, Mick." "That is no smart answer, you fuck. You should beg. You should beg that I don't do you slow." "Would it help?" "No." "There you go, boss." Mickey said, "Herman, leave this room"; Gerstein exited. The typers kept typing and the clerks kept clerking. Buzz gave the little hump's cage a rattle. "No hard feelin's, huh?" Mickey said, "I will make you a deal, because when I say "deal," it is always to trust. Right?" "Trust" and "deal" were the man's bond-it was why he went with him instead of Siegel or Dragna. "Sure, Mick." "Send Audrey back to me and I will not hurt a hair on her head and I will not do you slow. Do you trust my word?" "Yes." "Do you trust I'll get you?" "You're the oddson favorite, boss." "Then be smart and do it." "No deal. Take care, Jewboy. I'll miss you. I really will.

The day we were all allowed to bring our pets into the classroom was going to be special. It was a nice sunny morning and Batty my black mouse had been spruced up for the occasion. He was in his new second-hand plastic cage, it was mustard coloured, had the mandatory wheel and sleeping chamber but had previously been a torture chamber for my cousin's late hamster. Despite my best efforts to revitalise it the wire remained rusty in places but at least it was more secure than the wooden enclosure my father had made... and Batty had instantly, and repeatedly, chewed his way out of. Sadly the species list for the class was a meagre four: rabbit, hamster, guinea pig and... one domesticated house mouse, Batty. They all ignored him, they cooed over the 'bunnies' and those chubby-fat tailless things whose eyes bulged when you squeezed them a bit, and queued to offer carrot and cabbage to those cow-licked multicoloured freaks with scratchy claws, but not one of the kids wanted to see, let alone hold, my mouse. By mid-afternoon the teacher finally caught sight of the lonely boy whispering into his mouse cage in the corner and gingerly agreed to let the rodent walk onto her hand in front of the class. Batty promptly pissed and then pooed three perfect wet little pellets, the classroom erupted with a huge collective 'urrgh' and then a frenzy of giggling, she practically threw him back in his cage and then made a big deal about washing her hands. With soap. Then we were all meant to wash our hands, with soap, but I didn't and no one noticed.

While the reading list in the book belongs to one character, there are so many more books I wanted to include, books that have changed the way I’ve thought about writing, people, the world. Books that inspired me, moved me, taught me more than any school lesson could. Books that made me want to be a reader and eventually a writer. This is my reading list. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Zadie Smith, White Teeth Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column Ali Smith, There But For The These books found me at just the right time in my life. I can remember each of them so vividly, I remember the characters as though they were friends, sometimes even family, I can remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I turned that final page. They’ve stayed with me ever since.

What, you’re looking at my lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce?” The old man had come by little and little into the room, until he now touched my guardian with his elbow, and looked close up into his face with his spectacled eyes. “It’s one of her strange ways, that she’ll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named ‘em all.” This was in a whisper. “Shall I run ‘em over, Flite?” he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away, affecting to sweep the grate. 
“If you like,” she answered hurriedly. The old man, looking up at the cages, after another look at us, went through the list. “Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That’s the whole collection,” said the old man, “all cooped up together, by my noble and learned brother.” “This is a bitter wind!” muttered my guardian. “When my noble and learned brother gives his Judgment, they’re to be let go free” said Krook, winking at us again.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor. “No way that just happened.” Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to Steven. What are the fucking odds, huh? Loretta was always a cranky old bitch. No sense of humor. Even when I was a kid she hated me. Thought I was a bad influence on her precious grandchild. Don’t know where she got that idea from. She moved out to Arizona years ago. Like a lot of women her age, she still enjoys a good tug on the slot machine—hence her frequent trips to Sin City. Apparently this is one such trip. Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Consider Shakespeare: we’re most familiar with a small number of his classics, forgetting that in the span of two decades, he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Simonton tracked the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays, measuring how often they’re performed and how widely they’re praised by experts and critics. In the same five-year window that Shakespeare produced three of his five most popular works—Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello—he also churned out the comparatively average Timon of Athens and All’s Well That Ends Well, both of which rank among the worst of his plays and have been consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development. In every field, even the most eminent creators typically produce a large quantity of work that’s technically sound but considered unremarkable by experts and audiences. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose the 50 greatest pieces of classical music, the list included six pieces by Mozart, five by Beethoven, and three by Bach. To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand. In a study of over 15,000 classical music compositions, the more pieces a composer produced in a given five-year window, the greater the spike in the odds of a hit. Picasso’s oeuvre includes more than 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries—only a fraction of which have garnered acclaim. In poetry, when we recite Maya Angelou’s classic poem “Still I Rise,” we tend to forget that she wrote 165 others; we remember her moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and pay less attention to her other 6 autobiographies. In science, Einstein wrote papers on general and special relativity that transformed physics, but many of his 248 publications had minimal impact. If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.” Across fields, Simonton reports that the most prolific people not only have the highest originality; they also generate their most original output during the periods in which they produce the largest volume.* Between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, Edison pioneered the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon telephone. But during that period, he filed well over one hundred patents for other inventions as diverse as stencil pens, a fruit preservation technique, and a way of using magnets to mine iron ore—and designed a creepy talking doll. “Those periods in which the most minor products appear tend to be the same periods in which the most major works appear,” Simonton notes. Edison’s “1,093 patents notwithstanding, the number of truly superlative creative achievements can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor. “No way that just happened.” Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to Steven. What are the fucking odds, huh? .... Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

