Button Girl Quotes

And Nate? You kiss like a slobbering dog, you have bad breath, and you wouldn't know how to punch the right buttons on a girl if we came with manuals. Happy Thanksgiving, Jackass.

But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.

Something to learn about me,” I told him, “I’m a Snooze Button Girl.

Charley threw Cindy on the bed and pulled a switchblade knife. He pressed the release button and a five-inch blade flipped open. “One word to anybody and your ugly dog gets his throat cut!

I promise I will repay you.” “Oh yeah?” she asked, looking at him, with his bare feet and plain, dark clothes. “With what?” The smile stayed on his lips. “Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of things long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.

Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of thing long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus

Whatever pain meds Dr. Steve was taking for his shoulder, they must have been the strong ones. I mean the really strong ones, because he had gotten two of his shirt buttons in the wrong holes, spilled coffee all over his sling, and he was grinning like he was six years old and someone had just given him a puppy.

It's not your bra. It's our bra and I want it off." I slip it off her, pulling her against me as I rub my hands down the length of her back, then around to the button on the front of her jeans. "And I want to take off our pants." She grins against my lips and slowly nods. "Okay, but hurry," she whispers. "I can be quick," I assure her. "But I'll never hurry.

And, of course, there are the perfect day, perfect moment, perfect life dreams that come sometimes and make a person hit the snooze button for hours, trying to go back to sleep and make the perfect moments last.

My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also. You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore’s glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover’s fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling’s cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly. Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.

Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.

Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I got lost in the crowd.” “I noticed,” he said. “One second I was dancing with you, and the next you were gone and a very persistent werewolf was trying to get the buttons on my jeans undone.” Sebastian chuckled. “Girl or boy werewolf?” “Not sure. Either way, they could have used a shave.

In the basement, with Ruth, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of just a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction.

He'd been so angry at her -always pushing his buttons, that girl. But then he'd taken her into his arms, and all that anger had blazed into a darker, hotly possessive need that had urged him to bend his head, bite down on the throbbing pulse in her neck, leave a mark.

Ayden and Blake stared each other down. "Oh. My. God," Luna blurted from Ayden's back seat. "It's a love triangle." We all looked at her like she'd sprouted an alien from her head. "it's just like in a book. Two guys after one girl and-" I groaned. "That's ridiculous, Luna, this is not a love triangle." "Says the girl in the middle of a love triangle. Luna ignored my protests and prattled on. "Not one Hexy Boy but two. I've got to call Danica. Oooo," she squealed and clapped her hands,"We could have teams. Team Ayden and Team Blake. With T-shirt and buttons and-" "I could make a website," Lucian offered. "No!" My voice pitched with panic. "No teams. No shirts. No-" "I'll get you some headshots," Blake said, turning his profile towards Luna and Lucian. "I've been told the left is my best side. What do you think?" "Aurora's right," Ayden said. "This is buts. Blake you can follow us-" "Dude, you know no one would pick Team Ayden. You're just jealous." "That's not true. My team would be way bigger than yours." "Dare to dream, little man, dare to dream." "Care to make a wager on it?" "Absolutely." "Fine. How about-" "You two shut up!" I shoved myself out of the car.

I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, but I really wish there was something like a reset button on my life.

I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open.

Girls are like phones. We love to be held, talked too but if you press the wrong button you'll be disconnected!

I was told The average girl begins to plan her wedding at the age of 7 She picks the colors and the cake first By the age of 10 She knows time, And location By 17 She’s already chosen a gown 2 bridesmaids And a maid of honor By 23 She’s waiting for a man Who wont break out in hives when he hears the word “commitment” Someone who doesn’t smell like a Band-Aid drenched in lonely Someone who isn’t a temporary solution to the empty side of the bed Someone Who’ll hold her hand like it’s the only one they’ve ever seen To be honest I don’t know what kind of tux I’ll be wearing I have no clue what want my wedding will look like But I imagine The women who pins my last to hers Will butterfly down the aisle Like a 5 foot promise I imagine Her smile Will be so large that you’ll see it on google maps And know exactly where our wedding is being held The woman that I plan to marry Will have champagne in her walk And I will get drunk on her footsteps When the pastor asks If I take this woman to be my wife I will say yes before he finishes the sentence I’ll apologize later for being impolite But I will also explain him That our first kiss happened 6 years ago And I’ve been practicing my “Yes” For past 2, 165 days When people ask me about my wedding I never really know what to say But when they ask me about my future wife I always tell them Her eyes are the only Christmas lights that deserve to be seen all year long I say She thinks too much Misses her father Loves to laugh And she’s terrible at lying Because her face never figured out how to do it correctl I tell them If my alarm clock sounded like her voice My snooze button would collect dust I tell them If she came in a bottle I would drink her until my vision is blurry and my friends take away my keys If she was a book I would memorize her table of contents I would read her cover-to-cover Hoping to find typos Just so we can both have a few things to work on Because aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need a little editing? Aren’t we all waiting to be proofread by someone? Aren’t we all praying they will tell us that we make sense She don’t always make sense But her imperfections are the things I love about her the most I don’t know when I will be married I don’t know where I will be married But I do know this Whenever I’m asked about my future wife I always say …She’s a lot like you

It took me all of five minutes to button up my shirt, find a belt, and slip on socks and shoes. The girls, however, took for fucking ever.

Dear lord, the flash of his gleaming white teeth was like a hot button to my nether regions. Down vagina! Down, girl.” Bad Rep by A. Meredith Walters

life would be perfect if girls had a mute button, guys had an delete button, bad times had a fast forward button, and good times had a pause button.

(Man, I wish life had emoticons, you know? So that when your dad pisses you off you could like click a mental button or something and just show him one of those rolleyes. That would rock) Anyway.

In the basement, with Ruth, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of just a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction. And I learned that they can taste like winning.

He came off so lost, which of course hit all my buttons because who doesn’t dream of finding an incredibly hot boy and fixing him? Straight guys may have cars and gadgets, but girls and gay boys, we like to fix broken boys.

But then Vega snapped in a loud, clear voice, “My guess is they clicked ‘like’ because there’s no ‘I fucked her’ button.

Sometimes we’re on a collision course, and we just don’t know it. Whether it’s by accident or by design, there’s not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she’d stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who’d stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn’t been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot. When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the while Daisy was getting dressed. The delivery truck pulled away and the taxi was able to move, while Daisy, the last to be dressed, waited for one of her friends, who had broken a shoelace. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would’ve crossed the street, and the taxi would’ve driven by. But life being what it is - a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control - that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed.

knock, knock. who's there? it's cancer. cancer who? cancer of the section right behind your belly button that you have been trying to pass off as the pinch of ovulation. but it's not. it's cancer. it's me.

There are thousands of ways to love men, Lidia Yuknavitch once wrote, and when I watch my brothers button their shirts, or body slam my niece, or dance with their lips puckered, I think I know all of them.

He looked down at himself and laughed softly. ‘‘My dark side dresses better than I do.’’ He stood up and reached for clothes folded neatly on a table to the side as he loosened the tie on his robe. He hesitated, smiled, and raised his eyebrows. ‘‘If you don’t mind, Claire . . . ?’’ ‘‘Oh. Sorry.’’ Claire turned her back. She didn’t like turning her back on him, even with the cell door locked. He was better behaved when he knew she was watching. She focused on the faint, distorted image of his reflection on the TV screen as he shed the dressing gown and began to pull on his clothing. She couldn’t see much, except that he was very pale all over. Once she was sure his pants were up, she glanced behind her. He had his back to her, and she couldn’t help but compare him with the only other man she’d really studied half-naked. Shane was broad, strong, solid. Myrnin looked fragile, but his muscles moved like cables under that pale skin—far stronger than Shane’s, she knew. Myrnin turned as he buttoned his shirt. ‘‘It’s been a while since a pretty girl looked at me with such interest,’’ he said. She looked away, feeling the blush work its heat up through her neck and onto her cheeks. ‘‘It’s all right, Claire. I’m not offended.

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 slip her shirt over her head and she tries to cover herself, but I move her arms out of the way and kiss up her neck while I talk about all the things that are no longer just mine. 'Will, stop.' She laughs and attempts to pull my hands away from her bra. 'You can't take off my bra, we're in our driveway. What if they come outside?' 'It's dark,' I whisper. 'And it's not your bra. It's our bra and I want it off.' I slip it off her, pulling her against me as I rub my hands down the length of her back, then around to the button on the front of her jeans. 'And I want to take off our pants.

Behind every powerful man is a woman who knows how to push his buttons. Good

He despised the words leaving his mouth, hating the way they made him feel. Exposed. Open. By a girl who didn’t weigh more than his cock. A girl who stared at him with eyes of fire, who pushed buttons he didn’t know he had, and had wormed her way inside a part of him that should be closed.

But it was only sad in the old world, I reminded myself, where people stayed cowed by the bitter medicine of their lives. Where money kept everyone slaves, where they buttoned their shirts up to the neck, strangling any love they had inside themselves. —

The scent of the sea and the burning asphalt being carried on the southerly wind made me think of summers past. The warmth of a girl's skin, old rock n' roll, button-down shirts right out of the wash, the smell of cigarettes smoked in the pool locker room, faint premonitions, everyone's sweet, limitless summer dreams. And then one year(when was it?), those dreams didn't come back.

So Dorothy said we might was well go out to Fountainblo with Louie and Robber if Louie would take off his yellow spats which were made of yellow shammy skin with pink pearl buttons. Because Dorothy said, 'Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all the time.

Ty didn't think Middleton was a great girl. He thought Middleton was a pain in the ass. Waltzing around with her shiny hair and long legs and her throaty voice, being cuter than a fistful of buttons. Where did she get off?

Your first crush is allowed to be on a doofus." "Mine won't be. I'll choose a handsome gypsy boy who'll break my heart, or a soft girl with a diamond in her belly button.

...sleeping pills are just button-shaped vulnerability.

You wouldn't know how to pinch the right buttons on a girl if we came with manuals.

She pushed the button and like a miracle her head filled with the sound of Jerry Trupiano’s voice… and more importantly, with the sounds of Fenway Park. She was sitting out here in the darkening, drippy woods, lost and alone, but she could hear thirty thousand people. It was a miracle.

And that was the point I knew I just loved this filthy, ugly, loquacious man in a fur coat, who would spend the day roaming all over town, looking for bright lights, and laughter - and then at night come on stage, and unbutton two buttons on his waistcoat, with his clumsy, fat fingers, and show you his heart beneath.

Jaeshawn!” I screamed. My hips bucked off the bed, as the sucking grew more intense. I could feel a tightening sensation in my stomach that sent tingles to the ends of my toes. He stopped sucking and roughly dragged his tongue over my love button, over and over again, until I felt like I was going to explode. "Jaeeee!” I screamed as I started to ride his tongue.

Boys can smell heartbreak from across a continent. Even at fourteen. Even in the middle of an innocent summer afternoon. We girls have an invisible string behind our belly button, and only certain guys can tug at it. This boy... he will snap it if I let him.

You wouldn't know how to punch the right buttons on a girl if we came with manuals.

I'm sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer.

You can if things until you go crazy, my girl.

Wondered whether the moment of no return had already been and gone, or whether this was it, here, right now, hovering above that red button. Either way, going back didn't exist any more, not for her. There was only forward. Only onwards. She straightened up and pressed record.

Maybe my ploy had worked. I wore a respectable shirt that buttoned down the front, only - whoops! – I must have forgotten to fasten the button over my cleavage. No respectable girl would wear her shirt open that low. (Cough.)

The painting showed she did not yet know that lives end abruptly, that much of living is repetition and separation, that buttons forever need re-sewing no matter how ferociously one works the thread, that nice things almost happen.

The first fifteen minutes of our drive are silent, except for a few seconds when the audiobook I was listening to starts up, and I have to smack the power button because I'm fairly certain my romance novel was heading toward a sex scene.

Bok knows everything about me, including my thing with auras. Truth is, though, he isn't much good as a bodyguard. Bok is a shade heavier than an eating disorder, has a cute button nose and long, silky, straight hair most girls would kill for. We've been friends since prep when he used to sit behind me in class and hit me with his ruler. I put up with it for weeks, and then one day when the teacher stepped out of the room I pushed him off his chair and watched as he fell flat on his skinny, pretty arse.

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.

A little girl was sitting beside him, with huge, doomy eyes, a bear suit with all the buttons done up in the wrong buttonholes, and very dark, straggly hair that stuck straight out of her head at odd angles. She seem to read his mind. "Shh," said the little girl. A lot of her teeth had recently fallen out and she was very serious for such a small person. "We're not allowed to talk about the Lost. It's bad for morale.

You are the strangest girl I've ever met," he said, like he thought I was joking. He picked up his water bottle and gave me a sideways glance. "Have you ever kissed anybody?" he asked, and took a sip. I smirked. "There aren't a whole lot of opportunities in the digital world. I did practice on my hand once. It didn't do anything for me." Justin coughed on the water he was swallowing and I slapped my hand over my mouth. "Did I just say that out loud?" I mumbled. He was half coughing, half laughing. "Yes, you did," he managed to say. "Delete, delete, delete," I said, and pushed an imaginary button in the air. "I really miss that feature." "No, that's the good stuff. People always want to delete the good stuff." His eyes lit up. "That's a cool idea, though. What would you say, right now, if you could immediately delete it, so no one read it?

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like "sunset" and "Paris." Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus. Sorrow for Sasha locked up my throat.

But here’s the thing I want to be clear on: I knew what I was doing, I was punching every button on him. I was watching him coil tighter and tighter—I wanted him to finally say something, do something. Even if it’s bad, even if it’s the worst, do something, Nick. Don’t leave me here like a ghost.

I've got my Motown girl-group music playing, and my supplies are laid out all around me in a semicircle. My heart hole punch, pages and pages of scrapbook paper, pictures I've cut out of magazines, glue gun, my tape dispenser with all my different colored washi tapes. Souvenirs like the playbill from when we saw Wicked in New York, receipts, pictures. Ribbon, buttons, stickers, charms. A good scrapbook has texture. It's thick and chunky and doesn't close all the way.

