Bubbly Girl Quotes

But this girl, she lived in a bubble, and seeing her out at a frat party was like spotting a unicorn.

He slouched back in his seat, looking tired, and leaned his face on his shoulder to look at me while he played with my hair. He started to hum a song, and then, after a few bars, he sang it. Quietly, sort of half-sung, half-spoken, incredibly gentle. I didn’t catch all the words, but it was about his summer girl. Me. Maybe his forever girl. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an icecovered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me.

Vodka Redbull: Upper meets downer in an effervescent hybrid of bubble gum and junkie piss

Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened.

once lived a girl in a bubble who i suspected was nothing but trouble still i gave her my heart but she blew it apart and left me with nothing but rubble

And this was why falling for the butterflies was never a good idea. I didn’t feel all bubbly and excited now. I felt cold and broken and empty. - Rachel

The call from Momma was like a bullet piercing my Washington bubble. Janice had been on short trip with her baby daughter locked safely in a car seat in the back. The baby was fussy and, as Janice reached back to grab her daughter’s pacifier that had fallen, another vehicle had blindsided her car. She survived it but her baby girl didn’t.

Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert's future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower.

So our crew is back to being all girls, and stays that way for the rest of lunch. The only other guy who’d sit with us never bothers making an appearance in the cafeteria. But I pass Nate in the hallway afterward, and all the questions bubbling in my brain about Simon, Leah, and Janae disappear when he gives me a fleeting grin. Because God, it’s beautiful when that boy smiles.

the dream had come again, like the sun after a storm. It was the same dream that had come many times before, battering down the doors of my mind night after night since i was a child. it was the sort of dreams all girls dream, i suppose- a dream of mysterious worlds and hidden doorways, of leaves that breathe and make music when they are rustled in the wind, and river that bubbles and froth with secrets.

It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?

So proper for a circus girl," Mme. Padva says with with a gleam in her eye. "We shall have to loosen those corset laces if we intend to keep you an intimate dinner company." "I expected the corset unlacing would take place after dinner," Celia says mildly, earning a chorus of laughter. "We shall keep Miss Bowen as intimate company regardless of the state of her corset," Chandresh says. "Make a note of that," he adds, waving a hand at Marco. "Miss Bowen's corset is duly noted, sir," Marco replies, and the laghter bubbles over the table again.

I can't swallow another drop of soda by this point because the carbonation is burning my throat. "Oh really? Well..." I trail off as I feel bubbling at the base of my throat. This is not good. Before I can stop myself, I let out the biggest burp I've ever, ever, ever had. I slap a hand over my mouth and stare at Logan whose eyebrows have reached astronomical heights. "Dude! So not smooth, man! Girls cannot stand rudeness," Dan yells from the back room.

A girl never can predict who might wander into her boudoir during a bubble bath.

I was desperate. I had to keep Annabeth alive. I imagined all the bubbles in the sea—always churning, rising. I imagined them coming together, being pulled toward me. The sea obeyed. There was a flurry of white, a tickling sensation all around me, and when my vision cleared, Annabeth and I had a huge bubble of air around us. Only our legs stuck into the water. She gasped and coughed. Her whole body shuddered, but when she looked at me, I knew the spell had been broken. She started to sob—I mean horrible, heartbroken sobbing. She put her head on my shoulder and I held her. Fish gathered to look at us—a school of barracudas, some curious marlins. 'Scram!' I told them. They swam off, but I could tell they went reluctantly. I swear I understood their intentions. They were about to start rumors flying around the sea about the son of Poseidon and some girl at the bottom of Siren Bay.

I thought about my beautiful dreams and wondered if they would drift away just like those lovely soap bubbles.

...I'm in a little bubble of warmth, just like I had with Ellis, a place I never thought I'd be again.

Blaze your own glittery, sparkly, fiery, shimmering path. Surround yourself with the things that make you shine. Create your bubble and thrive in it.

When I go to the woods now, I always head out along the brook and go straight to the big maple. I run there, like Toby must have done on that stormy night, then I bend down and crawl on the earth. Because what if there’s a clue? What if there’s a piece of chunky strawberry bubble gum still bundled up in its waxy wrapper, or a weather-faded matchbook, or a fallen button from somebody’s big gray coat? What if buried under all those leaves is me? Not this me, but the girl in a Gunne Sax dress with the back zipper open. The girl with the best boots in the world. What if she’s under there? What if she’s crying? Because she will be, if I find her. Her tears tell the story of what she knows. That the past, present, and future are just one thing. That there’s nowhere to go from here. Home is home is home.

I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so she's in the closet with my gallstones.

I was contemplating dropping out [pole dancing lessons]; I could barely move a muscle. It had certainly burst my ‘I’m in great shape’ bubble.

In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she’d wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had take her away from nothing, there’d been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?

Oh, no, she isn’t quite as useless as that,” Aimery said. As Winter stared, a thin crimson line drew itself across his throat, blood bubbling up from the wound. “The prettiest girl on all of Luna? She will make some member of this court a happy bride someday, I should think.” “The prettiest girl, Aimery?” Levana’s light tone almost concealed the snarl beneath. Aimery slipped into a bow. “Prettiest only, My Queen. But no mortal could compare with your perfection.

Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and may in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil.

Jack complained “I could really go for some bubble and squeak or some bangers. Do you kids think you could cook up some steak-and-kidney pie for me?” The girls stared “I hear noises coming from his mouth but they don’t sound like words,” Daphne said. “Maybe he is having some kind of fit” Sabrina said.

So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way - not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen. This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you'll just open your heart and join in.

Girl, you are the epitome of spoiled. I can smell it in your expensive perfume, in the quality of your ridiculous clothing, in the bracelet wrapped ’round that delicate wrist.” He closed the gap between us and all the air sucked from the room. “You won’t last out here. You’ll stay blind to the environment that surrounds you. You’ll live in your clean, perfect bubble and return to your posh life come six months. You are....you. I know your kind. I’ve seen it all before. You will never wake up. Not really,” he explained away before backing up and leaving me to my room once again.

Careful,” Lye said. “I am fragile.” “That’s all right,” said September suddenly, feeling the warm cinnamon courage of her bath bubble up inside her, fresh and bright. “I’m not.

4 million volts course like lovers through her body. Eerie rays eliminate from bulbous cathodes to caress her skin penetrating deep. Also somewhat like lovers, actually. Chemicals so secret they don't even have names and bubbles and spurts in her vein.

Work just as hard for fun moments, vacation moments, and pee-your-pants-laughing moments as you do for all the other things. I encourage you to take a walk, call a friend, have a glass of wine, enjoy a bubble bath, or take a long lunch. All of that work will be there when you get back, and a little time away can recharge your batteries and give you the energy to battle that ever-growing to-do list.

I'm not a baby or a spoiled darling any more, to be laughed at, whatever she does. I have my own views, plans, and ideas, though I can't put them into words yet. Oh, so many things bubble up inside me as I lie in bed, having to put up with people I'm fed up with, who always misinterpret my intentions.

It was 1976. It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man's head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful experience. I remember thinking to myself, You're damn right it had better be magic, because that's what it's going to take to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried. I didn't. I raised my hand. "Mrs. Shimmer," I asked the cautiously, "so what kind of security napkins do boys wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?" The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles. "You haven't been paying attention, have you?" Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. "Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self control, but you'll learn that soon enough." I was certainly hoping my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like the pistil of a flower) didn't get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did.

Which on am I?" I drew my left eyebrow in a high, puzzled arch. "Which what?" Crack reached for her makeup kit. "Bottom or fool?" She pulled out a tiny mirror and put another layer of mascara on her giant fake lashes. She used a special oversized mascara brush for her oversized lashes, carried in a big tube. "No. Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles?" I asked. "Who, in the show?" She shrugged. "What ever you want, Sugar. Makes no diff to me. A name's just another kind of package. Marketing. Starts the day you're born" p.136

The things I was good at had no real application: addressing envelopes in bubble letters with smiling creatures on the flap. Making sludgy coffee I drank with grave affect. Finding a certain desired song playing on the radio, like a medium scanning for news of the dead.