Do you see? My breath...I'm real

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Zadie Smith, White Teeth Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column Ali Smith, There But For The

. . . Wasted. . . . Breakfast with the Great Judge was uneventful. They did not talk of the Jorgian war. Shortly after breakfast Marin winged away from the Judge’s Court. As he removed the Marin disguise from the face and body of Wade Trask, he could mentally list only two things that had occurred during his visit. The Great Judge had listened to his plea on behalf of Wade Trask. And Delindy had secretly come to him to arrange the details of her going with him to Asia. It seemed to him, who could leave nothing to chance, that either event could have been the main reason for his being invited to Court. He could well imagine that the conversation of the previous evening had been promoted by the Great Judge himself, and not by Edmund Slater. And Delindy’s coming to him had three possible explanations. On the one hand the Great Judge might be coolly using his own mistress to spy on her former lover, clearly confident that she would be loyal to the ruler of a planet rather than to some underling. On the other hand, Delindy herself might be a Jorgian spy using her body, first to ensnare a Group Master, and then the dictator, for her own country. The third possibility was that she loved David Marin. There was actually, Marin realized, a fourth consideration that he could have. She was a pawn of the Brain, unconsciously doing that mechanical being’s work and consciously just being whatever she normally was. Uneasily, Marin put that thought away from him. Not that it didn’t have substance or meaning. It was simply too bizarre and out of his control.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Zadie Smith, White Teeth Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column

One of the crucial documents for the Ordine dei Medici, it turned out, was an Italian passport. Until then nobody had bothered to mention this potentially insurmountable obstacle. It happened I did have a right to citizenship, but since it would be bestowed on me automatically by my Italian husband (Italian husbands are less powerful nowadays), the passport logically hung on Italian recognition of our American marriage, which was in turn predicated on Italian recognition of my husband’s American divorce from a prior marriage. The divorce certification, based on various Byzantine legal fictions, was a long time coming. One time there was a false sighting of his Italian divorce, and I optimistically went down to the Anagrafe or Central Registry to see whether I could get my citizenship papers. At the end of the forty-five-minute line a small man with slicked-down hair took my documents with a yawn and disappeared into the dark forest of files. When the clerk emerged, the bored look was gone from his face. He invited me to follow him along the long bank of teller windows, he on his side me on mine, and then pass through a little gate to the employee side. He sat me down, then paced between piled-up dossiers for a minute, no grille window to screen him off, before speaking. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said kindly, “You have applied for Italian citizenship on the grounds of being married to a certain Andrea Di Vecchia.” I admitted that was true. He paced a little more, lit a cigarette. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said again, even more gently, and I should have caught on from the way he repeated it. “I must tell you something. This Mr. Di Vecchia—he is already married to another woman!” His hand was already out to give a comforting squeeze to my shoulder, but it dropped when I laughed and explained that the problem was red tape, not bigamy. I thought later, high drama must be rare behind the certificate window, and he had risen to its call. How many American file clerks would have been so ready for their unexpected moment of glory? Another problem involved my residence papers, a crucial component in any pile of documents. All residents in Italy must communicate changes of address to the State within three months, and when we left my mother-in-law’s for our own place eight months earlier we had duly registered the move. But when I went to pick up an identity document I was told it couldn’t be issued because I was still listed at my old address. I slyly told the clerk in the cage to hold on, scurried over from his Identity Card window to the Certificate window three paces away, had the printer spit out a Residence Certificate bearing my name and the new address, and carried it back in triumph. He wasn’t impressed. “Oh, that certificate. That’s from the computer, it’s not worth anything. Your address has been changed in the computer, but the computerized part of the system doesn’t count.