I lifted the remote control, pushed the Play button, and started the video. I guess, in that moment, I also started my new life as Cameron-the-girl-with-no-parents. Ruth was sort of right, I would learn: A relationship with a higher power is often best practiced alone. For me it was practiced in hour-and-half or two-hour increments, and paused when necessary. I don't think it's overstating it to say that my religion of choice became VHS rentals, and that its messages came in Technicolor and musical montages and fades and jump cuts and silver-screen legends and B-movie nobodies and villains to root for and good guys to hate. But Ruth was wrong, too. There was more than just one other world beyond ours; there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and at 99 cents apiece I could rent them all.

Each clip and zip and fastening, each button and bow, each stretch of elastic as you undress a woman reveals hidden treasure, a clavicle, a shoulder blade, the shadowy line of a breast, a hip bone carved by Michelangelo, the discreet charms and mystery of the navel, a neglected erogenous zone cherished by the Ancient Greeks.

This is a dream. It has to be, because the three of them can’t be SN, and I’ve had dreams like this before, when they’re all there—Liam, Ethan, Caleb—morphing into each other, swapping shirts. But no, Caleb is in gray. Ethan is the Batman. And Liam is wearing a button-down, because unlike his friends, he rotates his wardrobe. One point for Liam there. If this is a dream, next they will break out into song. Serenade me with “The Girl No One Knows.” No one is singing. This is not a dream.

If two girls on trikes appeared, she was out like a belly button.

Even Polly seemed impressed, for he called her a good girl, blessed her buttons, and begged her to "come and take a walk, dear", in his most affable tone.

As I pressed the doorbell button it popped off the wall and hung by two colored cords. Obviously it didn’t work, so I knocked.

A stack overflow error caused cabin fever and the reset button was Pattaya.

but sleeping pills are just button-shaped vulnerability.

Life is like that: you press a button and life lights up. Except that the girl didnt know which button to press.

Pip faltered, thumb hovering over the send button, reading back her words. She ran them through her mind until they sounded misshapen and nonsensical.

The encyclopedia is the only place in the world where World Domination comes before Work!—The last words of Joaquin the Illiterate, just before he hit that big red button labeled Do Not Touch

I got back from the University late in the afternoon, had a quick swim, ate my dinner, and bolted off to the Stanton house to see Adam. I saw him sitting out on the galley reading a book (Gibbon, I remember) in the long twilight. And I saw Anne. I was sitting in the swing with Adam, when she came out the door. I looked at her and knew that it had been a thousand years since I had last seen her back at Christmas when she had been back at the Landing on vacation from Miss Pound's School. She certainly was not now a little girl wearing round-toed, black patent-leather, flat-heeled slippers held on by a one-button strap and white socks held up by a dab of soap. She was wearing a white linen dress, cut very straight, and the straightness of the cut and the stiffness of the linen did nothing in the world but suggest by a kind of teasing paradox the curves and softnesses sheathed by the cloth. She had her hair in a knot on the nape of her neck, and a little white ribbon around her head, and she was smiling at me with a smile which I had known all my life but which was entirely new, and saying, 'Hello, Jack,' while I held her strong narrow hand in mine and knew that summer had come.

I began to learn that anger, hate, fear, and loneliness are all but one button awaiting the touch of a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction. and I learned they can taste like winning.

I was acutely aware of him, and the thought that he was walking me back to my room and would most likely try to kiss me again sent shivers down my spine. For self-preservation purposes, I had to get away. Every minute I spent with him just made me want him more. Since merely annoying him wasn’t working, I’d have to up the ante. Apparently, I needed him not only to fall out-of-like with me, but to hate me as well. I’d frequently been told that I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. If I were going to push him away, it was going to be so far away that there would be absolutely no change of him ever coming back. I tried to wrench my elbow out of his grasp, but he just held on more tightly. I grumbled at him, “Stop using your tiger strength on me, Superman.” “Am I hurting you?” “No, but I’m not a puppet to be dragged around.” He trailed his fingers down my arm and took my hand instead. “Then you play nice, and I will too.” “Fine.” He grinned. “Fine.” I hissed back. “Fine!” We walked to the elevator, and he pushed the button to my floor. “My room is on the same floor,” Ren edxplained. I scowled and then grinned lopsidedly and just a little bit evilly, “And umm, how exactly is that going to work for you in the morning, Tiger? You really shouldn’t get Mr. Kadam in trouble for having a rather large…pet.” Ren returned my sarcasm as he walked me to my door. “Are you worried about me, Kells? Well, don’t. I’ll be fine.” “I guess there’s no point in asking how you knew which door belong to me, huh, Tiger Nose?” He looked at me in a way that turned my insides to jelly. I spun around but awareness of him shot through my limbs, and I could feel him standing close behind me watching, waiting. I put my key in the lock, and he moved closer. My hand started shaking, and I couldn’t twist the key the right way. He took my hand and gently turned me around. He then put both hands on the door on either side of my head and leaned in close, pinning me against it. I trembled like a downy rabbit caught in the clutches of a wolf. The wolf came closer. He bent his head and began nuzzling my cheek. The problem was…I wanted the wolf to devour me. I began to get lost in the thick sultry fog that overtook me every time Ren put his hands on me. So much for asking for permission…and so much for sticking to my guns, I thought as I felt all my defenses slip away. He whispered warmly, “I can always tell where you are, Kelsey. You smell like peaches and cream.” I shivered and put my hands on his chest to push him away, but I ended up grabbing fistfuls of shirt and held on for dear life. He trailed kisses from my ear down my cheek and then pressed soft kisses along the arch of my neck. I pulled him closer and turned my head so he could really kiss me. He smiled and ignored my invitation, moving instead to the other ear. He bit my earlobe lightly, moved from there to my collarbone, and trailed kisses out to my shoulder. Then he lifted his head and brought his lips about one inch from mine and the only thought in my head was…more. With a devastating smile, he reluctantly pulled away and lightly ran his fingers through the strands of my hair. “By the way, I forgot to mention that you look beautiful tonight.” He smiled again then turned and strolled off down the hall.

Her voice was perfect, custom-made for my ears. I wanted to hit the record button in my brain and save this all for later. Half of me was listening to her words, but the other half was mesmerized by the melody.

I have this recurring dream, where something bad has happened and I need to dial 911, but I’ve lost all control over my fingers. They keep slipping across the buttons (it’s always an old-fashioned landline I’m dialing from), and every time I realize, You’re having this dream again, but this time you’re going to outsmart it. Just take it slow, I think. You can’t mess this up if you take it slow. Find the nine. Push. The one. Push.

More wine for me, pour me some more!" "You smart girl, I knew you're a smart girl, just teasing...” Faces turn red, the dark earth blood is rising. They wink at Pelka, wink at the host: "He knows his goods!" The women feel the buttons constricting them - they undo one, another, a third. By twos the guests go outside to get some air. "Well, my dear guests, are you soaked to the gills? Eh? And now-to dance! Get lively!" The table and the chairs vanish. The middle of the room is empty. Ivan the Monk jumps out of his hole, a tambourine in his hands: "Tim-ta-a-am! Tim-ta-a-am!" “Eh-hey!" the redhead suddenly snatches the tambourine and sweeps off, tapping wildly in a circle. Eyes closed: a white sleepless sun-a white night on the meadow-white columns of smoke swaying over fires... "Eh-ah!"-to whirl herself to death, to whirl out everything, to empty herself - nothing has ever been... Heavy boots are thumping on the floor, beards fly in the wind, the frock-coat tails go flying... hey, get going, faster, faster - a hundred versts an hour! ("The North")

In the basement, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear, and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction. And I learned that they can taste like winning.

mostly they just stayed round in this languid paradise of dreamy skies and firefly evenings and noisy niggery street fairs—and especially of gracious, soft-voiced girls, who were brought up on memories instead of money.

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like "sunset" and "Paris." Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus. Sorrow for Sasha locked up my throat.

In the crush men used the women to play silent games with themselves. One stared ironically at a dark-haired girl to see if she would lower her gaze. One, with his eyes, caught a bit of lace between two buttons of a blouse, or harpooned a strap. Others passed the time looking out the window into cars for a glimpse of an uncovered leg, the play of muscles as a foot pushed break or clutch, a hand absentmindedly scratching the inside of a thigh.

As he catches my eye he beams at me, his dark face bright with affection. Anyone can see it who cares to look at him, he is hopelessly indiscreet. He puts his hand to his heart as if swearing fidelity to me. I look to left and right, thank God no-one is looking, they are all getting on their horses and George the duke is shouting for the guard. Recklessly, Richard stands there, his hand on his heart, looking at me as if he wants the world to know that he loves me. He loves me. I shake my head as if reproving him, and I look down at my hands on the reins. I look up again and he is still fixing his gaze on me, his hand still on his heart. I know I should look away, I know I should pretend to feel nothing but disdain – this is how the ladies in the troubadour poems behave. But I am a girl, and I am lonely and alone, and this is a handsome young man who has asked how he may serve me and now stands before me with his hand on his heart and his eyes laughing at me. One of the guard stumbled while mounting his horse and his horse shied, knocking the nearby horseman. Everyone is looking that way, and the king puts his arm around his wife. I snatch off my glove and, in one swift gesture, I throw it towards Richard. He catches it out of the air and tucks it in the breast of his jacket. Nobody has seen it. Nobody knows. The guardsman steadies his horse, mounts it, nods his apology to his captain, and the royal family turn and wave to us. Richard looks at me, buttoning the front of his jacket, and smiles at me warmly, assuredly. He has my glove, my favour.

Alana – still dressed as a pirate- chambers over the counter like that evil Japanese ghost in the Ring, knocking over the child-size popcorn of some little kid, who starts to cry. The pink-pigtailed girl knows something crazy is going on, but she doesn’t yet understand it has anything to do with her. Not until Alana has grabbed Tyler by his black button-down shirt and pushed him hard into the Icee machine, which begins to stream cherry-red Icee onto the counter.

Nailed it. So okay. The media says, ‘Girls, women, you can be anything you want to be in this brave new world of equality, as long as you can still see your toes when you stand up straight.’” He has been watching me, Gwendy thinks, because I do that every day when I get to the top. She blushes. She can’t help it, but the blush is a surface thing. Below it is a kind of so-what defiance. It’s what got her going on the stairs in the first place. That and Frankie Stone.

We stare at each other pop-eyed over the burlap sack and laugh as if we're afraid to stop. Somebody needs to say the magical, abracadabrical words that will turn tonight's crime into a joke. Marta has buttoned her wet sweater up to her neck. Petey's vanished. Now Raffy swirls the flashlights with true panic. Our joke keeps hatching and waddling forward in a snaky black procession, growing longer and less funny by the second, and this time nobody, not even Raffy, knows the punch line.

It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our fender flicked a button on one man’s coat. “You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.” “I am careful.” “No, you’re not.” “Well, other people are,” she said lightly. “What’s that got to do with it?” “They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an accident.” “Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.” “I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.” Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I’d been writing letters once a week and signing them: “Love, Nick,” and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free. Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

Amy will be fine. Amy ..." Here was where I should have said, "Amy loves Mom." But I couldn't tell Go that Amy loved our mother, because after all that time, Amy still barely knew our mother. Their few meetings had left them both baffled. Amy would dissect the conversations for days after—"And what did she mean by ..."—as if my mother were some ancient peasant tribeswoman arriving from the tundra with an armful of raw yak meat and some buttons for bartering, trying to get something from Amy that wasn't on offer.

Men are not raised to be intimate, they're raised to be competitive performers. Traditional socialization teaches young boys to filter their sense of self-worth through performance. The paradox for boys is that in order to be worthy of connection they must prove themselves invulnerable, button down warriors in the world's emotional marketplace. In the world of boys and men, you're either a winner or a loser, one up or one down, in control or controlled, man enough or a girl. Where in this set up is the capacity for love?

I lost my breath, actually fought for breath at how stunning she looked. Before I had even thought it through, I had my camera in my hand. I felt the weight transfer into my hands, and closing my eyes, I let the urge succeed. Opening my eyes, I lifted the camera to my eye. Uncapping the lens, I found the most perfect angle of my girl dancing in the waves. And I clicked. I clicked the button on the camera, my heart stuttering at every snap of the shutter, sure in the knowledge that I was capturing Poppy in this moment—happy.

They say in extreme moments time will slow, returning to its unmoving core, and standing there, it seemed as if everything stopped. Within the stillness, I felt the old, irrepressible ache to know what my point in the world might be. I felt the longing more solemnly than anything I’d ever felt, even more than my old innate loneliness. What came to me was the fleur de lis button in the box and the lost girl who’d put it there, how I’d twice carried it from Charleston to Philadelphia and back, carried it like a sad, decaying hope.

Athena: "What makes you human? What’s different about you from every other creature out there?” “We can think?” a boy wearing a loose button up shirt and khakis called from the front row. “We have emotions?” a girl asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her pinkie. “We’re self-aware? Like, we think about thinking and time and stuff?” Gods, when had college kids become so uncertain? All their replies ended with an upward lilt like they were asking a question instead of supplying an answer. After a couple of students gave faltering answers, I [Hades] called from the back of the room, voice strong and certain, “They can lie.” Athena jerked her head toward me, panic flashing in her eyes as she scanned the rows of students. When her gaze locked on mine, the color drained from her face. “Class dismissed.

Swatting his arm was like swatting a brick wall; Elle had never noticed the toned biceps hiding under his pressed suits and crisp button-ups. Or maybe she had, but she’d just added it to the list of reasons Grant was a sleazy jerk: gym-obsessed, girl-obsessed, and money-obsessed.