After so long keeping to herself and tending her secret quietly, all these words just bubbled up out of her her like cool golden champagne.

The first thing I saw was the pink bubble gum, four feet lower than it should have been, inches above the ground, and framed by a set of perfectly painted lips. It was one of those huge bubbles you just know is going to pop and cover the girl's face, and she'll shriek and yell and whine that her makeup is ruined, blah, blah, blah. But the bubble didn't pop—she did that thing where you suck all the air back into your mouth, and the bubble deflated into a little pink heap.

Bruce Springsteen settled down. He used to run around with lots of women and now all he wants to do is hang out with Patty Scialfa and the kids." Patty's from Jersey. You don't mess around on Jersey girls. They're too tough. I'm sorry Bubbles, but being from Pennsylvania, you're no match.

I came here to tell you that I’M READY. I’M ALL IN, if you’ll have me, because if you won’t, I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life. No one could ever love me the way you do. You’ve forgiven me when other people wouldn’t, you’ve loved me when I couldn’t even love myself, and you’ve shown me that some things are worth fighting for. I accused you of not fighting for me, but the truth is, I’ve never fought for anything. It’s been easier for me to wrap myself in my protective bubble, so I don’t get hurt, but that’s not living. I want to live my life to the fullest… and I can’t do that without you in it.

The music glides between the pores of your skin to bubble through your veins in place of blood, and you can't help but clutch the mic with both trembling hands and let the song flow out of you like blood from a wound. In those moments, when the music has replaced everything and even awareness of your own body has faded, you can't breathe, can't do anything but let the song own you, let the performance rocket through you. There's no people, no problems in your life, no buzz of alcohol in your blood or pain in your heart.

Girls are better at this sort of labour, often called 'emotional labour', not because there's anything in the meat and matter of our living cells that makes us naturally better but because we're trained for it from birth. Trained to make other people feel good. Trained to serve the coffee, fill in the forms, organise the parties and wipe the table afterwards. Trained to be feisty, if we must, but not strong. To be bubbly, not funny. You must at no stage appear to have a body that functions in a normal human way, that pisses and shits and sweats and farts and falters. Decorate the prison of your body. Make yourself useful. Shut up and smile.

He leaned closer. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Your face is absolutely adorable when you blush.” My ears burned. Oh great, am I the color of a tomato now? “Yeah, well, I can make you blush,” I retorted. “By telling you how hot you are, and that when that little piece of black hair falls into your eyes, it’s so sexy it makes me forget my words, and...” I stopped, suddenly aware of how warm the mausoleum was. “Go on,” Caspian prodded, shaking his head so that his hair covered one green eye. I blushed again, and glanced around me, slowly backing away from him. I just needed some... space to clear my head. He followed me, stalking my every move. My blood felt like pure oxygen racing through my veins, fizzy and bubbling and making me want to float away. A hard wall at my back stopped me, but Caspian kept coming. I thought desperately of some way to change the subject. “I got you Moby-Dick,” I blurted out. He gave me a sly smile. “Mmmm, did you? How... interesting.” “And Treasure Island, and The Count of Monte Cristo.” I babbled on. “I thought you might like some boy books.” He stopped an inch away from me. I felt like I was his prisoner. “Let’s go back to the sexy and hot thing,” Caspian said. “Could we add a gorgeous or mysterious in there, too?” I gulped. “Like you don’t already know you’re all of those things. You probably had girls falling all over you before.” Caspian cocked his head to one side. “True. But I always thought it was because I was the quiet new guy. And besides, there’s only one person I was ever really interested in.” “Was?” I squeaked. Then I cleared my throat and tried again. “I mean—” “Am,” Caspian corrected himself. “Technically, I guess it’s both. I was interested the first day I saw her, and I still am interested in her.” His eyes glowed in the soft candlelight around us, and every last ounce of coherent thought left me. “It’s... um... really. It’s...” My head felt like it was thickening and my body was overheating, every word dragged from somewhere in the depths of my fuzzy brain. I waved a hand in front of my face to fan myself, and finally spit out what I was trying to say. “It’s hot in here. Don’t you think? It’s really warm.” “I only feel warmth when I’m standing next to you,” Caspian said. He stepped half an inch closer. “Like right now.

Do you need help with anything?" he asked with a wicked arched brow. "Maybe with cookies for Santa." Scowling because no one was here but us, I said, "You're a bit late for that. Santa already came." He hadn't moved, but I knew better than to think he would. Flynn was a pro at filling the bubble air space that was meant to be private and personal. "And were you a good girl?" he asked. Awkwardly folding my arms over my chest, I said, "Not sure, I haven't checked. But you needn't look. We all know you are all bad." Laughing, he said, "Yeah, well, there are other things worth unwrapping." Grinding my teeth, I asked, "What, you didn't get your Ho, Ho, Ho, last night?" Tossing back another full belly laugh, he said, "You know you're kind of funny when you want to be.

Lucinda was dead, and the reminder slapped him constantly, freezing ocean waves against his thighs. He could only wade deeper. Deeper, until the truth bubbled into his mouth, salty, miserable. Deeper, until it was pointless to search for shorelines because he knew Lucinda would not be standing on them.

It was a crude drawing of a smiling, female stick figure with red hair and a T-shirt that read “Kerry.” Above Kerry’s head was a yellow dog. Those two elements alone, of course, would not have caused a problem. Unfortunately, there was a third element to the drawing: a shower of large brown clumps raining down from the yellow dog’s rear onto Kerry’s face. And just in case the viewer wasn’t sure how Kerry felt about that, a thought bubble protruding from her head read, “I like it.” “It’s very upsetting,” my teacher said. “Why is the dog above her head? That doesn’t even make sense. How’d he get above her head?” he asked, turning to me. “I don’t know,” I said. “You have to draw a hill or something under the dog. A dog can’t just float up into the atmosphere and take a shit on someone’s head. I mean, I know you’re six or seven or whatever, but that’s pretty basic physics right there,” he said. “Mr. Halpern, that’s really not the issue,” my teacher said. “I dunno, seems like a pretty big issue to me. At least we know we can cross artist off the list,” he said.

metal-bubble girls. We rock your world and do it quietly from behind our VR systems because we’re too scared to show up at venues.

Life is like a beer. When the bubbles blew over, that was when the beer started. The beer is only half as good without the foam.

She was one of the original dot-com phenoms—made crazy money for two years, then took the Internet bubble bath in 2000.

You got hair like a girl,” Mr. D said. “And you smell like bubble bath. At least I can get a trim.” “I’m wearing Old Spice.” “Next time try something stronger. Like horse manure.” Mr.

In both runs, Curtain Time attempted to play to the same sizable audience that had made The First Nighter Program a radio powerhouse. It had a theater setting, announcements that the curtain was “about to go up,” and the same fare, generally bubbly boy-girl romances. There was an usher in the later run, who called out “Tickets, please, thank you, sir,” and escorted “theatergoers” to their imaginary seats in “seventh row center, seats seven and eight.” The announcer, Myron Wallace, became famous decades later as the tough TV reporter on 60 Minutes.

If anyone was questioning themselves, it was all under the surface, a filmy bubble drifting and popping in their brains. Their doubt growing weak as the particulars of a dream grow weak.

unsolicited advice to adolescent girls with crooked teeth and pink hair When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys call asking your cup size, say A, hang up. When he says you gave him blue balls, say you’re welcome. When a girl with thick black curls who smells like bubble gum stops you in a stairwell to ask if you’re a boy, explain that you keep your hair short so she won’t have anything to grab when you head-butt her. Then head-butt her. When a guidance counselor teases you for handed-down jeans, do not turn red. When you have sex for the second time and there is no condom, do not convince yourself that screwing between layers of underwear will soak up the semen. When your geometry teacher posts a banner reading: “Learn math or go home and learn how to be a Momma,” do not take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom. When the boy you have a crush on is sent to detention, go home. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boy with the blue mohawk swallows your heart and opens his wrists, hide the knives, bleach the bathtub, pour out the vodka. Every time. When the skinhead girls jump you in a bathroom stall, swing, curse, kick, do not turn red. When a boy you think you love delivers the first black eye, use a screw driver, a beer bottle, your two good hands. When your father locks the door, break the window. When a college professor writes you poetry and whispers about your tight little ass, do not take it as a compliment, do not wait, call the Dean, call his wife. When a boy with good manners and a thirst for Budweiser proposes, say no. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys tell you how good you smell, do not doubt them, do not turn red. When your brother tells you he is gay, pretend you already know. When the girl on the subway curses you because your tee shirt reads: “I fucked your boyfriend,” assure her that it is not true. When your dog pees the rug, kiss her, apologize for being late. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Jersey City, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Harlem, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because your air conditioner is broken, leave him. When he refuses to keep a toothbrush at your apartment, leave him. When you find the toothbrush you keep at his apartment hidden in the closet, leave him. Do not regret this. Do not turn red. When your mother hits you, do not strike back.