People I love will be watching me. Their eyes like safety nets, I can't fall.

Because people heal a whole lot faster when they're with someone who loves them.

Big words," she said in mock fear. "I'm a big guy." He didn't stop until reaching the rung just below her, his body caging her in and showing her just how big he was. She looked at him over her shoulder, and he realized he could look into those beautiful brown eyes forever. "Is this where you show me your moves?" "One of them." He captured her lips in a kiss that ended with her moaning. "The rest will be added to my list, since none of them can be fully appreciated while balancing on a ladder." "You have a list?" "Started it after our first meeting," he said, sliding his hands over hers to take the string of lights, loving how she shivered at the simple contact. "It's getting pretty big." She leaned back against him. "Your list or..." "Both," he whispered in her ear, then gave her ass a playful swat. "Now climb on up so we can get these hung and move on to dinner." "And the list." "Definitely the list.

My stomach goes cold, like I've swallowed winter.

I won Cooper Well's heart and I'm caging it up and never letting it out." He chuckled, "Be gentle with me." I went serious. "I will." "And, Abby, " he said. "It may have taken me a while to figure it out, but I'm the one who won.

No…” I shook my head with tears running down my cheeks. “I saw the ad, the listing. I applied for this job. Raina…” I paused, thinking about how Raina just so happened to be driving exactly where I was. “Raina dropped that paper off to your motel room in hopes that’d make the process easier for you. Raina was paid to follow you and pick you up. Raina is basically the Ivory’s adoptive daughter, and her husband Jax once worked here.” “How’d they escape? How did they manage to not tell anyone about what’s happening here?” “Demi, you just don’t get it.” Bradley rubbed his forehead as if it were aching. “It’s not white-therapy; it’s white-torture. We all went through it. You’re the first they haven’t done it to in years. For two years, we all lived in those sound-proof rooms, eating nothing but plain white food. No sounds, no color, no stimulation. It stripped us of emotion. It made us completely submissive and devoted to this family.” “But you don’t seem submissive. You seem like you’re just pretending so you could be here for Daisy?” “I can’t imagine leaving this place. I’m messed up, Demi. I wanted to help Daisy escape, but thought I’d probably stay here and work for the family. Because if they caught me, they’d put me back into a cage. No one speaks to you, you hear no noise, no sounds, you see no color or anything. They shave your head and put you in all-white. You stare at four white walls all day and eat white food so your senses are depleted.” Fear churned inside of me as my legs trembled and I forced myself to sit down. “Why do they do this?” “Because they need staff. Loyal staff who will help them with their business. They sell these women as mail-order brides essentially, and their wait list is filled with the world’s richest men. Each woman is guaranteed to be completely obedient, subservient, and designed to be exactly what that man wants. Each woman sells for one to three million dollars.

You got anyone else on that hit list of yours? I'll kill as many people as you want if you keep telling me you love me." "You're an idiot," I croak, blinking away the tears. Cage grabs a hold of me and tugs me into his embrace, holding me tight. "I'm going to fuck you for so long later tonight," he whispers sinfully.

It's this feeling like the universe is compacting around me, while something in my rib cage is expanding. I'm the culmination of their list dreams, their missed other lives, and at the same time, they're proud of me.

I’ve cried in pain and I’ve cried in fear, but these tears are different, deeper, like I’m breaking apart.

I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should’ve been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won’t let you grow.

The switch blurs. Red slashes of pain. Pain that isn’t right or mine to take. I fall, kneeling inside Adam’s anger.

How long?” “I don’t know. When I found you, it was nineteen days after you checked out of school.” His eyes close. His eyelids look pink and translucent. “Adam?” I lean in closer to show I’m still here, still listening. “It didn’t…feel like nineteen days. It was like a thousand years…longer than my whole life before it. Why?” I have to hold my face rigid, because it’s happening again. The burning throat and the urge to cry. I went years without crying, but now it’s like I can’t stop. In spite of my decision to be calm and soothing, I have to blink and brush away tears, but then more stupid tears just refill my eyes like a faucet I can’t turn off.