Mr. Wonderful was probably taking his sweet time, right?” “No, it was actually my fault this morning. I was busy with…paperwork.” “Oh. Well, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it. What kind of paperwork?” He smiled. “Nothing important.” Mr. Kadam held the door for me, and we walked out into an empty hallway. I was just starting to relax at the elevator doors when I heard a hotel room door close. Ren walked down the hall toward us. He’d purchased new clothes. Of course, he looked wonderful. I took a step back from the elevator and tried to avoid eye contact. Ren wore a brand new pair of dark-indigo, purposely faded, urban-destruction designer jeans. His shirt was long-sleeved, buttoned-down, crisp, oxford-style and was obviously of high quality. It was blue with thin white stripes that matched is eyes perfectly. He’d rolled up the sleeves and left his shirt untucked and open at the collar. It was also an athletic cut, so it fit tightly to his muscular torso, which made me suck in an involuntary breath in appreciation of his male splendor. He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it’s like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century. I again quickly ran through my list of reasons for not being with Ren and said a few “He’s not for me’s.” The good thing about seeing his mouthwatering self and watching him walk around like a regular person was that it tightened my resolve. Yes. It would be hard because he was so unbelievably gorgeous, but it was now even more obvious to me that we didn’t belong together. As he joined us at the elevator, I shook my head and muttered under my breath, “Figures. The guy is a tiger for three hundred and fifty years and emerges from his curse with expensive taste and keen fashion sense too. Incredible!” Mr. Kadam asked, “What was that, Miss Kelsey?” “Nothing.” Ren raised an eyebrow and smirked. He probably heard me. Stupid tiger hearing. The elevator doors opened. I stepped in and moved to the corner hoping to keep Mr. Kadam between the two of us, but unfortunately, Mr. Kadam wasn’t receiving the silent thoughts I was projecting furiously toward him and remained by the elevator buttons. Ren moved next to me and stood too close. He looked me up and down slowly and gave me a knowing smile. We rode down the elevator in silence. When the doors opened, he stopped me, took the backpack off my shoulder, and threw it over his, leaving me with nothing to carry. He walked ahead next to Mr. Kadam while I trialed along slowly behind, keeping distance between us and a wary eye on his tall frame.

GUYS! Would you give it a rest?" Kevin shouted at them, "You're standing there feeding off each other! Dad – you're trying to prove to Ted why me and Dani are a Bad Thing – because you just can't bring yourself to admit that it isn't, even though you can SEE that it isn't! You know it! And Ted – you're pushing my dad's buttons on purpose because you're not so sure yourself how you really feel about us - her, me, any of it! So both of ya just SHUT THE HELL UP!" He turned back towards Dani, "Dani – you're beautiful and I love you – but this wasn't one of your best ideas. Now everyone just be quiet while I hit the stupid little white ball and make it go into the stupid little round hole! GAWD!" All three of them stared at Kevin while he swung. The stupid little white ball flew straight and high, and landed on the green. Apparently a little focus – no matter what it was directed towards – was just what Kevin needed.

I sat on a bench and did what, as a girl, I had done whenever I needed to calm myself: instead of pressing the button with the number 4 on it, I let myself go up to the sixth floor. That space had been empty and dark for many years, ever since the lawyer who had his office there had left, taking with him even the light bulb from the landing. When the elevator stopped, I let my breath glide into my stomach and then return slowly to my throat. As always, after a few seconds, the light in the elevator went out, too. I thought of reaching my hand out to one of the door handles: you had only to pull it and the light would return. But I didn't move and continued to send my breath deep into my body. The only sound was that of the woodworms eating into the panelled walls. Just a few months earlier (five, six?), on a sudden impulse, I had revealed to my mother, during one of my brief visits, that as an adolescent I used to retreat to that secret place, and I brought her up there, to the top. Maybe I wanted to try to establish an intimacy that there had never been, maybe I wanted to let her know in some confused way that I had always been unhappy. But she seemed to me only amused by the fact that I had sat suspended in the void, in a dilapidated elevator.

It was nothing like the feast I'd been imagining. The distance made me feel a little sad. but it was only sad in the old world, I reminded myself, where people stayed cowed by the bitter medicine of their lives. Where money kept everyone slaves, where they buttoned their shirts up to the neck, strangling any love they had inside themselves.

I’d rather relive last night, even though all that girl and I did was fight. I smiled to myself. She’d fallen asleep with her glasses on last night. I took them off. I loved the way her tie was always tightened half-assed, her cuffs were too long and never buttoned, and her skin was my fucking religion lately. Especially the skin on her neck.

And why can't I have an ignore button like my phone? As I hit it, his calls disappear from the screen and the ringing stops. But the tingles are still at my fingertips, as if he sent them through the phone to grab me. Shoving it in my purse-the pockets on skinny jeans must just be for show 'cause nothing else is fitting in there-I smile at Mark. Ah, Mark. The blue-eyed, blond-haired, all-American quarterback. Who knew he had a crush on me all these years? Not Emma McIntosh, that's for dang sure. And not Chloe. Which is weird, because Chloe was a collector of this kind of information. Maybe it's not true. Maybe Mark's only interested in me because Galen was-who wouldn't want to date the girl who dated the hottest guy in school? But that's just fine with me. Mark is...well, Mark isn't as fantabulous as I always imagined he would be. Still, he's good-looking, a star quarterback, and he's not trying to hook me up with his brother. So why am I not excited? The question must be all over my face because Mark's got his eyebrow raised. Not in a judgmental arch, more like an arch of expectation. If he's waiting for an explanation, his puny human lungs can't hold their breath long enough for an answer. Aside from not being his business, I can't exactly explain the details of my relationship with Galen-fake or otherwise. The truth is, I don't know where we can go from here. He ripped holes in my pride like buckshot. And did I mention he broke my heart? He's not just a crush. Not just a physical attraction, someone who can make me forget my own name by pretending to kiss me. Not just a teacher or a snobby fish with Royal blood. Sure, he's all of those things. But he's more than that. He's who I want. Possibly forever.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must As chimney sweepers come to dust “Per aspera, ad astra,” my Golden friends whisper, even Sevro. And with a press of a button, Roque disappears from our lives to begin his last journey to join Ragnar and generations of fallen warriors in the sun.

In the empty Houston streets of four o’clock in the morning a motorcycle kid suddenly roared through, all bespangled and bedecked with glittering buttons, visor, slick black jacket, a Texas poet of the night, girl gripped on his back like a papoose, hair flying, onward-going, singing, “Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas—and sometimes Kansas City—and sometimes old Antone, ah-haaaaa!” They pinpointed out of sight.

With a Western Kansas contingent was another musician, seemingly from a small town. He carried a mandolin. He wore a green hat and green clothes which had pearl buttons on them wherever they could be put — cuffs, lapels, pocket flaps. In his tie was a small gold vanity pin which looked as if a fluffy-haired 16-year-old girl in a white dress had placed it there the night before the lad had started away for the wars.

JJ glared at his slumbering frame. Long legs, lethal in denim, his button fly already enticingly popped, abdomen all ridged and naked, begging for a finger or a tongue to discover the hills and valleys, dark shaggy hair spread around his head like a freaking halo on her pillow. Well too damn bad for this broken-down angel. She was the one who’d worked her ass off until two am. Not him. And she wanted her bed back.

The whiff of ocean on the southern breeze and the smell of burning asphalt brought back memories of summers past. It had seemed as though those sweet dreams of summer would last forever: the warmth of a girl’s skin, an old rock ‘n’ roll song, freshly washed button-down shirt, the odor of cigarette smoke in a pool changing room, a fleeting premonition. Then one summer (when had it been?) the dreams had vanished, never to return.

This is something every girl should know in addition to sewing on a button and applying mascara correctly. Before I know it, I'm asking her, 'If you had a daughter what would you tell her?' Mrs. Dupree smiles. 'Oh let me think.' she says. 'Well, I would say that every time you buy a new blouse or some wrinkle cream to make you look good, go and buy a book right away. It's just as important to keep your mind beautiful, don't you think?

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like “sunset” and “Paris.” Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus. Sorrow for Sasha locked up my throat.

Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like “sunset” and “Paris.” Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus. Sorrow for Sasha locked up my throat. She

Coraline walked down the hallway until she reached the mirror at the end. There was nothing reflected in it but a young girl in her dressing gown and slippers, who looked like she had recently been crying but whose eyes were real eyes, not black buttons, and who was holding a slightly burned-out candle in a candlestick. She looked at the girl in the mirror and the girl in the mirror looked back at her. I will be brave, thought Coraline. No, I am brave.

Just like with buttons on a shirt, the hooks are always going to be on the same side (your left). If you’re trying to remove a bra but can’t, simply say, “I need a little help.” The girl will laugh at you, but she’ll take off her bra. It happened to me many times in my early days, so it’s not a big deal, but it’s in your best interests to be able to do it on your own (unstrapping a bra with one hand or foot at lightning speed is a move girls appreciate).

Excuse me," a breathy female voice came from beside her, and she lifted her head. A stunning blonde in a dress cut down to her belly button and up to her crotch hovered beside the table. "Yes?" she asked, not certain whether to scream or laugh. "Are you Richard Addison?" the woman breathed, ignoring Sam. Rick blinked. "Oh, me. I thought you were talking to her. Yes, I am." "Could I have your autograph?" "Certainly. Do you have a pen?" The woman held out a napkin and a pen, and Rick signed his name. "There you go." "How about your phone number?" The woman gave a low giggle, but pressed the napkin back into Rick's hand. Sam would have stood, but Rick kicked her under the table. "Ouch," she grumbled, glaring at him. "I'm sorry, but I don't give out my phone number." "Are you sure?" Belly Button Girl licked her lips. "If I might make a comment," Rick continued, granting her a warm smile, though Sam noted that his eyes remained cool and untouched, "I'm a bit occupied right now, enjoying the company of a very lovely young lady with whom I enjoy spending my every spare moment." He straightened further, lowering his voice to a bare murmur. "So I thank you for your interest, but I am never in a million years going to give you my phone number. Good evening." Her face turning scarlet under its inch of makeup, the woman turned away, departing with a sway of her perfect hips. "You're so cool," Sam breathed. "You could at least pretend to be jealous," he said, pulling her hand across the table to kiss her knuckle. She had been jealous, but no way was she going to tell him that. Not until she could figure out for herself what the hell it meant. At least she hadn't panicked and tried to belt a near-naked woman for sneaking up behind her. "She's not your type." "And what precisely is my 'type'?" he asked. "The kind who could have handed you a comeback instead of just stomping away.

I know all their favorites. It's a knack, a professional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms. My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe farther into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily- this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centered apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children... Chocolate curls, white buttons with colored vermicelli, pain d'épices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknells, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes... I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing among the hazels and nougatines....

The passengers in the plane shifted, moving back to let others come forward to the windows for a look. In one window appeared a man wearing an open button-down flannel shirt. Standing in front of him was a young girl with long, wavy brown hair. The man put his hands on the girl’s shoulders and they both smiled. There was a familial comfort to their touch. And the little girl was an exact younger version of Chris. Fitz held a hand over the phone. “Someone go call the mama bear to let her know.

I suddenly turn my head to the blonde tall girl in tight high boots and mini tight skirt. Her shirt is—I think-in wrong size, because it is obviously too small and looks like her second skin. You can almost see her belly button. Not that I pay attention to her belly button. But everytime I see someone who’s dressing like a fucking whore, I always imagining her belly button even I do not want to. I don’t even care about her boobs or whatever. That is so weird, I probably have some major disorder.

Sure, there are good things, lots, sure, blow jobs, chocolate mousse, winning streaks, the warm fire in your enemy’s house, good book, hunk of cheese, flagon of ale, office raise, championship ring, the misfortunes of others, sure, good things, beyond count, queens, kings, old clocks, comfy clothes, lots, innumerable items in stock, baseball cards and bingo buttons, pot-au-feu, listen, we could go on and on like a long speech, sure it’s a great world, sights to see, canyons full of canyon, corn on the cob, the eroded great pyramids, contaminated towns, eroded hillsides, deleafed trees, those whitened limbs stark and noble in the evening light, geeeez, what gobs of good things, no shit, service elevators, what would we do without, and all the inventions of man, Krazy Glue and food fights, girls wrestling amid mounds of Jell-O, drafts of dark beer, no end of blue sea, formerly full of fish, eroded hopes, eruptions of joy, because we’re winning, have won, won, won what? the . . . the Title.

Prostitution is not exactly a reputable business over there either, even though the girls actually have to pay taxes on their earnings, and submit to regular health check ups. Even the prostitutes have universal healthcare over there. The benefit of legal prostitution is obvious: tax income for the city, healthier girls, and safety. In Amsterdam, each girl has an alarm button next to her bed that she can press if one of her "customers" tries to rape or hurt her. The police will arrive within minutes and protect the girl from harm.

His hands moved lightly over her velvet-covered back. His voice was very soft. "Have you been a good girl in my absence?" "Yes, of course," she said breathlessly. St. Vincent gave her a disapproving glance and kissed her with a seductive gentleness that sent her pulse racing. "We'll have to remedy that immediately. I refuse to tolerate proper behavior from my wife." She touched his face, smiling as he nipped at her exploring fingertips. "I've missed you, Sebastian." "Have you, love?" He unfastened the buttons of her robe, the light eyes glittering with heat as her skin was revealed. "What part did you miss the most?" "Your mind," she said, and smiled at his expression. "I was hoping for a far more depraved answer than that." "Your mind is depraved," she told him solemnly. He gave a husky laugh. "True." She gasped as his experienced hand slipped inside her robe. "What part of m-me did you miss the most?" "I missed you from head to toe. I missed every freckle. I missed the taste of you... the feel of your hair in my hands... Evie, my love, you are shamefully overdressed.

In our hands we hold the shadow of our hands. The night is kind―the others do not see us holding our shadow. We reinforce the night. We watch ourselves. So we think better of others. The sea still seeks our eyes and we are not there. A young girl buttons up her love in her breast and we look away smiling at the great distance. Perhaps high up, in the starlight, a skylight opens up that looks out on the sea, the olive trees and the burnt houses― We listen to the butterfly gyrating in the glass of All Soul’s Day, and the fisherman’s daughter grinding serenity in her coffee- grinder.

Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not the little sex-hard, but the death-hard; the murder-hard. It sniffed the air for him, even through the thickness of his trousers and underwear. It smelt the victim that ran ahead of him. The Mask didn't care that his prey was female; he got the murder-hard for anyone. In his time he'd had a heat for old men, pissing their pants as they went down in front of him; for girls, sometimes; sometimes women; even children. Ol' Button Face looked with the same cross-threaded eyes on the whole of humanity.

This is the girl in the borrowed trench-coat, moving across the bridge with the river Seine underneath. She pulls something from the jacket's pocket and hits the button, not answering when the man without his coat catches up with her at that moment, calling her name. Pull back fifty metres, and here is the burning apartment, debris floating softly through the air that is filled with screams. Here is the man again, gripping the shoulders of the girl with his coat and yelling into her ears, 'What have you done?' And here is that playful smile that creeps upon her lips as she disappears, the air rushing to fill the space where she had just been.