Like the girl, he seems to bend the light around him, and although he is nearly as attractive as the girl in his own way, it is his artistic fire that created a bubble around him rather than his beauty.

Glowing in the dimensionless whispering dimness, Griffin saw a scene that could only have come from his dreams. The girl, naked white against the ledges and slopes of the falls, water cascading down her back, across her thighs, cool against her belly, her head laid back and white water bubbling through the shining black veil of her hair, touching each strand, silkily shining it with moisture; her eyes closed in simple pleasure; that face, the right face, the special face, the certain face of the woman he had always looked for without looking, hunted silently for, without acknowledging the search; lusted for, without feeling worthy of the hunger.

Boys are found everywhere- on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerated them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them. A boy is Truth with dirt on its face, Beauty with a cut on its finger, Wisdom with bubble gum in its hair and the Hope of the future with a frog in its pocket. A boy is a magical creature- you can lock out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart. You can get him out of your study, but you can't get him out of your mind. Might as well give up- he is your captor, your jailor, your boss and your master- a freckled-faced, pint-sized, cat-chasing bundle of noise. But when you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them like new with two magic words- 'Hi, Dad!

Just for a moment it reminded not-Triss of drawings she had seen in magazines and on book jackets, of pastel-colored parties where languid, fashionable women slunk and posed, slim and elegant as fish, and gentlemen passed them flutes of fat-bubbled champagne. The impression did not last long, however. The scene around her was too jarringly and robustly real. The accents were all too Ellchester, and some of the girls had knobbly ankles.

Kate had thought hula was something for tourists, girls in plastic skirts dancing to will songs about tiny bubbles in the champagne. Mehana's hula was different-a way of telling stories without words, a kimd of body poetry.

see Joziah?” Denyce said. “He all that.” Nia popped a bubble with her gum. “I heard he’s strapped.” “What?” Rachel said. “That’s wack.” Sometimes it seemed to Ruth that Rachel and her friends spoke a different language. “He ain’t got no gun,” Denyce said. “He just like to tell people he do.” A gun? Ruth didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until the girls all stared at her. “Oh, look,” Nia said. “We shocked your baby sister.” If Mama knew Rachel

I take a deep breath, relishing in the fresh air and open space around me. Something wet splatters on my cheek, and I turn my face toward the cloudy sky that is now beginning to drizzle down on me. I spread out my arms and tilt my head up, loving the feel of rain pelting my skin. The the drizzle turns into a downpour. Rain is falling rapidly while I'm smiling stupidly. My head feels clearer than it has in days as cool water coats my skin, my dress, my hair. I spin in place, the skirts of my gown swishing around my ankles, feeling like an idiot and absolutely loving it. I slip the shoes from my aching feet and pad through puddles like I did as a little girl, reminding me of a time when I was younger... Laughter bubbles out of me. Hysterical. I am completely hysterical. Rain is sticking strands of hair to my face and dripping down the tip of my nose while I smile through it all, momentarily forgetting about my troubles and simply taking a moment to exist. "I don't know that I ever lived before lying eyes on the likes of you." I spin, blinking through the steady stream of rain before my eyes find the gray ones blending in with the sheet of water falling down on us. His hair is dripping wet, all wavy and tousled. His white button-down shirt is sticky and see-through, showing off an inked chest and tanned torso beneath. And the sight of him has me smiling. "oh, but I only have eyes for one little lady, and I can't seem to take them off of her." His chest is rising and falling just as rapidly as the rain while my heart is thundering just as loudly as the storm.

Love is not a spaceship you construct and then fly off together into the stars. Love is a soap bubble that bursts in the air. Love is the first winter snowflake that falls into you palm, a mirage that glows in the sun and fades in the shadows.

With the best of intentions, the generation before mine worked diligently to prepare their children to make an intelligent case for Christianity. We were constantly reminded of the superiority of our own worldview and the shortcomings of all others. We learned that as Christians, we alone had access to absolute truth and could win any argument. The appropriate Bible verses were picked out for us, the opposing positions summarized for us, and the best responses articulated for us, so that we wouldn’t have to struggle through two thousand years of theological deliberations and debates but could get right to the bottom line on the important stuff: the deity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, the role and interpretation of Scripture, and the fundamentals of Christianity. As a result, many of us entered the world with both an unparalleled level of conviction and a crippling lack of curiosity. So ready with the answers, we didn’t know what the questions were anymore. So prepared to defend the faith, we missed the thrill of discovering it for ourselves. So convinced we had God right, it never occurred to us that we might be wrong. In short, we never learned to doubt. Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter a virtue. Where would we be if the apostle Peter had not doubted the necessity of food laws, or if Martin Luther had not doubted the notion that salvation can be purchased? What if Galileo had simply accepted church-instituted cosmology paradigms, or William Wilberforce the condition of slavery? We do an injustice to the intricacies and shadings of Christian history when we gloss over the struggles, when we read Paul’s epistles or Saint Augustine’s Confessions without acknowledging the difficult questions that these believers asked and the agony with which they often asked them. If I’ve learned anything over the past five years, it’s that doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves. It helps us cast off false fundamentals so that we can recover what has been lost or embrace what is new. It is a refining fire, a hot flame that keeps our faith alive and moving and bubbling about, where certainty would only freeze it on the spot. I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one’s beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubt (questioning God). When we know how to make a distinction between our ideas about God and God himself, our faith remains safe when one of those ideas is seriously challenged. When we recognize that our theology is not the moon but rather a finger pointing at the moon, we enjoy the freedom of questioning it from time to time. We can say, as Tennyson said, Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.15 I sometimes wonder if I might have spent fewer nights in angry, resentful prayer if only I’d known that my little systems — my theology, my presuppositions, my beliefs, even my fundamentals — were but broken lights of a holy, transcendent God. I wish I had known to question them, not him. What my generation is learning the hard way is that faith is not about defending conquered ground but about discovering new territory. Faith isn’t about being right, or settling down, or refusing to change. Faith is a journey, and every generation contributes its own sketches to the map. I’ve got miles and miles to go on this journey, but I think I can see Jesus up ahead.

There is no reason to expect that misogyny will typically manifest itself in violence or even violent tendencies, contra Steven Finker. From the perspective of enforcing patriarchal social relations, this is not necessary. It is not even desirable. Patriarchal social relations are supposed to be amicable and seamless, when all is going to plan. It is largely when things go awry that violence tends to bubble to the surface. There are numerous nonviolent and low-cost means of defusing the psychic threat posed by powerful women who are perceived as insufficiently oriented to serving dominant men's interests. For example, women may be taken down imaginatively, rather than literally, by vilifying, demonizing, belittling, humiliating, mocking, lampooning, shunning, and shaming them.