All right; let's go!" Trot decided. "But where's Button-Bright?" Just at this important moment Button-Bright was lost again, and they all scattered in search of him. He had been standing beside them just a few minutes before, but his friends had an exciting hunt for him before they finally discovered the boy seated among the members of the band, beating the end of the bass drum with the bone of a turkey-leg that he had taken from the table in the banquet room. "Hello, Trot," he said, looking up at the little girl when she found him. "This is the first chance I ever had to pound a drum with a reg'lar drum stick. And I ate all the meat off the bone myself.

We only have a little bit of time before I leave for Korea. Let’s not waste it.” Then I slide my hand in his, and he squeezes it. The house is completely empty, for the first time all week. All the other girls are still at the party, except for Chris, who ran into somebody she knows through Applebee’s. We go up to my room, and Peter takes off his shoes and gets in my bed. “Want to watch a movie?” he asks, stretching his arms behind his head. No, I don’t want to watch a movie. Suddenly my heart is racing, because I know what I want to do. I’m ready. I sit down on the bed next to him as he says, “Or we could start a new show--” I press my lips to his neck, and I can feel his pulse jump. “What if we don’t watch a movie or a show? What if we…do something else instead.” I give him a meaningful look. His body jerks in surprise. “What, you mean like now?” “Yes.” Now. Now feels right. I start planting little kisses down his throat. “Do you like that?” I can feel him swallow. “Yes.” He pushes me away from him so he can look at my face. “Let’s stop for a second. I can’t think. Are you drunk? What did Chris put in that drink she gave you?” “No, I’m not drunk!” I had a little bit of a warm feeling in my body, but the walk home woke me right up. Peter’s still staring at me. “I’m not drunk. I swear.” Peter swallows hard, his eyes searching mine. “Are you sure you want to do this now?” “Yes,” I say, because I really, truly am. “But first can you put on Frank Ocean?” He grabs his phone, and a second later the beat kicks in and Frank’s melodious voice fills the room. Peter starts fumbling with his shirt buttons and then gives up and starts to pull my shirt up, and I yelp, “Wait!” Peter’s so startled, he jumps away from me. “What? What’s wrong?” I leap off the bed and start rummaging through my suitcase. I’m not wearing my special bra and underwear set; I’m wearing my normal every day cappuccino-colored bra with the frayed edges. I can’t lose my virginity in my ugliest bra.

The idea came from one time when I was waiting for one of the girls at the airport and I saw this huge, happy, noisy crowd carrying balloons and placards and video cameras and regular cameras and flowers and wrapped gifts, and then the plane landed and a woman walked in with a tiny little button of a baby, Korean I think or Chinese, and the crowd started cheering and this couple stepped forward and the wife held out her arms and the woman gave her the baby and … I’ve always felt sort of cheated that we haven’t had any adoptions in our family. Adoption is more sudden than pregnancy, don’t you think? It’s more dramatic. So I said, ‘Why don’t we welcome our babies like that?

Here’s the thing,” said Kami, doing her buttons up fast, trying to keep things casual. “I don’t think that people who are freaked out by each other’s physical existence should date.” “I cannot believe you just did that,” Jared said. “Are you crazy?” He still looked shaken, which Kami found irritating. She was sure other girls received far more enthusiastic responses when they started with the undressing. “Well, I can’t believe you walked in and said that,” she shot back. “In front of Angela!” “I had to work myself up to it,” Jared said. “I may have lost my head.” “I was acting on an impulse!” Kami said. “I still feel it was a sensible impulse.” “So what you’re saying is, we’re both crazy,” said Jared. “Well, this is going to be fun.

As a young man, the seer became a rake. He drank and fought and made free with the village girls. He became a wagoner, carrying goods and passengers to other villages, an occupation that extended the range of his conquests. A good talker, sure of himself, he tried every girl he met. His method was direct: he grabbed and started undoing buttons. Naturally, he was frequently kicked and scratched and bitten, but the sheer volume of his efforts brought him notable success. He learned that even in the shyest and primmest of girls, the emptiness and loneliness of life in a Siberian village had bred a flickering appetite for romance and adventure. Gregory’s talent was for stimulating those appetites and overcoming all hesitations by direct, good-natured aggression.

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.

It's almost like he's trying to protect me. He hasn't done this since fifth grade, when the most popular, richest, and prettiest girl (seriously, where is the justice in the world?) in the year below us, Minami Vu, made fun of my overalls. "Those are so last year," she'd sneered, with her perfect button nose pointing up in the air. Her mother is a venture capitalist, and Minami always wears the latest styles before they even started trending on Instagram. I'd been proud of my green corduroy overalls. Hell, I didn't even know overalls had a year. But Jack loudly commented, "I like overalls. They look good on you, Ellie." Then he'd shifted in front of me, facing the girl, and she flushed all red. The following week, she wore the exact same green corduroy overalls to school. For some reason, he never complimented her on them.

In Rochester, New York, I was accused of “sexual deviancy,” so I attended the pretrial hearing in a Vivienne Westwood tartan plaid suit that featured penis-and-balls buttons that blended in so well you would have had to really look hard to see them. No one noticed, and I denied being a “sexual deviant,” but indeed that was exactly what they had on their hands. In this case, I was trying to get a girl out of my hotel room by saying she could only stay if she made it with the other girl I’d let in, who just happened to be younger and better-looking. When she wouldn’t, and why not I don’t know, I told her to leave and ended up throwing her out of the room, which was a mistake. I should have called the road manager. Later I would have a security guard, but back then I was on my own. The girl’s case was thrown out, but the fact is, I should have known better.

You cracked up. You were looking at me and laughing. And I said, What? And you said, I love you. And we were both completely shocked. Because it was a little premature, surely. And you said it again, as though you were checking the flavor, and it tasted perfectly right. You said it again, softly, I love you; you were looking right into my heart. You said it again, almost shouting. And you were laughing and it was as though you were so happy you couldn't believe that someone had given you this good thing. And it was partly that, and it was partly because you were thinking you'd had a premature decision, whereas guys your age were more generally associated with premature ejaculation. As well as inability to speak girl and commitment problems to anything other than games with buttons. And the best part was when you said, You love me, too. And all I had to do was nod. Because it was true.

I don't have a girlfriend." "Right." Daniel looked at me just long enough to make me squirm, and only just avoid flattening a granny who was crossing against the light her shopping cart. "Excuse me?" I sighed. "Let me guess. She's as tall as you are and looks like she spends her leisure time in a lace bra and angel wings." "Jesus,Ella, what was in that cup?" "What? Guys like you always have girlfriends like that." He reached out and jabbed a button on the dash. It took two tries,but the music stopped. "Sounds good to me, but there's no girlfriend-" I got it, a little late. Apparently, I'm slow that way. "Ah.I get it now." I slapped my forehead. It was unsatisfactorily silent; his glove was that thick. "Slow.Okay." "You look like an ordinary girl, but in truth-" I gave him the Hand.It looked silly in his glove. "Truth: I am a completely ordinary girl. There are tons of us around.Always have been.

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace. Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops. One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward. It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . . I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was hard to spot a woman wearing a dress or anything other than very casual pants or even shorts. Had I not known that they were coming to the school for church meetings, I would have assumed that there was some kind of sporting event taking place. The dress of our ward members compared very favorably to this bad example, but I am beginning to think that we are no longer quite so different as more and more we seem to slide toward that lower standard. We used to use the phrase “Sunday best.” People understood that to mean the nicest clothes they had. The specific clothing would vary according to different cultures and economic circumstances, but it would be their best. It is an affront to God to come into His house, especially on His holy day, not groomed and dressed in the most careful and modest manner that our circumstances permit. Where a poor member from the hills of Peru must ford a river to get to church, the Lord surely will not be offended by the stain of muddy water on his white shirt. But how can God not be pained at the sight of one who, with all the clothes he needs and more and with easy access to the chapel, nevertheless appears in church in rumpled cargo pants and a T-shirt? Ironically, it has been my experience as I travel around the world that members of the Church with the least means somehow find a way to arrive at Sabbath meetings neatly dressed in clean, nice clothes, the best they have, while those who have more than enough are the ones who may appear in casual, even slovenly clothing. Some say dress and hair don’t matter—it’s what’s inside that counts. I believe that truly it is what’s inside a person that counts, but that’s what worries me. Casual dress at holy places and events is a message about what is inside a person. It may be pride or rebellion or something else, but at a minimum it says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the difference between the sacred and the profane.” In that condition they are easily drawn away from the Lord. They do not appreciate the value of what they have. I worry about them. Unless they can gain some understanding and capture some feeling for sacred things, they are at risk of eventually losing all that matters most. You are Saints of the great latter-day dispensation—look the part.

All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.

The next morning the newspapers carried the news that while our meeting was being held there had been staged in Paris, Texas, one of the most awful lynchings and burnings this country has ever witnessed. A Negro had been charged with ravishing and murdering a five-year-old girl. He had been arrested and imprisoned while preparations were made to burn him alive. The local papers issued bulletins detailing the preparations, the schoolchildren had been given a holiday to see a man burned alive, and the railroads ran excursions and brought people of the surrounding country to witness the event, which was in broad daylight with the authorities aiding and abetting this horror. The dispatches told in detail how he had been tortured with red-hot irons searing his flesh for hours before finally the flames were lit which put an end to his agony. They also told how the mob fought over the hot ashes for bones, buttons, and teeth for souvenirs.

She wraps her legs around my waist, and I walk us slowly down the hall. "Mmm, wait," she whines against my mouth. "I haven't showered. I'm so gross, and I don't..." She trails off as I turn into my bathroom, then set her down. She shuffles her bare feet against the gray stone tile, an inquisitive look on her face as she looks around the narrow space bathed in neutral hues. I push open the glass door and turn on the shower. Water cascades from the waterfall showered. "Oh," she says as she grins and bites her bottom lip. By the time we've helped each other out of our clothes, the water's warm. I help her in first, then step in. And then, under the hot stream of water, we resume our dirty kissing and grabbing. "Wait, wait." She presses a hand against my chest, then reaches for the shampoo bottle on the ledge. "I do need to get clean first." I laugh and follow her lead by shampooing my own hair and doing a quick rinse with body wash. She holds her hand out for the loofah, but I shake my head. "Let me?" A devilish smirk tugs at her perfect mouth. When she nods and licks her lips, I have to take a second. God, this woman. The way she's sweet and filthy all at once is enough to make me lose it right here. But I refuse. Not before she gets what I'm dying to give her. I work up a lather and run the loofah all over her body. I take my time, paying attention to every part of her. These beautifully curved hips, the fullness of her thighs, the gentle curve of her waist, her arms, her hands, the swell of her boobs. And then I lather up my hands and slowly work between her legs. She clutches both hands around my biceps, and her toes curl against the earthen-hued river rock that lines the shower floor. Her eyes go wide and pleading as she looks up at me. I lean down to kiss her. "Tell me what you want." "You. Just you. Please." With her breathy request, I'm ready to burst. Not yet, though. She reaches down to palm me, but I gently push her hand away. I want this to be one hundred percent about her. When she presses her mouth against my shoulder and her sounds go louder and more frantic, I work my hand faster. She's panting, pleading, shouting. When I feel the sting of her teeth against my skin, I grin. Fuck yeah, my girl is rough when she loses it and I love it. I love her. She explodes against my palm, the weight of her body shuddering against me. I've got her, though. I've always, always got you. When she starts to ease back down, she lets out a breathy laugh. "Oh my god." I nod down at her, which only makes her laugh harder. Then she glances down at what I'm sporting between my legs and flashes a naughty smirk. "Let's do something about that." Soon it's me at the mercy of her hands. My head spins at the pleasure she delivers so confidently, like she knows every single one of my buttons to push. When I lose it, I'm shuddering and grunting. For a few seconds, my vision's blurry. She's that incredible.

Deep blue like the hour between the dog and the wolf. An attractively scooped neckline. Sleeves and hemline a length and cut you would call kind. Buttons in back like discreetly sealed lips. Good give in the fabric. Double lined. The sort of dress that looks like nothing but a sad dark sack on the hanger, but on the body it’s a different story. Takes extremely well to accessories. My mother loved this sort of dress. At whatever weight she was—thin, fat, middling—she owned an iteration. I saw her wear it to work, lunch with friends, on dates, to movies, parties, funerals. I saw her wear it alone in her apartment for days on end. Scratch at a stain on the boob. Shit. The hemline begin to unravel. Fuck fuck fuck. Do you have a safety pin? Holes begin to appear in the armpits. Jesus. The sleeves fray. Well. That’s that, isn’t it? She wore it so much she’d wear it out and then she’d have to hunt for another, whip through the plus-size racks for something that fit just as impossibly well, that was just as dignified, just as forgiving in its plain dark elegance.

Well, at any rate, all that part of it was over, though neither of them could possibly believe that father was never coming back. Josephine had had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery, while the coffin was lowered, to think that she and Constantia had done this thing without asking his permission. What would father say when he found out? For he was bound to find out sooner or later. He always did. “Buried. You two girls had me buried!” She heard his stick thumping. Oh, what would they say? What possible excuse could they make? It sounded such an appallingly heartless thing to do. Such a wicked advantage to take of a person because he happened to be helpless at the moment. The other people seemed to treat it all as a matter of course. They were strangers; they couldn’t be expected to understand that father was the very last person for such a thing to happen to. No, the entire blame for it all would fall on her and Constantia. And the expense, she thought, stepping into the tight-buttoned cab. When she had to show him the bills. What would he say then?

Eleanor unpacked the picnic basket and spread Mrs. Stevenson's goodies across it. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the four of them ate ham sandwiches and Cox's Orange Pippins and far too much cake, washing it all down with fresh ginger beer. Edwina watched the proceedings imploringly, snaffling up each small tidbit as it came her way. But really, the heat for October was uncanny! Eleanor undid the small pearl buttons at her wrist, rolling her sleeves back once, and then twice, so they sat in neat pleats. A somnolence had come over her after lunch, and she lay back on the blanket. Closing her eyes, she could hear the girls bickering lazily over the last slice of cake, but her attention drifted, sailing beyond them to pick out the 'plink' of water as gleaming trout leapt in the stream, the thrum of hidden crickets on the rim of the woods, the warm rustling of leaves in the nearby orchard. Each sound was an exaggeration, as if a bewitching spell had been cast over this small patch of land, like something from a fairy tale, one of Mr. Llewellyn's stories from her childhood.

Can I get a regular skim cap?” I didn’t get coffee here every day—because I had my coffee machine, or used to have—how depressing—but I visited regularly enough that they knew me. Sometimes I wanted something frothy with chocolate on the top, and I was too lazy to do that at home. Frances was in her mid-thirties, had gorgeous straight blonde hair, which was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and an infectious smile. “Hey, chicky. Coming right up. A little birdie told me it was your birthday yesterday. Happy birthday!” She banged used coffee grounds out of the thingamajig and filled it with new ones. “Aw, thanks. Did you run into the girls last night?” The girls being my besties, Sophie and Michelle. “Yep. How come you weren’t there? They told me you piked.” She screwed the thingamajig into the machine and pressed the button. And wouldn’t you know, it worked. I wish my machine still worked. “Big day photographing a wedding. One drink and I would have fallen asleep.” I laughed—it wasn’t too far from the truth. So what if I left out the bit where I had a pity party because my brother hadn’t called. I’d try calling him later. Knowing him, he had a good

Arm in arm with a fellow who's had the mishap, To forget, when he shagged her, to button his flap. Nor I don't like to see, though some think it a treat. A young woman scratching her thing in the street; And a boarding-school miss, with no sense in her pate. Sit and chalk a man's tool on the back of her slate. I don't like to see, in the bright face of the day, A man stand and piss in the public highway; Nor a Newfoundland dog, without any disguise. Tied fast to a bitch not a quarter his size. Nor I don't like to see, little sisters and brothers Get playing at what they call fathers and mothers; And I don't like to see, though at me you might scoff, An old woman trying to toss herself off. I don't like to see - it's a fact that I utter - That nasty word — written up on a shutter: And I don't like to see a man, drunk as an Earl. Getting into a lamp-post thinking it's a girl. I don't like to see, 'cause my feelings it shocks. Two girls busy playing with each other's c-; Nor I don't like to see, though it may be a whim. A hole like a pit-mouth in place of a q-. But I fear I'm encroaching too much on your time, So I'll put an end to my quizzical rhyme; Though with my way of taste you'll perhaps not agree, I've told you the things I don't like to see.

We are in uncharted territory" when it comes to sex and the internet, says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. "There have been two major transitions" in heterosexual mating, Garcia says, "in the last four million years. The first was around ten to fifteen thousand years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled," leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract. "And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet," Garcia says. Suddenly, instead of meeting through proximity, community connections, and family and friends, people could meet each other virtually and engage in amorous activity with the click of a button. Internet meeting is now surpassing every other form. “It’s changing so much about the way we act both romantically and sexually,” Garcia says. “It is unprecedented from an evolutionary standpoint.” And yet this massive shift in our behavior has gone almost completely unexamined, especially given how the internet permeates modern life. While there have been studies about how men and women use social media differently- how they use language and present themselves differently, for example- there's not a lot of research about how they behave sexually online; and there is virtually nothing about how girls and boys do. While there has been concern about the online interaction of children and adults, it's striking that so little attention has been paid to the ways in which the Internet has changed the sexual behavior of girls and boys interacting together. This may be because the behavior has been largely hidden or unknown, or, again, due to the fear of not seeming "sex-positive," mistaking responsibility for judgement. And there are questions to ask, from the standpoint of girls' and boys' physical and emotional health and the ethics of their treatment of each other. Sex on a screen is different from sex that develops in person, this much seems seems self-evident, just as talking on a screen is different from face-to-face communication. And so if talking on a screen reduces one's ability to be empathic, for example, then how does sex on a screen change sexual behavior? Are people more likely to act aggressively or unethically, as in other types of online communication? How do gender roles and sexism play into cybersex? And how does the influence of porn, which became available online at about the same time as social networking, factor in?

Don’t think, muñeca. Everything will work itself out.” “But--” “No buts. Trust me.” My mouth closes over hers. The smell of rain and cookies eases my nerves. My hand braces the small of her back. Her hands grip my soaked shoulders, urging me on. My hands slide under her shirt, and my fingers trace her belly button. “Come to me,” I say, then lift her until she’s straddling me over my bike. I can’t stop kissing her. I whisper how good she feels to me, mixing Spanish and English with every sentence. I move my lips down her neck and linger there until she leans back and lets me take her shirt off. I can make her forget about the bad stuff. When we’re together like this, hell, I can’t think of anything else but her. “I’m losing control,” she admits, biting her lower lip. I love those lips. “Mamacita, I’ve already lost it,” I say, grinding against her so she knows exactly how much control I’ve lost. She moves her hips in a slow rhythm against me, an invitation I don’t deserve. My fingertips graze her mouth. She kisses them before I slowly slide my hand down her chin to her neck and in between her breasts. She catches my hand. “I don’t want to stop, Alex.” I cover her body with mine. I can easily take her. Hell, she’s asking for it. But God help me if I don’t grow a conscience. It’s that loco bet I made with Lucky. And what my mom said about how easy it is to get a girl pregnant. When I made the bet, I had no feelings for this complex white girl. But now…shit, I don’t want to think about my feelings. I hate feelings; they’re only good for screwing up someone’s life. And may God strike me down right now because I want to make love to Brittany, not fuck her on my motorcycle like some cheap whore. I move my hands away from her cuerpo perfecto, the first sane thing I’ve done tonight. “I can’t take you like this. Not here,” I say, my voice hoarse from emotion overload. This girl was going to gift me with her body, even though she knows who I am and what I’m about to do. The reality is hard to swallow. I expect her to be embarrassed, maybe even mad. But she curls into my chest and hugs me. Don’t do this to me, I want to say. Instead I wrap my arms around her and hold on tight. “I love you,” I hear her say so softly it might have been her thoughts. Don’t, I’m tempted to say. ¡Noǃ ¡Noǃ My gut twists and I hold her tighter. Dios mío, if things were different I’d never give her up. I burrow my face in her hair and fantasize about stealing her away from Fairfield. We stay that way for a long time, long after the rain stops and reality sets in.

From what Harper tells me, you were very brave. I will find the person who did this, okay? They’ll never bother you again. I just need you to tell me whatever you remember about him so that I can find him.” Heidi’s little button nose wrinkled. “Well —” “What did he look like?” Martina interrupted. “Tall? Short?” “He was tall,” said Robbie. “He had broad shoulders.” Heidi nodded. “He —” “What about his hair?” said Martina. “Blond? Red? Brown? Black?” Heidi opened her mouth to answer, but Robbie beat her to it. “He had a buzzcut.” “Did he tell you his name?” Knox asked Heidi. “Yes,” she replied. “He said it was —” “He won’t have given her his real name,” Robbie scoffed. “He could be anyone. I’ve never seen him before.” Heidi did a cute little growl. “Will someone please let me talk? Jeez.” Harper bit her lip, stifling a smile. “They don’t mean to talk over you, Heidi-ho, they’re just anxious. Now what is it you’d like to say?” “He said his name was Dean. I don’t know if it’s true. Check.” She pulled a brown leather wallet out of her pocket and handed it to Knox. Jolene framed her face with her hands, smiling. “You fabulous little girl!” Levi grinned and tugged on one of her ringlets. “You told him he was really tall in that shaky voice to make him bend down so you could rob him, didn’t you?” She grinned back at him. “Uh-huh.

He ran his hand up her calf, over her knee, and up the sensitive slope of her thigh, until he cupped her mound in his palm. She gasped at the shock of pleasure. His fingers caressed her gently, stroking up and down the seam of her sex, teasing her with light passes until she was breathless. She reached between their bodies, feeling for his trouser buttons and tugging at them with eager, inexpert fingers. At last, his placket fell open, and his erection sprang into her hand. Hot, hard, and heavy. She explored him the same way he touched her- skating her fingertips up and down his length, marveling at the silky softness of his skin and tracing the intriguing, yet entirely unfamiliar contours. "Let me see you," she whispered. He rose up on his knees, and his male organ jutted toward her. The dark hair on his chest arrowed straight toward it, like a signpost indicating a point of natural interest:THIS WAY TO THE MANHOOD. As if it could be missed. Rude, large, framed by dark hair, and impressively male. No surprises, really. It simply looked like a part of him. An intimidatingly large part of him, considering what was about to occur and where she hoped he could put it. But it wasn't foreign or frightening. As was the case with all the other parts of his body, she found it bold, strong, unabashed in its nature, and arousing in the extreme.

Your belly’s getting big,” he said one night. “I know,” I answered, looking down. It was kind of hard to deny. “I love it,” he said, stroking it with the palm of his hand. I recoiled a little, remembering the black bikini I’d worn on our honeymoon and how comparatively concave my belly looked then, and hoping Marlboro Man had long since put the image out of his mind. “Hey, what are we naming this thing?” he asked, even as the “thing” fluttered and kicked in my womb. “Oh, man…” I sighed. “I have no idea. Zachary?” I pulled it out of my wazoo. “Eh,” he said, uninspired. “Shane?” Oh no. Here go the old movies. “I went to my senior prom with a Shane,” I answered, remembering dark and mysterious Shane Ballard. “Okay, scratch that,” he said. “How about…how about Ashley?” How far was he going to take this? I remembered a movie we’d watched on our fifteenth date or so. “How about Rooster Cogburn?” He chuckled. I loved it when he chuckled. It meant everything was okay and he wasn’t worried or stressed or preoccupied. It meant we were dating and sitting on his old porch and my parents weren’t divorcing. It meant my belly button wasn’t bulbous and deformed. His chuckles were like a drug to me. I tried to elicit them daily. “What if it’s a girl?” I said. “Oh, it’s a boy,” he said with confidence. “I’m positive.” I didn’t respond. How could I argue with that?

I got back to the vehicles and spotted Ashley Voss right away. She was standing there waiting with her rucksack, ready to go. I walked up to her, smiled, and said, “Hey, what’s up? I’m Noah.” “Hi. I’m Ashley,” she said without much emotion. “Cool. Are you excited to come to our area?” I flashed her a grin. After a brief pause she said, “Yeah, the medics can use a female.” She was acting like a professional and I was acting more like someone standing at a bar trying to buy her a drink. As if that couldn’t be more awkward, right at that moment my radio squawked loudly, “Hey, can somebody get me that female medic’s roster number? I need it before we head out.” It was Jerry, ruining my game. I leaned over and hit the button and said a little too proudly, “I’ve got the female medic with me now. I will get that for you.” And before I could ask her what it was, Jerry came back over the radio, “Galloway. You’re with the female. Why am I not surprised?” Ashley gave me her roster number, and I sent it back to Jerry. I turned to Ashley and said, “I’m not a player, just wanted to know more about you.” She didn’t look that convinced. We got in the trucks and drove back. At the potato plant all the guys started sniffing this girl out like a bunch of hound dogs. One of the guys ran and grabbed her rucksack for her and carried it into the medic station, like he was a bellhop.

Baking and cooking bring me inner peace, like a tasty version of yoga, without all the awkward stretching and sweating. When my life spins out of control, when I can't make sense of what's going on in the world, I head straight to the kitchen and turn on my oven, and with the press of a button, I switch one part of my brain off and another on. The rules of the kitchen are straightforward, and when I'm there I don't have to think about my problems. I don't need to think about anything but cups and ounces, temperatures and cooking times. When I was a freshman at Cornell, I heard a plane had flown into the World Trade Center while sitting in my Introduction to American History lecture. My friends and I ran back to our dorm rooms and spent the next few hours glued to the television. I kept my TV on all day, but after talking to my parents and watching three hours of the coverage, I headed straight to the communal kitchen and baked a triple batch of brownies, which I then distributed to everyone on my floor. Some of my friends thought I was crazy ("Who bakes brownies when the country is under attack?"), but it was the only thing I could do to keep from having a panic attack or bursting into tears. I couldn't control what was happening to our country, but I could control what was happening in that kitchen. Baking was my way of restoring order in a world driven by chaos, and it still is.

think he’ll finish with a growl, make a mess out of me, maybe admire his handiwork, but that’s not what happens at all. Instead he pulls back so that his eyes can hold my own till the very last moment, glassy and nearly all black. His free hand searches blindly, frantically. It grabs mine when he finds it, twining our fingers together in a tight grip, and that’s when I know. When I realize deep in my belly that for Jack this is not about friction or about fucking. It’s not even about coming, or about anything else I might have stupidly suspected. This is about him and me. And the possibility of something that goes far beyond the both of us. “Elsie,” he mouths when he comes. He seems to retreat into himself, to dig deep into his head to deal with the shocking pleasure of it and avoid losing his mind, and all I need to do is hold him tight to remind him that yes. I’m here. With him. I’m here. It’s downright terrifying, what this could be. What I want it to be. It makes me tear up, and then it makes me sob, and then it makes me clutch at Jack for dear life, the splotch of his semen sticking to his shirt and my stomach, pooling in my belly button. To his credit, he doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. He doesn’t beg for explanations. He just holds me close, both arms wrapped around me, even when my tears morph into giggles, like I’m some crazy, unstable girl who doesn’t know what to be or what to feel.