My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each bubble contains a scene from a tiny sunken world ... I have never been the prophet of my own past before. It makes me wonder how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself. ... I had almost forgotten this occipital sorrow, the way you are so alone with the things you see in dreams.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was not afraid. The girl ran as people run who do not fear falling. Her small, strong, nimble feet sped over the rocks and stumps. On the soles of her feet, she felt the soft moss, the sun-warmed sand, the prickly pine needles, the dewy grass. She trusted that her legs would carry her wherever she wished to go. The girl laughed as those laugh who have not yet known humiliation. Her laughter started deep in her belly. It filled her chest, gurgled in her throat, and bubbled on her tongue. Finally, it wriggled out of her mouth, shot through the air, and burst into apple blossoms on the trees. Her laughter warmed and brightened all that surrounded her. Often it ended in hiccuping, but that did not matter because the hiccuping only made her laugh all the more. The girl trusted as those trust for whom the earth has never given way, whom no one has ever betrayed. She hung upside down and trusted that she would not fall. Or if she fell, someone would catch her before she hit the ground. Once upon a time, there was a girl who learned fear. Fairy tales do not begin this way. Other, darker stories do.

Two lines in “If I Was Your Girlfriend” stand out after talking with people close to Prince. When he’s imagining himself as her girlfriend he sings, “Would u let me wash your hair?” And later as a man he says, “Would u let me give u a bath?” Those desires I’m told are part of his real life. Someone who was intimate with him and knows others who were, too, says Prince was not doing exactly as much screwing as he’d have you believe. I was told by someone who knows that Prince loves to bathe women. And brush their hair. And sometimes he did these things in lieu of intercourse. It was not part of trying to get laid or deepen the sexual experience, but as a worshipful appreciation of femininity. A person who was close to Prince said, “One girl told me that she got frustrated because he’d rather bathe her.” A woman who was in a relationship with Prince years ago told me that when he gave women baths he took total control. “He ran the bath, he put the bubbles in, he took your clothes off, he washed you, he washed your hair, it was a whole procedure and process. He put lotion on you after. He’d give you a robe. I don’t know if it was worshipful or if it was sweet and sensitive.

Our princess moaned and wept. Her tears fell on the elder-stump, and it was quite moved, for it was the Marsh King himself, who lives in the quagmire. I saw the stump turn itself, so it wasn’t only a trunk, for it put out long, muddy boughs like arms. Then the unhappy girl was frightened, ans sprang aside into the quivering marsh, which will not bear me, much less her. In at once she sank, and down with her went the elder-stump - it was he who pulled her down. Then a few big black bubbles, and no trace of her left. She is engulfed in the marsh, and will never return to Egypt with her flower…

Can I offer you a slice of this amazing caramelized white chocolate apricot brioche made by my favorite granddaughter?" "You may indeed." When you slice the rich, buttery bread topped with crunchy bits of pearl sugar, you get a swirl of white chocolate, which now also has hints of caramel flavor from having been roasted, and chunks of apricot. It is a good one. Herman loved it and immediately said we would have it in the rotation all summer and to order more apricots. Bubbles hands me two thick pieces of my bread, lightly toasted and lavished with butter. It is delicious, if I do say so myself.

Stefan!" shouted Casimir. "What are you doing, out in the rain with that girl? Madman!" As Stefan raised his head, Rozalia heard her aunt's bubbling laughter. "Not a madman, Cass - a lover!" "Same thing," said Casimir; but he put an arm around Anastasia where she stood holding the baby, and kissed her.

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing—the part of her that was clean. No undreamable dreams about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter’s private parts, soiled her daughter’s thighs and threw her daughter out of the wagon. She might have to work the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter.

Obsidian rests around your neck as if you are carrying the history of every night sky in one stone Smile young girl Your eyes are moonless, grimmer than the rock revolved around your throat Your voice is weak when you speak of the things you love You do not love things properly Your jaw was battered against the ceramic when your father screamed of your selfishness and slapped you with all the anger your grandfather bred in him You conduct yourself in spite of his judgement In spite of being just like him But while you chase after reckless habits and restless bodies you are mirroring his tantrums Drain the anger from your blood, young girl Do not make this tempered interpretation a trio Your Obsidian is the cooling heat of lava and only pure when it maintains its darkness But there is more power in your will than in the frozen anger of the stone Your body does not have to erupt when you feel the heat of an outrage bubbling at the rim Keep your composure, you are not a volcano You do not have to hang around someone’s neck like a chunk of lava wishing to explode

I am getting incredibly high on a single, astounding fact: that it’s always sunny above the clouds. Always. That every day on earth—every day I have ever had—was secretly sunny, after all. However shitty and rainy it is in Wolverhampton—on the days where the clouds feel low, like a lid, and the swarf bubbles and the gutters churn to digest—it’s always been sunny up here.

I love you, Kate,” he whispered, his lips brushing the words against her mouth. “I love you so much.” She nodded, unable to make a sound. “And right now I wish . . . I wish . . .” And then the strangest thing happened. Laughter bubbled up inside of him. He was overtaken by the pure joy of the moment, and it was all he could do not to pick her up and twirl her grandly through the air. “Anthony?” she asked, sounding equal parts confused and amused. “Do you know what else love means?” he murmured, planting his hands on either side of her body and letting his nose rest against hers. She shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly even hazard a guess.” “It means,” he grumbled, “that I’m finding this broken leg of yours a damned nuisance.” “Not half so much as I, my lord,” she said, casting a rueful glance at her splinted leg. Anthony frowned. “No vigorous exercise for two months, eh?” “At least.” He grinned, and in that moment he looked every inch the rake she’d once accused him of being. “Clearly,” he murmured, “I shall have to be very, very gentle.” “Tonight?” she croaked. He shook his head. “Even I haven’t the talent to express myself with that light a touch.” Kate giggled. She couldn’t help herself. She loved this man and he loved her and whether he knew it or not, they were going to grow very, very old together. It was enough to make a girl— even a girl with a broken leg— positively giddy. “Are you laughing at me?” he queried, one of his brows arching arrogantly as he slid his body into place next to her. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” “Good. Because I have some very important things to tell you.” “Really?” He nodded gravely. “I may not be able to show you how much I love you this eve, but I can tell you.” “I should never tire of hearing it,” she murmured. “Good. Because when I’m done telling you, I’m going to tell you how I’d like to show you.” “Anthony!” she squeaked. “I think I’d start with your earlobe,” he mused. “Yes, definitely the earlobe. I’d kiss it, and then nibble it, and then . . .” Kate gasped. And then she squirmed. And then she fell in love with him all over again.

I bent down and, and as our lips came together, I understood why people made such a big deal about this. First there was the novelty of it: the weird sensation of my lips pressed against hers, and the warm air sighing in and out of our noses, and the mysterious dark hollows behind our teeth. After that came the disappearing. The walls of the room fell away, the ceiling vanished, and we floated up, up to the stars, suspended in a clear crystal bubble... Our kiss contained us, it contained all of our hopes and fears and wants, and even more. It contained the world: Indians praying to painted gods, and skinny Chinese men pedaling their bicycles to work, and the glossy black water of a bayou at night, where, above it in a soft yellow room, a boy kissed a girl for the very first time while the silver-and-gold sparks of a comet rained down on them......

I was a young girl buying bubble gum at the corner store when I first really heard the full name bell hooks. I had just 'talked back' to a grown person. Even now I can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be kin to bell hooks - a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back. I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to my female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech.

Here we’ll describe four signs that you have to disengage from your autonomous efforts and seek connection. Each of these emotions is a different form of hunger for connection—that is, they’re all different ways of feeling lonely: When you have been gaslit. When you’re asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or is there something completely unacceptable happening right now?” turn to someone who can relate; let them give you the reality check that yes, the gaslights are flickering. When you feel “not enough.” No individual can meet all the needs of the world. Humans are not built to do big things alone. We are built to do them together. When you experience the empty-handed feeling that you are just one person, unable to meet all the demands the world makes on you, helpless in the face of the endless, yawning need you see around you, recognize that emotion for what it is: a form of loneliness. ... When you’re sad. In the animated film Inside Out, the emotions in the head of a tween girl, Riley, struggle to cope with the exigencies of growing up.... When you are boiling with rage. Rage has a special place in women’s lives and a special role in the Bubble of Love. More, even, than sadness, many of us have been taught to swallow our rage, hide it even from ourselves. We have been taught to fear rage—our own, as well as others’—because its power can be used as a weapon. Can be. A chef’s knife can be used as a weapon. And it can help you prepare a feast. It’s all in how you use it. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and rage is indeed very, very powerful. Bring your rage into the Bubble with your loved ones’ permission, and complete the stress response cycle with them. If your Bubble is a rugby team, you can leverage your rage in a match or practice. If your Bubble is a knitting circle, you might need to get creative. Use your body. Jump up and down, get noisy, release all that energy, share it with others. “Yes!” say the people in your Bubble. “That was some bullshit you dealt with!” Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.