One of the most effective ways to quicken your story’s pace is to move from a static description of an object, place or person to an active scene. The classic method for accomplishing this is to have your character interact with the subject that’s been described. For instance, let’s say you’ve just written three paragraphs describing a wedding dress in a shop window. You’ve detailed the Belgian lace veil, the beaded bodice, the twelve-foot train, even the row of satin buttons down the sleeves. Instinctively you feel it’s time to move into an action scene, but how do you do it without making your transition obvious? A simple, almost seamless way is to initiate an action between your character (let’s call her Miranda) and the dress you’ve just described. Perhaps Miranda could be passing by on the sidewalk when the dress in the window catches her attention. Or she could walk into the shop and ask the shopkeeper how much the dress costs. This method works well to link almost any static description with a scene of action. Describe an elegant table, for instance, complete with crystal goblets, damask tablecloth, monogrammed napkins and sterling silver tableware; then let the maid pull a cloth from her apron and begin to polish one of the forks. Or describe a Superman kite lying beside a tree, then watch as a little girl grabs the string and begins to run. You will still be describing, but the nature of your description will have changed from static to active, thus quickening the story’s pace. Throughout

VIN RESISTED THE URGE TO PICK at her noblewoman’s dress. Even after a half week of being forced to wear one—Sazed’s suggestion—she found the bulky garment uncomfortable. It pulled tightly at her waist and chest, then fell to the floor with several layers of ruffled fabric, making it difficult to walk. She kept feeling as if she were going to trip—and, despite the gown’s bulk, she felt as if she were somehow exposed by how tight it was through the chest, not to mention the neckline’s low curve. Though she had exposed nearly as much skin when wearing normal, buttoning shirts, this seemed different somehow. Still, she had to admit that the gown made quite a difference. The girl who stood in the mirror before her was a strange, foreign creature. The light blue dress, with its white ruffles and lace, matched the sapphire barrettes in her hair. Sazed claimed he wouldn’t be happy until her hair was at least shoulder-length, but he had still suggested that she purchase the broochlike barrettes and put them just above each ear. “Often, aristocrats don’t hide their deficiencies,” he had explained. “Instead, they highlight them. Draw attention to your short hair, and instead of thinking you’re unfashionable, they might be impressed by the statement you are making.” She also wore a sapphire necklace—modest by noble standards, but still worth more than two hundred boxings. It was complemented by a single ruby bracelet for accentuation. Apparently, the current fashion dictated a single splash of a different color to provide contrast. And it was all hers,

Then she bent her head over at the waist and tossed her head around to separate the curls. The elevator stopped and she heard the door open. She straightened up to find some big guy in a ball cap and sunglasses right in her face, charging into the elevator before she could even get out of it. He had both hands full of carry-out bags—Mexican food, judging from the smell. She looked at them, her mouth watering. Yep. Enrique’s. The best in town. He whirled around to punch the door-close button. “Hey,” she said. “I’m getting off here.” Some girl outside in the lobby yelled, “We know it’s you, Chase. You shouldn’t lie to us.” Startled, Elle looked at the guy’s face and saw, just before he reached for her, that it really was Chase Lomax in ragged shorts and flip-flops. He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his. “Wait for us,” another girl yelled. The sound of running feet echoed off the marble floor, slid to a stop. “Oh, no!” Kissing her, without so much as a “Hi, there, Elle.” Burning her up. She tried to struggle but he had both her arms pinned to her sides. And suddenly she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before. The door slid closed. The girls began banging on it. “We know your room number, Chase, honey,” they yelled. “See you there.” Loud giggles. “We’ll show you a real good time.” The elevator moved up, the voices faded away. But Chase kept on kissing her. She had to make him stop it. Right now. Who did he think he was, anyway? Somebody who could send lightning right through her whole body, that’s who. Lightning so strong it shook her to her toes. He had to stop this now. But she couldn’t move any part of her body. Except her lips. And her tongue . . . When he finally let her go she pulled back and away, fighting to get a handle on her breathing. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. Her blood rushed through her so fast it made her dizzy. “You’re asking me? It’s more like, what’s the matter with you? How’d you get the idea you could get away with kissing me like that without even bothering to say hello?” She touched her lips. They were still on fire. “You have got a helluva nerve, Chase Lomax.” He grinned at her as he took off his shades. He hung them in the neck of his huge, baggy T-shirt that had a bucking bull and rider with Git’R’Done written above it. He wore ragged denim shorts and flip-flops, for God’s sake. Chase Lomax was known for always being starched and ironed, custom-booted and hatted. “I asked if you’re all right because you were bent over double shaking your head when the doors opened,” he said. “Like you were in pain or something.” “I was drying my hair.” He stared, then burst out laughing. “Oh, well, then.” His laugh was contagious but she wouldn’t let herself join in. He could not get away with this scot-free. He’d shaken her up pretty good. “Oh. I see. You thought I needed help, so you just grabbed me and kissed me senseless. Is that how you treat somebody you think’s in pain?” He grinned that slow, charming grin of his again. “It made you feel better. Didn’t it?” He held her gaze and wouldn’t let it go. She must be a sight. She could feel heat in her cheeks, so her face must be red. Plus she was gasping, trying to slow her breathing. And her heart-beat. “You nearly scared me to death to try to get rid of those girls. And it was all wasted. They’re coming to your room.” Something flashed deep in his brown eyes. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I don’t think it was wasted,” he drawled. “I liked that kiss.

Top Dog" If I could, I would take your grief, dig it up out of the horseradish field and grate it into something red and hot to sauce the shellfish. I would take the lock of hair you put in the locket and carry it in my hand, I would make the light strike everything the way it hit the Bay Bridge, turning the ironwork at sunset into waffles. If I could, I would blow your socks off, they would travel far, always in unison, past the dead men running, past the cranes standing in snow, beyond the roads we rode, so small in our little car, it was like riding in a miner's helmet. If I could I would make everyone vote and call their public servants to say, “No one was meant for this.” I would go back to the afternoon we made love in the tall grass under the full sun not far from the ravine where the old owner had flung hundreds of mink cages. I would memorize gateways to the afterworld, the electric third rail, the blond braid our girl has hanging down her back, the black guppy we killed at our friends’ when we unplugged the bubbler and the fish floated to the top, one eye up at the ceiling, the other at the blue gravel on the bottom of the tank. I would beg an audience with Sister Lucia, the last living of the children visited by Our Lady of Fatima, I would ask her about the weight of secrets, if they let her sleep or if she woke at night with a body on her body, if the body said, “Let's play top dog, first I'll lie on you, then you lie on me.” I would ask how she lived with revelation, the normal state of affairs amplified beyond God, bumped up to the Virgin Mother, who no doubt knew a few things, passed them on, quietly, and I would ask Lucia how she lived with knowing, how she could keep it under her hat, under wraps, button up, zip her lip, play it close to the vest, never telling, never using truth as a weapon.

She was a new world - a place of endless mysteries and unexpected delights, an enchanting mixture of woman and child. She supervised the domestic routine with deceptive lack of fuss. With her there, suddenly his clothes were clean and had their full complement of buttons; the stew of boots and books and unwashed socks in his wagon vanished. There were fresh bread and fruit preserves on the table; Kandhla's eternal grilled steaks gave way to a variety of dishes. Each day she showed a new accomplishment. She could ride astride, though Sean had to turn his back when she mounted and dismounted. She cut Sean's hair and made as good a job of it as his barber in Johannesburg. She had a medicine chest in her wagon from which she produced remedies for every ailing man or beast in the company. She handled a rifle like a man and could strip and clean Sean's Mannlicher. She helped him load cartridges, measuring the charges with a practised eye. She could discuss birth and procreation with a clinical objectivity and a minute later blush when she looked at him that way. She was as stubborn as a mule, haughty when it suited her, serene and inscrutable at times and at others a little girl. She would push a handful of grass down the back of his shirt and run for him to chase her, giggle for minutes at a secret thought, play long imaginative games in which the dogs were her children and she talked to them and answered for them. Sometimes she was so naive that Sean thought she was joking until he remembered how young she was. She could drive him from happiness to spitting anger and back again within the space of an hour. But, once he had won her confidence and she knew that he would play to the rules, she responded to his caresses with a violence that startled them both. Sean was completely absorbed in her. She was the most wonderful thing he had ever found and, best of all, he could talk to her.

Early in the boob-emerging years, I had no boobs, and I was touchy about it. Remember in middle school algebra class, you’d type 55378008 on your calculator, turn it upside down, and hand it to the flat-chested girl across the aisle? I was that girl, you bi-yotch. I would have died twice if any of the boys had mentioned my booblets. Last year, I thought my boobs had progressed quite nicely. And I progressed from the one-piece into a tankini. But I wasn’t quite ready for any more exposure. I didn’t want the boys to treat me like a girl. Now I did. So today I’d worn a cute little bikini. Over that, I still wore Adam’s cutoff jeans. Amazingly, they looked sexy, riding low on my hips, when I traded the football T-shirt for a pink tank that ended above my belly button and hugged my figure. I even had a little cleavage. I was so proud. Sean was going to love it. Mrs. Vader stared at my chest, perplexed. Finally she said, “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to look hot.” “Thank you!” Mission accomplished. “Here’s a hint. Close your legs.” I snapped my thighs together on the stool. People always scolded me for sitting like a boy. Then I slid off the stool and stomped to the door in a huff. “Where do you want me?” She’d turned back to the computer. “You’ve got gas.” Oh, goody. I headed out the office door, toward the front dock to man the gas pumps. This meant at some point during the day, one of the boys would look around the marina office and ask, “Who has gas?” and another boy would answer, “Lori has gas.” If I were really lucky, Sean would be in on the joke. The office door squeaked open behind me. “Lori,” Mrs. Vader called. “Did you want to talk?” Noooooooo. Nothing like that. I’d only gone into her office and tried to start a conversation. Mrs. Vader had three sons. She didn’t know how to talk to a girl. My mother had died in a boating accident alone on the lake when I was four. I didn’t know how to talk to a woman. Any convo between Mrs. Vader and me was doomed from the start. “No, why?” I asked without turning around. I’d been galloping down the wooden steps, but now I stepped very carefully, looking down, as if I needed to examine every footfall so I wouldn’t trip. “Watch out around the boys,” she warned me. I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers, toodle-dee-doo, dismissing her. Those boys were harmless. Those boys had better watch out for me.

One day, because I was bored in our usual spot, next to the merry-go-round, Françoise had taken me on an excursion – beyond the frontier guarded at equal intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar sellers – into those neighbouring but foreign regions where the faces are unfamiliar, where the goat cart passes; then she had gone back to get her things from her chair, which stood with its back to a clump of laurels; as I waited for her, I was trampling the broad lawn, sparse and shorn, yellowed by the sun, at the far end of which a statue stands above the pool, when, from the path, addressing a little girl with red hair playing with a shuttlecock in front of the basin, another girl, while putting on her cloak and stowing her racket, shouted to her, in a sharp voice: ‘Good-bye, Gilberte, I’m going home, don’t forget we’re coming to your house tonight after dinner.’ That name, Gilberte, passed by close to me, evoking all the more forcefully the existence of the girl it designated in that it did not merely name her as an absent person to whom one is referring, but hailed her directly; thus it passed close by me, in action so to speak, with a power that increased with the curve of its trajectory and the approach of its goal; – transporting along with it, I felt, the knowledge, the notions about the girl to whom it was addressed, that belonged not to me, but to the friend who was calling her, everything that, as she uttered it, she could see again or at least held in her memory, of their daily companionship, of the visits they paid to each other, and all that unknown experience which was even more inaccessible and painful to me because conversely it was so familiar and so tractable to that happy girl who grazed me with it without my being able to penetrate it and hurled it up in the air in a shout; – letting float in the air the delicious emanation it had already, by touching them precisely, released from several invisible points in the life of Mlle Swann, from the evening to come, such as it might be, after dinner, at her house; – forming, in its celestial passage among the children and maids, a little cloud of precious colour, like that which, curling over a lovely garden by Poussin,15 reflects minutely like a cloud in an opera, full of horses and chariots, some manifestation of the life of the gods; – casting finally, on that bald grass, at the spot where it was at once a patch of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the blonde shuttlecock player (who did not stop launching the shuttlecock and catching it again until a governess wearing a blue ostrich feather called her), a marvellous little band the colour of heliotrope as impalpable as a reflection and laid down like a carpet over which I did not tire of walking back and forth with lingering, nostalgic and desecrating steps, while Françoise cried out to me: ‘Come on now, button up your coat and let’s make ourselves scarce’, and I noticed for the first time with irritation that she had a vulgar way of speaking, and alas, no blue feather in her hat.

As if reading his mind, she smiled happily up at him. “Gary really came through for us, didn’t he?” “Absolutely, ma petite. And Beau LaRue was not so bad either. Come, we cannot leave the poor man pacing the swamp. He will think we are engaging in something other than conversation.” Wickedly Savannah moved her body against his, her hands sliding provocatively, enticingly, over the rigid thickness straining his trousers. “Aren’t we?” she asked with that infuriating sexy smile he could never resist. “We have a lot of clean-up to do here, Savannah,” he said severely. “And we need to get word to our people, spread the society’s list through our ranks, warn those in danger.” Her fingers were working at the buttons of his shirt so that she could push the material aside to examine his chest and shoulder, where two of the worst wounds had been. She had to see his body for herself, touch him to assure herself he was completely healed. “I suggest, for now, that your biggest job is to create something for Gary to do so we can have a little privacy.” With a smooth movement, she pulled the shirt from over her head so that her full breasts gleamed temptingly at him. Gregori made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan. His hands came up to cup the weight of her in his palms, the feel of her soft, satin skin soothing after the burning torture of the tainted blood. His thumbs caressed the rosy tips into hard peaks. He bent his head slowly to the erotic temptation because he was helpless to do anything else. He needed the merging of their bodies after such a close call as much as she did. He could feel the surge of excitement, the rush of liquid heat through her body at the feel of his mouth pulling strongly at her breast. Gregori dragged her even closer, his hands wandering over her with a sense of urgency. Her need was feeding his. “Gary,” she whispered. “Don’t forget about Gary.” Gregori cursed softly, his hand pinning her hips so that he could strip away the offending clothes on her body. He spared the human a few seconds of his attention, directing him away from the cave. Savannah’s soft laughter was taunting, teasing. “I told you, lifemate, you’re always taking off my clothes.” “Then stop wearing the damn things,” he responded gruffly, his hands at her tiny waist, his mouth finding her flat stomach. “Someday my child will be growing right here,” he said softly, kissing her belly. His hands pinned her thighs so that he could explore easily without interruption. “A beautiful little girl with your looks and my disposition.” Savannah laughed softly, her arms cradling his head lovingly. “That should be quite a combination. What’s wrong with my disposition?” She was writhing under the onslaught of his hands and mouth, arcing her body more fully into his ministrations. “You are a wicked woman,” he whispered. “I would have to kill any man who treated my daughter the way I am treating you.” She cried out, her body rippling with pleasure. “I happen to love the way you treat me, lifemate,” she answered softly and cried out again when he merged their bodies, their minds, their hearts and souls.

(The very next day) 'I am enduring will standing alone bare and yes, I am completely naked to the world outside. So, unprotected by the atmosphere above and around me, so unlike- the day, I was born into this hellish world.' 'My life was not always like this! Still as of now, I stand trembling on top of this cruel land, which I call my hereditary land or my home-town.' 'Some still call me by my name, and that is 'Nevaeh May Natalie.' 'Some of the others, like the kids I go to school within this land, have other titles for me.' 'However, you can identify me by the name of 'Nevaeh.' That is if you want to.' 'I do not think that even matters to you, my name is… it has been replaced and it is not significant anymore. Nor does my name matter to anyone out there for miles around. At least that is the way it seems to me, standing here now as I see the bus come to take me there.' 'Names or not said to me, 'I feel alone!' I whispered to myself.' 'It is like I am living a dream. I didn't think my nightmare of orgasmic, tragic, and drizzling emotions pouring in my mind would last this long.' ('Class, faces, names, done.') 'It like a thunderstorm pounding in my brain, as it is today outside. I have come home from yet another day of hell that would be called- school to you.' 'I don't even go into the house until I have this restricting schoolgirl uniform torn off my body. I feel like my skin is crawling with bugs when it is on my figure.' (Outside in the fields, next to the tracks) 'It's the middle- September and I am standing in the rain. It is so cold, so lonely, and so loveless! Additionally, this is not usual for me, I am always bare around my house, I have my reason you'll see.' 'The rain has been falling on me like knives ever since the moment, I got off the yellow bus.' 'A thunderbolt clattered, more resonant than anything ever heard previously.' 'All the rain is matting my long brown hair on me as it lies on my backside longer than most girls. Yet I am okay with that at last, I am free.' (I have freedom) 'To a point! I still feel so trapped by all of them.' 'Ten or twenty minutes have now passed; I am still in the same very spot. Just letting water follow me down. I'm drenched!' 'I can feel the wetness as it lingers in my hair for a while, so unforgivably soaking my body even more as if sinking within me washing me clean.' 'Counting my sanctions, I feel satisfied in a way when I do feel it dropping offends my hair, as if 'God' is still in control of my life, even if I was sent to and damned to hell.' 'Like it is wiping away everything that happened to me today, away from the day of the past too.' 'The wetness is still running down the small of my back thirty minutes must have passed, and it is like my mind is off.' 'Currently, it follows the center point on my back. Then down in-between my petite butt cheeks. Water and bloodstream off my butt to the ground near the heels of my feet. I can feel as if that part of me is washed clean from the day that I had to go through.' 'Some of this shower is cascading off my little face, and it slowly collects on my little boobs, where it beads up and separates into two different watercourses down to my belly button.' 'I eyeball this, as it goes all the way down the front of me. It trickles down on me, to where it turns the color of light pink off my 'Girly Parts.' As they would never be the same.

(Summer of 2010) Chiaz Natherth- It was just going to be a typical summer day. I am at the local watering hole with my bud Melvin Shezor; we were just there to gaze at the girl gaze, sitting on lawn chairs. I had warm lemonade in my right hand at the time. I am looking around at all the bodies that are bobbing in the water; they all just seem to blend. The lifeguard is blowing her whistle while screaming at the little kids that are running around. Some stunning bodies are smacking the cold blue water with great speed, from the high dive. But- there is no more perfect figure there than hers. Everyone else seems to fade away out of my vision, along with all the ear-shattering noises. Bryan Adams ‘Heaven’ is playing in the background, and it seemed to be pronounced to my senses. When I am looking at her, it is like she is moving in slow motion, swimming across the pool. She climbed up the ladder and out of the pool. Her body dripping with water… what a moment, there is even water dripping down her chest. She looks amazing in that petite pink bikini. I was thinking to myself, that is a very cute looking camel-toe you got showing there Nevaeh! I never knew that she had a heart-shaped belly button piercing, when did that happen? Also, I could tell that her swimsuit was made by her, just like most of the sun-dresses she wears in the summertime too. Because it was not like any others I have ever seen around, it is cute, somewhat skimpy, and tailored to her perfect body. The fabric was not meant to get wet, it was somewhat see-through, yet she did not know, though it looks very good what can I say. She is walking towards me while running her fingers through her long brown hair. ‘I was thinking this is too good to be for real.’ She walked by and said ‘hi!’ and I was at loss for words. She was already gone, but I still babbled something like ‘Ahh-he-oll-o.’ At that point, into the changing room, she went, and I just sat there trying to fathom what had just happened. Melvin Shezor- ‘Chiaz! Ah, Chiaz! Hello, earth to Chiaz, snap out of its dude.’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘She is so fine! I would not mind having her on my arm.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Yah, the man she is not bad. But- isn’t she into girls though. So, do you like Nevaeh?’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘I do not think that she is, and well… Yes, did you see her in that swimsuit? She is adorable in every way.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Really is that so? Go talk to her!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘No way!’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Why not, you pussy!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘If Alissa finds out that I like her, or even looked at her I am going to die.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Ha, it sucks to be you man.’ Chiaz Natherth- ‘Hey, I will see you later, I got to go.’ (Text messages are going off… like crazy) Melvin Shezor- ‘Pu-ss-y!’ (Shouting as Chiaz Natherth is walking out the exit gate.) (Chiaz- He just waved it off, with the finger that is not supposed to be used in public, and does not think any more about it from that point on.) Chiaz Naztherth- Summer is over! Yet she is with him… he is so unconfident in himself that he has to follow me around. He gives me vain advice on what to do, and how to do it, yet I would have to say I need to stand up for myself more than what I do, yet I do not because of her. He attempts to belittle me, with his words of temperament to her. These results lead to her having breakdowns, where she is feeling miserable because she is stuck in the middle. She does not know what to do! She doesn't know how to feel! She does not want to hurt anyone's feelings, yet she is the one that is left to choke on her tears. Yes, I will save you long before you drowned!

him. “This is the team. Nicholas Lawrence and Isabella Martinez of the FBI.” “Agents,” Alex said, shaking hands. “Just Nick and Izzy. No formalities here.” Nick spoke as Izzy sized up Alex. His bronzed skin and thick muscles were clearly visible under the white linen button-up. Nick shot a glance at Izzy. She stood star struck. He understood how this guy had earned the nickname of Don Juan. Girls must throw themselves at him. He suddenly felt insecure. He was angry at himself for caring that Izzy had noticed him. They were partners. Nothing more. He was aware that this was becoming something that he had to convince himself of more and more lately. Declan continued, “You remember Hags? He’s our chauffeur.” He thumbed in the direction of Haggerty. “He’s now with the Bureau’s HRT. He’ll run tac ops for this thing.” “Well, we’re in good hands then. Come in and meet my sister, Cassidy. She’s pretty upset by all

Quinn pauses his sit-ups on his punching bag. “What…like her…?” He gestures to his crotch. I roll my eyes and unravel my black hand-wraps. Donnelly tosses his towel over his shoulder. “Her clit? It’s not a big bad word.” Oscar butts in, “Everyone lay off Quinn—alright, my little bro is young, impressionable, and still has his innocence and virtue; whereas the rest of us have lost our ever-loving minds.” Quinn chucks his green boxing glove at his older brother, ten years apart in age. “Bro, I can say clit every day easily. Clit, clit, clit, clit—” “We get it,” I say, dropping my hand-wraps on the mats. Quinn scratches his unshaven jaw, sweat built on his golden-brown skin, and a tiny scar sits beneath his eye. Likewise, his nose is a little crooked from a short stint and bad blow in a pro-boxing circuit. Oscar has similar lasting marks. Security jokes that no matter how many punches Oscar and Quinn have taken as pro-boxers in the past, they’ll always be handsome motherfuckers. “I purposefully censored myself,” Quinn clarifies. “I wasn’t about to mention a teenage girl’s…you know.” “Clit,” Donnelly says. “Jelly bean,” Oscar adds. “Magic button.” Donnelly smirks. Quinn shakes his head like we’re all the fucked-up ones. My brows spike. “You’re the one who assumed ‘clitoris piercing’ at the word ‘unmentionable’.” I tilt my head at him. “And weren’t you like a teenager like one year ago?” Oscar and Donnelly laugh loudly, and Quinn gives me a faint death-glare. He needs to work on his “intimidation” a bit—he’s very green: brand new to security detail, and at twenty, he’s the youngest bodyguard in the whole team. If he screws up, that

I recognize one of the virtual models as a character from the latest Final Fantasy game, a girl with bright blue hair, now greeting me by name and showing off her Louis Vuitton purse. A Buy Now button hovers right over it, waiting to be tapped.

I buttoned my own shirt reluctantly though there wasn't much I could do about my throbbing hard on aside from plan a trip back to my room as soon as I could possibly get out of this training session so that I could jerk off repeatedly with all of the new spank bank material she'd just gifted me. Tory remained on the desk in front of me and I was hoping that was because her legs weren't working right yet. The thirst prickled at me again as I eyed her throat and she sighed loudly as she noticed. “You’re still going to bite me, aren’t you?” she asked, her fingers curling around the edge of the desk. “You could look at it as rewarding me for my efforts,” I teased, because there was no fucking way she was getting out of here without me drinking from her and we both knew it. “Well that makes me feel a little better about leaving you with blue balls,” she taunted and I almost groaned in frustration as my dick throbbed in agreement. “Next time, I’ll be sure to carve out a few hours to dedicate to you,” I told her. “And then neither of us will be left wanting.” “Next time?” she asked, raising an eyebrow like that wasn't at all likely to happen. But I could hear her heartbeat pounding and I knew she was wondering how hard I could make her come with several hours at our disposal and my cock a whole lot more involved in the act. I found myself smiling again but then my mood dipped as I realised there wasn't likely to be a next time if the other Heirs succeeded with their plans for the dance. I didn't even really want to go along with the damn plan and in a moment of madness, I suddenly wondered if I could just save her from it. They would still strike at Darcy and maybe that would be enough to force the twins to leave the academy. But if I was being honest, I didn't even really want them to leave anyway. I moved closer to her again, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “Are you going to the dance on Friday?” I murmured and her pulse scattered, making my smile deepen in satisfaction. “Err, yeah,” she said, that suspicious look returning to her eyes. “Why don’t you blow it off?” I suggested, wondering if I could just convince her to stay away from it all together. She was my Source after all so the others couldn't even really get mad at me for protecting her - that was kinda in the job description anyway. She blinked at me in surprise and I realised she'd probably thought I was going to ask her to go to the dance with me as her date. But I couldn't do that, if I wanted to save her from the other Heirs and their plans then I needed to keep her away from the whole thing. “What possible reason would I have to do that?” she asked, shifting just enough to make my hand fall from her face. I felt the rejection before she could even voice it, but I wasn't going to give up that easily. I ran my dislodged hand down her arm instead, raising goosebumps along her skin and hopefully reminding her of just how good I'd made her feel with these fingers. “Because then I could sneak out and come to your room. We could have the whole House and an entire evening to ourselves." “That’s pretty presumptuous of you, Earth boy.” “Earth boy?” I asked in amusement, refusing to back down no matter how hard she was trying to resist me. I held a hand out to her, bringing earth magic to my fingertips and causing a dark blue flower to blossom in my palm. Girls fucking loved that trick. “Perhaps I’ve gotten what I wanted from you now,” she said, shifting forward to get up without reaching for the flower. Okay, so maybe this girl didn't love that trick after all. I let the flower dissolve into nothing again and stepped forward to stop her from getting to her feet, smiling darkly. “I’m confident you’ll come back for more,” I promised her and I could tell she was at least a little tempted by the prospect.(Caleb POV)

Raucous laughter drew my attention and I looked into the far corner, spotting Roxy Vega clambering up onto the table while two of her powerless little friends watched excitedly. She still had her uniform on and I wondered how long they’d been here, hiding themselves with that spell. It was a pretty clever way to avoid the Hell Week chaos going on back at the House even if they were being stupid by staying out after curfew. But then I could hardly talk on that front “Far be it for you to not go through with the... for me to not to go through to do the daring...” Roxy was slurring and she stumbled, almost falling from the table even though she was only wearing flat pumps. The guy leapt up and caught her waist to steady her and my gut lurched irritably as his hand skimmed her ass. I bit my tongue, turning away from them as I crossed the room in search of my drinks. I didn’t think I’d seen her that wasted before and a Tuesday evening in The Orb seemed like an odd venue to choose for a bender. But that was her business. “I only came up with that dare because I didn’t think you’d actually lose!” the girl protested. “I am not usually one for losing, Sofia,” Roxy agreed. “But I will never back out of a dare and you ordered a strip show.” I paused a few meters from the ice chiller, fighting against the urge to look back over to them again. Roxy Vega might have been the most irritatingly rude and stubborn girl I’d ever met but she was fucking hot. And with the stupid games we played together while I was tutoring her in her fire magic I had to admit that I’d imagined her stripping for me more than once. The guy muttered something in Spanish and the tone of it made me think she’d started to pull her clothes off. I fought the urge to turn with clenched teeth then continued my mission for beer, deciding to skip the food in favour of sleep. I snagged a six pack from the chiller and turned back, meaning to head for the exit. Of course my goddamn dick wasn’t going to let me leave without looking over at Roxy again, it didn’t care that I had to get rid of her or that she irritated me more than any woman ever born. Her blazer already lay in a heap on the floor and she was fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, her inebriation obviously slowing her down. But the way she was swaying her hips and tossing her long, black hair still made her look sexy as hell. Her pleated skirt fell to her mid thigh, giving me a look at several inches of bare flesh between it and the top of her knee length socks, but the elevated angle of looking up at her on the table made it seem like her bronzed legs went on forever. “Why don’t you do another dare?” the boy protested. “Go for a run in The Wailing Wood?” “Don’t be crazy,” Sofia objected. “There could be a Nymph out there!” (Darius POV)