During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn’t quite see or recognize. It wasn’t me. I was spaced out on the ceiling. I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn’t feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan. I’d add a large amount of salt — I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn’t look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else’s eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands would flip the omelette on to a plate and I’d spread the remainder of the butter on the toast when the two slices of bread leapt from the toaster. ‘Delicious,’ he’d say, commenting on the food before even trying it.

Hey Pete. So why the leave from social media? You are an activist, right? It seems like this decision is counterproductive to your message and work." A: The short answer is I’m tired of the endless narcissism inherent to the medium. In the commercial society we have, coupled with the consequential sense of insecurity people feel, as they impulsively “package themselves” for public consumption, the expression most dominant in all of this - is vanity. And I find that disheartening, annoying and dangerous. It is a form of cultural violence in many respects. However, please note the difference - that I work to promote just that – a message/idea – not myself… and I honestly loath people who today just promote themselves for the sake of themselves. A sea of humans who have been conditioned into viewing who they are – as how they are seen online. Think about that for a moment. Social identity theory run amok. People have been conditioned to think “they are” how “others see them”. We live in an increasing fictional reality where people are now not only people – they are digital symbols. And those symbols become more important as a matter of “marketing” than people’s true personality. Now, one could argue that social perception has always had a communicative symbolism, even before the computer age. But nooooooothing like today. Social media has become a social prison and a strong means of social control, in fact. Beyond that, as most know, social media is literally designed like a drug. And it acts like it as people get more and more addicted to being seen and addicted to molding the way they want the world to view them – no matter how false the image (If there is any word that defines peoples’ behavior here – it is pretention). Dopamine fires upon recognition and, coupled with cell phone culture, we now have a sea of people in zombie like trances looking at their phones (literally) thousands of times a day, merging their direct, true interpersonal social reality with a virtual “social media” one. No one can read anymore... they just swipe a stream of 200 character headlines/posts/tweets. understanding the world as an aggregate of those fragmented sentences. Massive loss of comprehension happening, replaced by usually agreeable, "in-bubble" views - hence an actual loss of variety. So again, this isn’t to say non-commercial focused social media doesn’t have positive purposes, such as with activism at times. But, on the whole, it merely amplifies a general value system disorder of a “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT HOW GREAT I AM!” – rooted in systemic insecurity. People lying to themselves, drawing meaningless satisfaction from superficial responses from a sea of avatars. And it’s no surprise. Market economics demands people self promote shamelessly, coupled with the arbitrary constructs of beauty and success that have also resulted. People see status in certain things and, directly or pathologically, use those things for their own narcissistic advantage. Think of those endless status pics of people rock climbing, or hanging out on a stunning beach or showing off their new trophy girl-friend, etc. It goes on and on and worse the general public generally likes it, seeking to imitate those images/symbols to amplify their own false status. Hence the endless feedback loop of superficiality. And people wonder why youth suicides have risen… a young woman looking at a model of perfection set by her peers, without proper knowledge of the medium, can be made to feel inferior far more dramatically than the typical body image problems associated to traditional advertising. That is just one example of the cultural violence inherent. The entire industry of social media is BASED on narcissistic status promotion and narrow self-interest. That is the emotion/intent that creates the billions and billions in revenue these platforms experience, as they in turn sell off people’s personal data to advertisers and governments. You are the product, of course.

You never told me how everyone liked the sirupskake." "It was splendid!" she said, her smile returning. "Your fa- my husband asked that you bake another one soon for me to bring him." Freya was always tripping over her words like that. Anna did the same thing herself. She chalked it up to wanting to say so much in a short amount of time. She was like a pot of melting chocolate: the words bubbled over. "Did he like the candied oranges I placed on top?" "Yes! He said he'd never seen it done that way before." Anna shrugged. "I love to put my own spin on recipes. I like to be unique, if you haven't noticed." "I have." Freya smiled. "I think my husband would enjoy meeting you. You and I have a similar joyful spirit, while he"- she sighed- "carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, I'm afraid. Much like my daughter." Freya talked about her daughter a lot but unfortunately never brought her along for visits. From what Anna knew, the girl seemed whip smart and serious. Anna wished she could meet her so she could shake her up a bit. Everyone needed to let their hair down sometimes. Plus it would be nice to have a friend close to her own age.

So, Joanie came over with some ice bubble hash--not sure what that means, but it's good--and I freaked her out with some Pink Floyd. She didn't know the early stuff so much. We went out into the garden with a fairly big-screen laptop, it was warmish, and after we were high and drinking a few beers, I played for her these videos, in this order: Jugband Blues Astronomy Domine (2x, once with Syd, once with Dave) Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun One of These Days A Saucerful of Secrets Echoes Comfortably Numb She passed out on the settee and I threw a cover over her. lol

This was the Connecticut Alex had dreamed of—farmhouses without farms, sturdy red-brick colonials with black doors and tidy white trim, a neighborhood full of wood-burning fireplaces, gently tended lawns, windows glowing golden in the night like passageways to a better life, kitchens where something good bubbled on the stove, breakfast tables scattered with crayons. No one drew their curtains; light and heat and good fortune spilled out into the dark as if these foolish people didn’t know what such bounty might attract, as if they’d left these shining doorways open for any hungry girl to walk through.

The last week of shooting, we did a scene in which I drag Amanda Wyss, the sexy, blond actress who played Tina, across the ceiling of her bedroom, a sequence that ultimately became one of the most visceral from the entire Nightmare franchise. Tina’s bedroom was constructed as a revolving set, and before Tina and Freddy did their dance of death, Wes did a few POV shots of Nick Corri (aka Rod) staring at the ceiling in disbelief, then we flipped the room, and the floor became the ceiling and the ceiling became the floor and Amanda and I went to work. As was almost always the case when Freddy was chasing after a nubile young girl possessed by her nightmare, Amanda was clad only in her baby-doll nightie. Wes had a creative camera angle planned that he wanted to try, a POV shot from between Amanda’s legs. Amanda, however, wasn’t in the cameramen’s union and wouldn’t legally be allowed to operate the cemera for the shot. Fortunately, Amy Haitkin, our director of photography’s wife, was our film’s focus puller and a gifted camera operator in her own right. Being a good sport, she peeled off her jeans and volunteered to stand in for Amanda. The makeup crew dapped some fake blood onto her thighs, she lay down on the ground, Jacques handed her the camera, I grabbed her ankles, and Wes called, “Action.” After I dragged Amy across the floor/ceiling, I spontaneously blew her a kiss with my blood-covered claw; the fake blood on my blades was viscous, so that when I blew her my kiss of death, the blood webbed between my blades formed a bubble, a happy cinematic accident. The image of her pale, slender, blood-covered legs, Freddy looming over her, straddling the supine adolescent girl, knife fingers dripping, was surreal, erotic, and made for one of the most sexually charged shots of the movie. Unfortunately it got left on the cutting-room floor. If Wes had left it in, the MPAA - who always seemed to have it out for Mr. Craven - would definitely have tagged us with an X rating. You win some, you lose some.

In drear nighted December" In drear nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity— The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy— But were there ever any Writh'd not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.

I believe my soul wasn’t with me during the time of abuse. My soul retreated into a protection mode. This soul loss saved my life and my sanity. Had my soul stayed and endured the years of torture, I would have been a broken person forever. I could have given in, turned my back on my family, and remained a sex slave, a full-time prostitute for the Chaldean ringleader’s benefit. Until they wearied of me and replaced me with a younger, fresher girl and disposed of me physically or threw me aside with nowhere to go. I could have ended up in a mental institution, driven crazy from the abuse, with no one to confide in. Though I felt empty, my body devoid of a soul, I also felt a protective bubble encircling my body, an energy that appeared when I was alone with my thoughts, my despair.

There’s a big difference in reaching for the best we can be and in trying to be something we are not and never will be.” “So women can’t do everything men can?” Tina clarified. “I’m afraid not.” A slow grin began to form. “Women can do more.” “Georgie,” Lucious admonished. Laughter bubbled up within her. “Some things are just different, that’s all.” He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close. “I think, Bettina Landrum, your mama is full of sass from getting that piece of legislation named after her.” “She is?” Tina asked. “She is.” He looked over his brood of girls. “But the truth is, your mama can do anything she sets her mind to.” Georgie gave him a playful push. “Don’t tease, Lucious. They’ll believe you.” “And well they should.” Leaning over, he gave her a kiss flush on the lips.

It’s probably long overdue for us to throw out what we think we know about love. Girls have grown up with too many fairy tale/date movies/romance bodice-rippers racing around in our heads—the warrior with his rippling muscles and the golden-maned damsel clinging to his breeches. The title is something like Savage Heat or Destiny’s Desire. This is the fairy tale world where men and women always orgasm at the same time or where the man wakes the sleeping princess with a kiss, or where the hero slays the dragon and rescues the damsel from a tower, or where, essentially, everyone lives happily ever after and no one writes what happens next. What happens next is that reality sets in. The golden bubble bursts. There are bills to pay. Someone has to walk the dog and clean the cat litter box and go to the grocery store for milk.

I got what I wanted, I guess. I’m here, in this home that I worked so hard to insulate from the problems of the world, our happy little bubble. The girls have their father every night. Adam has a newfound respect for me, the New Rachel, for the glittering, sharp edge that’s emerged like a razor in the grass. When I think about my old self, I feel pity and yearning at the same time. Poor Old Rachel, the sweet, naive idiot. And lucky Old Rachel, so completely happy. There’s one niggling thought I can’t shake, one that keeps me awake at night. What would I tell my daughters if they came to me with the news that their husband had a mistress? That he told her, my precious daughter, that sex with the other woman was amazing? Stay and work things out. Oh, and get that STD panel ASAP, darlings! But do stay. Take all that hurt and betrayal and just ball it up and swallow it. Want to bake cookies?

I have one priority in life and it’s not making millions as it once was. I have all the money I could ever want, too much, India claims. I’m business driven but it’s my girl who is the most important part of my life. My whole life. It’s that very reason I’m reluctant to bring any shift in our happy bubble. We both work hard. We play hard together. That woman is my equal in every aspect of life. She thrills me, and intrigues me. I’ve loved peeling back India’s layers. She’s vulnerable is my mean girl and I love the place we’ve gotten to where she trusts me with all her sad, unsure moments. She will grieve for her brother for the rest of her life. She’ll always worry about her mom becoming manic depressive again. She’ll forever be a woman who puts everyone else before her own needs. But what’s different in India’s life is she now has me who makes sure she’s first. In everything. It’s going to kill me to see the happiness drop from her eyes. She’ll go into fix it mode and when she can’t, she’ll get angry and stressed.

I was starting to wonder if I’d been underestimating, not the killer, but the victim. I didn’t want to think this, I’d been flinching off it, but I knew: there had been something wrong with Lexie, way deep down. The flint of her, the way she had left Chad behind without a word and laughed while she got ready to leave Whitethorn House, like an animal biting off its own trapped paw with one snap and no whimper; that could have been just desperation. I understood that, all the way. But this, the seamlessness of that switch from sweet shy May-Ruth to bubbly clown Lexie: that had been something else, something wrong. No kind of fear or desperation could have demanded that. She had done it because she wanted to. A girl with that much hidden and that much dark could have sparked a very high caliber of anger in someone. It’s not easy, Frank had said. But that was the thing: for me, it always had been. Both times, being Lexie Madison had come as natural to me as breathing. I had slid into her like sliding into comfy old jeans, and this was what had scared me, all along.

Ballad" Oh dream, why do you do me this way? Again, with the digging, again with the digging up. Once more with the shovels. Once more, the shovels full of dirt. The vault lid. The prying. The damp boards. Mother beside me. Like she’s an old hat at this. Like all she’s got left is curiosity. Like curiosity didn’t kill the red cat. Such a sweet, gentle cat it was. Here we go again, dream. Mother, wearing her take-out-the-garbage coat. I haven’t seen that coat in years. The coat she wore to pick me up from school early. She appeared at the back of the classroom, early. Go with your mother, teacher said. Diane, you are excused. I was a little girl. Already a famous actress. I looked at the other kids. I acted lucky. Though everyone knows what an early pick-up means. An early pick-up, dream. What’s wrong, I asked my mother. It is early spring. Bright sunlight. The usual birds. Air, teetering between bearable and unbearable. Cold, but not cold enough to shiver. Still, dream, I shiver. You know, my mother said. Her long garbage coat flying. There was a wind, that day. A wind like a scurrying grandmother, dusting. Look inside yourself, my mother said. You know why I have come for you. And still I acted lucky. Lucky to be out. Lucky to be out in the cold world with my mother. I’m innocent, I wanted to say. A little white girl, trying out her innocence. A white lamb, born into a cold field. Frozen almost solid. Brought into the house. Warmed all night with hair dryers. Death? I said. Smiling. Lucky. We’re barely to the parking lot. Barely to the car ride home. But the classroom already feels like the distant past. Long ago, my classmates pitying me. Arriving at this car full of uncles. Were they wearing suits? Death such a formal occasion. My sister, angry-crying next to me. Me, encountering a fragment of evil in myself. Evilly wanting my mother to say it. What? I asked, smiling. My lamb on full display at the fair. He’s dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute. Her flute case. Her rental flute. He’s dead! Our father. Our father, who we were not supposed to know had been dying. He’s dead! The flute gleaming in its red case. Here, my mother said at home. She’d poured us each a small glass of Pepsi We normally couldn’t afford Pepsi. Lucky, I acted. He’s no longer suffering, my mother said. Here, she said. Drink this. The little bubbles flew. They bit my tongue. My evil persisted. What is death? I asked. And now, dream, once more you bring me my answer. Dig, my mother says. Pry, she says. I don’t want to see, dream. The lid so damp it crumbles under my hands. The casket just a drawerful of bones. A drawerful. Just bones and teeth. That one tooth he had. Crooked like mine.

Coley and I had to separate to get around a girl who was mostly eclipsed by the size of the power she was carrying some sort of project about World War II—a picture of Hitler doing his mustachioed Sieg heil, a gaunt concentration camp victim, a couple of American soldiers smoking cigarettes and scowling at the camera, the captions beneath each photo in glitter-bubble letters. If this had been the movie version of my life, I knew, somebody who did teenage stuff well, some director, would have lingered on that poster and maybe even have swelled some poignant music, out is in slow motion as the hallway continued on at regular speed around us, backlit the three of us—Coley and the poster board chick and me—and in doing so tried to make some statement about teenage frivolity and prom season as it stacked up against something authentic and horrible like war. But if renting all those movies had taught me anything more than how to lose myself in them, it was that you only actually have perfectly profound little moments like that in real life if you recognize them yourself, do all the fancy shot work and editing in your head, usually in the very seconds that whatever is happening is happening. And even if you do manage to do so, just about never does anyone else you’re with at the time experience that exact same kind of moment, and it’s impossible to explain as it’s happening, and then the moment is over.

Coley and I had to separate to get around a girl who was mostly eclipsed by the size of the poster she was carrying, some sort of project about World War Two—a picture of Hitler doing his mustachioed Sieg heil, a gaunt concentration-camp victim, a couple of American soldiers smoking cigarettes and scowling at the camera, the captions beneath each photo in glitter-bubble letters. If this had been the movie version of my life, I knew, somebody who did teenage stuff well, some director, would have lingered on that poster and maybe even have swelled some sort of poignant music, put us in slow motion as the hallway continued on at regular speed around us, backlit the three of us—Coley and the posterboard chick and me—and in doing so tried to make some statement about teenage frivolity and prom season as it stacked up against something authentic and horrible like war. But if renting all those movies had taught me anything more than how to lose myself in them, it was that you only actually have perfectly profound little moments like that in real life if you recognize them yourself, do all the fancy shot work and editing in your head, usually in the very seconds that whatever is happening is happening. And even if you do manage to do so, just about never does anyone else you’re with at the time experience that exact same kind of moment, and it’s impossible to explain it as it’s happening, and then the moment is over.

Certain words, certain expressions. Things like ‘I love you’ and ‘I hate you.’ They’re big traps for actors. They can tempt you away from the connection you’ve developed with your partner and lead you into swamplands of clichéd performing. ‘Love’ and ‘hate’ are powerful words, and for some reason, we feel like we must fulfill them—and other words like them—whenever we say them. But we don’t have to.” Bill turns to Adam. “Actors hit that line—‘you know I’m absolutely crazy about you. Don’t you?’—and go all kablooey. Your head’s saying, ‘How can I not say a line like that without letting love swim into the duck pond? But inside you’re saying, ‘To hell will love! This girl’s really pissed me off, breaking off an important date like that.’ Follow your true inner response. It will never lead you astray. You’ll be bubbling up with impatience and irritation and you’ll say a line like that and it’ll have new meaning. It’ll have your meaning. Remember: Bad actors consciously adjust their inner responses to what they think the lines of the text require. Good actors adjust the text to the inner emotional line created by their sensitized responses to the other actor.” Adam says, “I get it. I was trying to act the words.” Bill nods. “You were manipulating yourself, cutting off our real response in order to live up to what you thought the text demanded of you. But any line can mean anything, and come out of you in any way.

Soon, things were heating up in the kitchen. The first course was a variation on a French recipe that had been around since Escoffier, Baccala Brandade. Angelina created a silky forcemeat with milk, codfish, olive oil, pepper, and slow-roasted garlic, a drizzle of lemon juice, and a shower of fresh parsley, then served it as a dip with sliced sourdough and warmed pita-bread wedges, paired with glasses of bubbly Prosecco. The second course had been a favorite of her mother's called Angels on Horseback- freshly shucked oysters, wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto, then broiled on slices of herb-buttered bread. When the oysters cooked, they curled up to resemble tiny angels' wings. Angelina accented the freshness of the oyster with a dab of anchovy paste and wasabi on each hors d'oeuvre. She'd loved the Angels since she was a little girl; they were a heavenly mouthful. This was followed by a Caesar salad topped with hot, batter-dipped, deep-fried smelts. Angelina's father used to crunch his way through the small, silvery fish like French fries. Tonight, Angelina arranged them artfully around mounds of Caesar salad on each plate and ushered them out the door. For the fifth course, Angelina had prepared a big pot of her Mediterranean Clam Soup the night before, a lighter version of Manhattan clam chowder. The last two courses were Parmesan-Stuffed Poached Calamari over Linguine in Red Sauce, and the piece de resistance, Broiled Flounder with a Coriander Reduction.

I take a deep breath, relishing in the fresh air and open space around me. Something wet splatters on my cheek, and I turn my face toward the cloudy sky that is now beginning to drizzle down on me. I spread out my arms and tilt my head up, loving the feel of rain pelting my skin. The the drizzle turns into a downpour. Rain is falling rapidly while I'm smiling stupidly. My head feels clearer than it has in days as cool water coats my skin, my dress, my hair. I spin in place, the skirts of my gown swishing around my ankles, feeling like an idiot and absolutely loving it. I slip the shoes from my aching feet and pad through puddles like I did as a little girl, reminding me of a time when I was younger... Laughter bubbles out of me. Hysterical. I am completely hysterical. Rain is sticking strands of hair to my face and dripping down the tip of my nose while I smile through it all, momentarily forgetting about my troubles and simply taking a moment to exist. "I don't know that I ever lived before lying eyes on the likes of you." I spin, blinking through the steady stream of rain before my eyes find the gray ones blending in with the sheet of water falling down on us. His hair is dripping wet, all wavy and tousled. His white button-down shirt is sticky and see-through, showing off an inked chest and tanned torso beneath. And the sight of him has me smiling. "oh, but I only have eyes for one little lady, and I can't seem to take them off of her." Hos chest is rising and falling just as rapidly as the rain while my heart is thundering just as loudly as the storm.

One day Spinner, the woman who runs PR tells me, “I like that idea, but I’m not sure that it’s one-plus-one-equals-three enough.” What does any of this nutty horseshit actually mean? I have no idea. I’m just amazed that hundreds of people can gobble up this malarkey and repeat it, with straight faces. I’m equally amazed by the high regard in which HubSpot people hold themselves. They use the word awesome incessantly, usually to describe themselves or each other. That’s awesome! You’re awesome! No, you’re awesome for saying that I’m awesome! They pepper their communication with exclamation points, often in clusters, like this!!! They are constantly sending around emails praising someone who is totally crushing it and doing something awesome and being a total team player!!! These emails are cc’d to everyone in the department. The protocol seems to be for every recipient to issue his or her own reply-to-all email joining in on the cheer, writing things like “You go, girl!!” and “Go, HubSpot, go!!!!” and “Ashley for president!!!” Every day my inbox fills up with these little orgasmic spasms of praise. At first I ignore them, but then I feel like a grump and decide I should join in the fun. I start writing things like, “Jan is the best!!! Her can-do attitude and big smile cheer me up every morning!!!!!!!” (Jan is the grumpy woman who runs the blog; she scowls a lot.) Sometimes I just write something with lots of exclamation points, like, “Woo-hoo!!!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!!! You totally rock!!!!!!!!!!!!” Eventually someone suspects that I am taking the piss, and I am told to cut that shit out.

The story we are told of women is not this one. The story of women is the story of love, of foundering into another. A slight deviation: longing to founder and being unable to. Being left alone in the foundering, and taking things into one's own hands: rat poison, the wheels of a Russian train. Even the smoother and gentler story is still just a modified version of the above. In the demotic, in the key of bougie, it's the promise of love in old age for all the good girls of the world. Hilarious ancient bodies at bath time, husband's palsied hands soaping wife's withered dugs, erection popping out of the bubbles like a pink periscope. I see you! There would be long, hobbledy walks under the plane trees, stories told by a single sideways glance, one word sufficing. Anthill, he'd say; Martini! she'd say; and the thick swim of the old joke would return to them. The laughter, the beautiful reverberations. Then the bleary toddling on to an early-bird dinner, snoozing through a movie hand in hand. Their bodies like knobby sticks wrapped in vellum. One laying the other on the deathbed, feeding the overdose, dying the day after, all heart gone out of the world with the beloved breath. Oh, companionship. Oh, romance. Oh, completion. Forgive her if she believed this would be the way it would go. She had been led to this conclusion by forces greater than she. Conquers all! All you need is! Is a many-splendored thing! Surrender to! Like corn rammed down goose necks, this shit they'd swallowed since they were barely old enough to dress themselves in tulle. The way the old story goes, woman needs an other to complete her circuits, to flick her to fullest blazing.

Four Years Since Today I remember the day but to be honest it is everyday That day then, the moment then, when you left us all here More than just a father I call, a gem I treasure, that day I lost We four girls, my mom’s other half, my brothers best bud, our first love, we lost Holding the key to the future called You, I stand still facing the gate of the past Why I keep on asking the same question? Why you? Why out of all those people? Why too soon? Why? It has been years, 4 years exact, it seems like yesterday yes You were taken too soon, words aren’t enough to express It’s not fair, but who I am to blame, who Am I to question? My eyes express longing you cannot fathom From my open mouth my broken heart pours Words that try to capture that image so faint He is the picture I could not ever paint Yet our memories is in the solid bowl being kept Spare me even just 5 or 10 minutes of your presence To build up this longing I feel, I am asking I want to hear your nag; I want to hear your laugh In my dreams please see me there I won’t get afraid nor get frightened Like a waterfalls my tears keeps on flowing Like a bubble your voice keeps on vanishing He, his shadow, he himself starts from fading I don’t want to forget you please stop time from ticking I don’t want to open my eyes don’t wake me from dreaming You are the art of my painting, the muse of my poem My strength, my inspiration why I’m still holding on My king, my superman, name them all, you are my only one I miss the old golden days when you used to carry us one by one Look papa, how I am now, hoping always, you’ll be proud It pains me to know this inevitable truth, yes That I can’t see you for now yes it’s the truth, but My father’s love undeniable not easily obtained Something that few, many people rather don’t have But I’m blessed and proud I have mine claimed.

HEART OF TEA DEVOTION Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steamy column and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful ev ning in. WILLIAM COWPER Perhaps the idea of a tea party takes you back to childhood. Do you remember dressing up and putting on your best manners as you sipped pretend tea out of tiny cups and shared pretend delicacies with your friends, your parents, or your teddy bears? Were you lucky enough to know adults who cared enough to share tea parties with you? And are you lucky enough to have a little person with whom you could share a tea party today? Is there a little girl inside you who longs for a lovely time of childish imagination and "so big" manners? It could be that the mention of teatime brings quieter memories-cups of amber liquid sipped in peaceful solitude on a big porch, or friendly confidences shared over steaming cups. So many of my own special times of closeness-with my husband, my children, my friends-have begun with putting a kettle on to boil and pulling out a tea tray. But even if you don't care for tea-if you prefer coffee or cocoa or lemonade or ice water, or if you like chunky mugs better than gleaming silver or delicate china, or if you find the idea of traditional tea too formal and a bit intimidating-there's still room for you at the tea table, and I think you would love it there! I have shared tea with so many people-from business executives to book club ladies to five-year-old boys. And I have found that few can resist a tea party when it is served with the right spirit. You see, it's not tea itself that speaks to the soul with such a satisfying message-although I must confess that I adore the warmth and fragrance of a cup of Earl Grey or Red Zinger. And it's not the teacups themselves that bring such a message of beauty and serenity and friendship-although my teacups do bring much pleasure. It's not the tea, in other words, that makes teatime special, it's the spirit of the tea party. It's what happens when women or men or children make a place in their life for the

The story really is short. Nine pages, about a boy who was born with a pair of wings. All his life, people tell him that this means he should try to fly. He’s afraid to. When he finally does, jumps off a two-story roof, he falls. He breaks his legs and wings. He never gets them reset. As he recovers, the bone heals in its misshapen form. Finally, people stop telling him that he must’ve been born to fly. Finally, he’s happy. When Alex comes back out, I’m crying. He asks me what’s wrong. I say, “I don’t know. It just speaks to me.” He thinks I’m making a joke and chuckles along, but for once, I wasn’t referencing the gallery girl who tried to sell us a twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear sculpture. I was thinking about what Julian used to say about art. How it either makes you feel something or it doesn’t. When I read his story, I started crying for a reason I can’t totally explain, not even to Alex. When I was a kid, I used to have these panic attacks thinking about how I could never be anyone else. I couldn’t be my mom or my dad, and for my whole life, I’d have to walk around inside a body that kept me from ever truly knowing anyone else. It made me feel lonely, desolate, almost hopeless. When I told my parents about this, I expected them to know the feeling I was talking about, but they didn’t. “That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with feeling that way, though, sweetie!” Mom insisted. “Who else do you think about being?” my dad said with his particular blunt fascination. The fear lessened, but the feeling never went away. Every once in a while, I’d roll it back out, poke at it. Wonder how I could ever stop feeling lonely when no one could ever know me all the way. When I could never peer into someone else’s brain and see it all. And now I’m crying because reading this story makes me feel for the first time that I’m not in my body. Like there’s some bubble that stretches around me and Alex and makes it so we’re just two different colored globs in a lava lamp, mixing freely, dancing around each other, unhindered. I’m crying because I’m relieved. Because I will never again feel as alone as I did during those long nights as a kid. As long as I have him, I will never be alone again.

Carolina walked over to the private deck and turned on the Jacuzzi, the bubbles starting to bounce in the water. Enrique followed her and brushed his hand through the water. "That looks nice, but I don't have a swimsuit." "Neither do I," she said with a smile. She held his gaze as her sundress fell to her toes. She was standing there in nothing but the new bra and panties and heels he'd purchased at the store. The yellow lace barely covered her nipples, and the thong accentuated her perfect ass. Enrique wanted to fuck her against the hot tub until she screamed his name. But again, he reminded himself that he needed to go slow. "You sure? I can run down to the gift shop and buy us swimsuits." She shook her head. "No, Enrique. I just don't want to hold back anymore, I want you." She unhooked her bra and took off her panties, revealing dark curls between her legs. The sight of this beautiful naked woman caused his cock to spring to attention. She carefully slipped out of her shoes, stepped into the tub, and sat down. He'd assumed she would be shy, but apparently that girl was gone. Well then! Enrique stripped down, his cock at full attention. Her mouth opened at the sight of his naked body. He grinned and then slipped into the bubbles and sat next to her. Enrique was about to kiss her when she straddled his thighs. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. She kissed him. "I'm sure." "Carolina... you're so beautiful." He kissed her neck, and she tossed back her hair. His cock was pressed up against her soft belly. He so desperately wanted to be inside of her. Her hands rubbed all over his body, and she hesitantly touched his throbbing cock underwater. Her delicate fingers felt incredible with the current from the jets. Her nipples were glistening from the water, and he sucked on one. She moaned as he touched her pussy, sliding a finger inside of her while thumbing her clit. God, she was tight. "Enrique. That feels so good." He smirked. "You haven't seen anything yet." He lifted her to sit on the edge of the tub, spreading her legs as he knelt on the seat inside. She shook her head and closed her legs. "Oh, I don't know if I'll like that." He laughed. "Yeah, you will." She bit her lower lip. "Do you like doing it?" "Babe, I've been dying to eat your pussy since I met you." Her jaw dropped and her cheeks seemed redder, but maybe that was from the heat of the spa. "Enrique! That mouth!" He grinned. "My dirty mouth speaks the truth. Now spread your legs and relax." She cautiously opened her legs.

My lips parted to say something, but I forgot what it had been as my gaze fell on the girl who had just stepped into the room. My thumping pulse picked up speed for a wholly different reason as I drank her in. Long, black hair tumbled down her spine, her green eyes turned up towards the curving roof as she drank in the sight of the building she was in. Her lips were full and primed for tasting, but the set of her mouth said she was more used to frowning than smiling. She was without a doubt, the most stunning creature I'd ever laid my eyes upon and I couldn't help but stare at her as she moved deeper into the room with the other students. I felt a silencing bubble closing around me as one of the others tossed it up to allow us to speak freely, but I didn't look away from her. My gaze was riveted to her as I drank in every small movement of her body and each expression crossing her face. I didn't give a fuck about the Vegas showing up tonight anymore. I just wanted to know that girl a whole lot better than I did. "Holy fuck," Caleb murmured beside me and a deep growl rolled through my chest as I got the impression his gaze was fixed where mine was. "Mine," I snarled, the beast in me waking up and my eyes shifting into reptilian slits as if my Dragon was aching for a look at her too. Every muscle in my body tensed and I was filled with the insane urge to get out of my seat and stride straight up to that girl and claim her in front of every fucker here. I didn't even know her name. I didn't know what Order she was or how powerful she was or any of the things like that which should have mattered to me. But I didn't care. Because the only thing about her that mattered in that moment was that I was laying my claim. The Dragon in me demanded it. "Well shit, I didn't consider the fact that they might be hot," Seth cursed and I frowned a little at his words, trying to piece them together. "That'll make things more interesting," Max agreed. "I wanna know how good they taste," Caleb said with a barely stifled groan. I didn't want to listen to any of them, but their words kept pushing in on me while I continued to stare at my mystery girl. ... The second girl looked strikingly like her sister, though for some reason I felt like I'd know which was which in the dark. I wasn't sure what it was. But despite their equally attractive looks, my attention was pulled back towards the first girl like the stars wanted it to be on her. Nova kept prattling on to the twins while my brothers all hissed plans back and forth between each other. Our parents had been more than clear on this. The Vega twins needed to go. We were expected to make sure that happened. That was all that mattered. My dick's interest in getting to know one of them a whole lot more intimately had no bearing on anything. (Darius POV)