Stop doubting my amazing stripping skills, dude,” Roxy teased as she continued to struggle with her buttons. I was about to force my eyes away from her when she cursed and yanked on her shirt hard enough to rip every button off of it. Beneath it she was wearing a gold push up bra which accentuated her perfect tits and made her look like something out of a Dragon’s wet dream. She tossed her head back with laughter, taking a playful bow for her friends but her foot slipped and she tumbled off of the table instead. I took a few running steps towards her before I could stop myself but the guy had leapt up to catch her before she could hit the ground. “Tory?” he asked as she slumped against him, seeming to have fallen unconscious. “Oh, shit! Help me.” The girl Roxy had called Sofia scrambled to help him with her and they struggled to move her towards one of the cushioned chairs close to where they’d been sitting. I shook my head to clear it of the image of her in that gold bra and spun on my heel, striding towards the exit and quite possibly a cold shower. Just as I made it to the door, a loud scream halted me. I turned back to see Roxy’s friends backing away from her in a panic as a thick sheet of ice spread across the ground away from her, tinting everything in its path a frosty blue. “Wake up, Tory!” Sofia yelled desperately. “Maybe you should run for a teacher,” the boy said. “I’ll try to get through to her.” Sofia turned to run for the exit and her eyes widened in panic as she found me striding towards her instead. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked, my tone clipped. “She err...” Sofia hesitated, clearly not wanting to trust me with her friend’s condition while battling against the inclination to do whatever I told her. “She passed out and now she’s using magic in her sleep and we can’t get close to help her.” Roxy whimpered behind her and I stepped around Sofia to inspect the damage for myself. I’d dealt with this kind of thing with the other Heirs once or twice when our powers had first been Awakened. We were just so powerful that if we got too drunk, sometimes we’d lose control over our magic in our sleep and Roxy had seemed wasted to me. “It’s fine, we’ll look after her,” the boy said firmly but I ignored him as I walked closer to Roxy where she was slumped in the chair. Ice crunched loudly beneath my boots while the temperature around me plummeted and I hadn’t even gotten close to her yet. I drew on my fire magic, pushing it against the ice and melting some of it but Roxy’s power fought back as she whimpered again. “Roxy,” I growled as I made it to stand before her. The ice was still spreading and thickening. She was trembling in the chair and I noticed a few tears sailing down her cheeks. “Not again,” she breathed, her fists balling as she curled in on herself. “Roxy, wake up!” I snapped, moving forward to grab her arm and shake her. She didn’t wake but the ice around me thickened even more and her friends cried out as they were forced to back up again. My breath rose before me and I dropped the six pack beside her chair, crouching down before her so that I could shake her more firmly. She started coughing and water burst from her mouth like she’d been drowning. I pulled her forward, slapping her back to help her get it all up and the tremors rocking her body reverberated through mine as she pressed against my chest. More cold water flooded from her, drenching her as she cried out in panic and I pulled her against me more firmly. (Darius POV)

Lucille liked her body, her hips and her neck and her belly button, she liked her Baywatch hair and her blue eyes, but she hated the narrative that floated around it. That this body, the body she was born into, meant that she was perpetually Open for Business. Not just sexy business, but power business—dudes looking to put her in her place, to make her shut up so they could appreciate her better as the toy she should know herself to be.

I flip through those two “fancy” hangers again and again—and even expand the search to the “not fancy” section of the closet. I scour the “outgrew it but not ready to say goodbye” section in the way back of the closet, but the shirt is nowhere to be found. Blergh! In desperation, I drop down to my pile of “let’s see if they still smell tomorrow” clothes on the floor, pinching my nose closed as I rummage through the mountain of stinky horse-themed tops and gym clothes. “Aha!” I bravely plunge my arm into the pile of stench. There, hiding at the very bottom, is the missing white button-down. Of course! I wore it back in October for my Amelia Earhart costume at the Halloween parade! It must have somehow disappeared in my Bermuda Triangle of laundry . . . for three months. Yikes. I

Then I scamper down to the laundry room and yank open the dryer door. Kay’s mountain of school sweatshirts tumbles out, along with my breeches. But I can’t find my white button-down anywhere in the pile. I sift through the sweatshirts again, tossing them haphazardly in the laundry basket. Still no white shirt. I reach my hand deep into the far corner of the dryer and pull out the only thing that’s left, a purple tie-dyed shirt. Huh, I don’t remember Kay having any purple tie-dyed shirts . . . Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh nooooo. The purple pen must have fallen out of Luis’s jacket pocket while I was putting the clothes in the washer last night! And then exploded in the dryer! All over my white button-down! Which also seems to be several sizes smaller than it was last night. Did I mention this is not good? Oh noooooooooo!

Squeeeeeeeak. Kay and I sit silently in the car as the garage door cranks open. She’s wearing her shrunken and purple-splashed Knowledge Maestros sweatshirt. I’m wearing my shrunken and purple-splashed button-down and breeches. “Well, at least we got all the bad luck out of our system early!” I say, trying to sound cheerful as Kay glowers from behind the steering wheel. “The day has to get better from here.” Crunch. Kay rolls over something. It’s my boots. Because of course I left them right behind the car so I wouldn’t forget them in the morning. Mission accomplished! “Okay, so it has to get better from here,” I say as I run back to grab the scuffed and dented boots and tug them onto my feet.

And being denied or forgotten by you?” My brows lift. “That feels like a brand on my skin, over every inch of it. It’s like burning flesh, painful and raw and without remedy. It’s been like living with the spokes of a Taser buried in my skin, the button frozen in the on position and the battery everlasting. That’s what being unwanted by you feels like. Literal torture, actual physical pain that won’t go away and I didn’t even want it to because I knew I deserved it.

The girl on TV is no older than I was when everyone in my quivering home learned to hustle one more ghost into our already overflowing pockets & even though it is not real, she is being swallowed by a carnivorous grief that is howling & escaping through the screen on all fours, pacing around at our feet & begging us to move.

My fourth-grade teacher, Kathy, is my best friend at school. She’s a plump, pretty woman with hair like yellow pipe cleaners. Her clothes resemble the sheets at my grandma’s house, threadbare florals with mismatched buttons. She says I can ask her as many questions as I want: about tidal waves, about my sinuses, about nuclear war. She offers vague, reassuring answers. In hindsight they were tinged with religion, implied a faith in a distinctly Christian God. She can tell when I’m getting squirrelly, and she shoots me a look across the room that says, It’s okay, Lena, just give it a second. When I’m not with Kathy I’m with Terri Mangiano, our school nurse, who has a buzz cut and a penchant for wearing holiday sweaters all year round. She has a no-nonsense approach to health that comforts me. She presents me with statistics (only 2 percent of children develop Reye’s syndrome in response to aspirin) and tells me that polio has been eradicated. She takes me seriously when I explain that I’ve been exposed to scarlet fever by a kid on the subway with a red face. Sometimes she lets me lie on the top bunk in the back room, dark and cool. I rest my cheek against the plastic mattress cover and listen to her administer pills and pregnancy tests to high school girls. If I’m lucky, she doesn’t send me back to class.

A Hamas leader named Nizar Rayyan was killed. He was buried under the rubble of his house with fifteen of his family, mostly his children, the youngest aged 2. On TV, I watched when a man pulled out a headless child, another with no arm or leg. So small I couldn’t tell if boy or girl. Hate ignores such details. The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas. Our ears were not Hamas. Our eyes were not Hamas. The one who ordered the killing, the one who pressed the button thought only of Hamas. My brother Hudayfah was born deaf and mute.

gets to disappear and start over.” She stood up. “If you weren’t such a Boy Scout, you might have saved the girl. I’m sure you’d have figured it out. I played Prescott, and he went right along with my idea. Men are so easy. All you have to do is press the right buttons. With Walter, it was hate. You were right:

I saw a girl who races to help others but doesn’t help herself. And right now you need to help yourself. No one should walk up the aisle feeling inferior or in a different league or trying to be something they’re not. I don’t know exactly who your issues are with, but …” He picks up the phone, clicks a button, and turns the screen to face me. Fuck. It’s my list. The list I wrote in the church. THINGS TO DO BEFORE WEDDING 1. Become expert on Greek philosophy. 2. Memorize Robert Burns poems. 3. Learn long Scrabble words. 4. Remember: am HYPOCHONDRIAC. 5. Beef stroganoff. Get to like. (Hypnosis?) I feel drenched in embarrassment. This is why people shouldn’t share phones. “It’s nothing to do with you,” I mutter, staring at the table. “I know,” he says gently. “I also know that standing up for yourself can be hard. But you have to do it. You have to get it out there. Before the wedding.

He knocked back the whisky like it was some cheap vodka he drank on spring break back in university out of some delusional girl’s belly button, proving yet again breeding wasn’t everything. “That drink you just wasted was a century old. At least pretend to show it the respect it deserves.

Stella walked to our pantry, raising her head up to sniff the lowest shelf filled with cereal boxes, bread, and crackers. I crawled over, attempting to redirect Stella away from the food. “Stella, look!” I crawled back to the door and pointed at the button. She looked back at Jake, over to me, back to the pantry, straight ahead to the door. She might have glanced at the buzzer, but she definitely did not look at it intentionally. I slowed down my rate of speech, articulated each and every syllable, and paused in between every word I said. “Outside,” I said both verbally and with her button at the same time. “Outside. Let’s go outside!” Stella stared ahead at the closed door, still unaware of the new addition on the floor. I pushed the button to hear “outside,” once more and promptly opened the back door. “Come on, girl!” Stella followed me, trotting down the three steps that led to our yard. “Yay! Stella outside. Outside!” Jake joined us. “Is that normal?” he said. “It seemed like she wasn’t paying attention.” “It’s okay. It takes time for kids to pay attention to a device or watch what I’m doing. So I’m sure it’ll take time for Stella, too. At the very least, she’s still hearing the words I’m saying and making associations between what she hears and what happens next.

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of ten thousand voices and fond memories. This is a mighty fine old world after all if you make yourself think so. Look happy even if things are going against you— that will make others happy. Pretty soon all will be smiling and then there is no telling what can’t be done. Coca-Cola Girl Mother baked a fortune cake pale yellow icing, lemon drops round rim, hidden within treasures, a ring—you’ll be married, a button—stay a bachelor, a thimble—always a spinster, and a penny—you’re rich. Gee, but I am hungry. Wait a second, dear, until I pull my belt up another notch. There that’s better. So, you see, Hon, I am straighter than a string around a bundle. You ought to see my eye, it’s a peach. I am proud of it, looks like I’ve been kicked by a mule. You know, dear, that they can kick hard enough to knock all the soda out of a biscuit without breaking the crust Hogging Catfish This gives you a fighting chance. Noodle your right hand into their gills, hold on tight while you grunt him out of the water. This can be a real dogfight. Old river cat wants to go down deep, make you bottom feed. Like I said, boys, when you tell a whopper, say it like you believe it. Saturday Ritual My Granddad was a cobbler. We each owned two pairs of shoes, Sunday shoes and everyday shoes. When our Sunday shoes got worn they became our everyday shoes. Main Street Saturday Night We each were given a dime on Saturday opening a universe of possibilities. All the stores stayed open and people flocked into town. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds set up a popcorn stand on Reinheimer’s corner and soon after lighting a little stove, sounding like small firecrackers, popping began. Dad, laughing shooting the breeze with a group of farmers, drinking Coca Cola, finding out if any sheds needed to be built or barns repaired, discussing the price of next year’s seed, finding out who’s really working, who’s just looking busy. There is no object I wouldn’t give to relive my childhood growing up in Delavan— where everyone knew everyone— and joy came with but a dime. Market Day Jim Pittsford’s grocery smelled of bananas ripening and the coffee he ground by hand, wonderful smoked ham and bacon fresh sliced. He’d reward the child who came to pick up the purchase, with a large dill pickle Biking home, skillfully balancing Jim Pittsford’s bacon, J B’s tomatoes and peaches, while sniffing a tantalizing spice rising from fresh warm rolls, I nibbled my pickle reward.

Do you even hear yourself? Because you seriously sound like such a dork, right now—and a little like Spiderman.” “And as for my mouth being on you…” The words were like a shock to my system. “You should be so lucky, Sadie Day.” When we reached their house, I pulled into the driveway, shut off the engine and turned to face the boy who had always known just what to say to get under my skin. His pierced eyebrow was cocked like I’d known it would be. He wore his usual grin. Colton’s whole face was a mixture of smug and arrogant, and as usual, it pushed all my buttons.

In a realm of soft hues and blooming blossoms, a young girl lay amidst a field of flowers, a celestial veil gracing her features with a gentle, translucent touch. Her arms extended gracefully above her, eyes closed, she seemed to dance on the edge of dreams. The flowers painted the canvas in shades of blue, purple, and pink, their petals swaying in a tender breeze. Dew-kissed blades of grass formed a sea of diamonds, reflecting the soft glow of an unseen moon. As the girl stirred in her slumber, a distant echo of horse steps reached her ears, a melody that danced through the flowered meadow. Slowly, she rose from her flowery bed, the veil slipping away like morning mist to unveil her enchanting presence. Her gown, a masterpiece of celestial elegance, cascaded around her. A floor-length creation in light blue, it cradled her form with a sweetheart neckline, the bodice adorned in gold, floral designs. Layers of tulle formed the flowing skirt, adorned with accents of blueish flowers, and a train that trailed behind her like a comet's tail. Around her neck hung a pendant, a crescent moon cradling a star, both crafted from silver and adorned with blue gemstones, a twin to the one she wore in the enchanted garden. Her golden locks, a cascade of loose curls, framed her face with ethereal grace, flowing like strands of sunlight. Awakening from the meadow's embrace, her deep blue eyes sought the source of the approaching steps. With a sense of dreamlike purpose, she floated towards the sound, the forest mist enveloping her like a lover's caress. In the heart of the foggy woodland, a clearing revealed itself, trees standing sentinel in the distance. From the shroud of mist emerged a figure on horseback, a man in the regalia of a medieval warrior. The horse, a noble steed of white, carried him forward with determined grace. His attire, a tapestry of dark fabric and gilded accents, spoke of a history steeped in honor and battle. High collars and embroidered shoulder pads, buttons, and chains of gold, all adorned his form. His cape billowed behind him, a canvas of golden threads dancing in the breeze. Their eyes met innocence and determination woven together in the tapestry of fate. As he approached, still astride his noble mount, he extended a hand, a silent invitation. With an innocence that matched the morning dew, she lifted her hand to meet his, and at that moment, the world seemed to swirl and dance around them.

In a realm of soft hues and blooming blossoms, a young girl lay amidst a field of flowers, a celestial veil gracing her features with a gentle, translucent touch. Her arms extended gracefully above her, eyes closed, she seemed to dance on the edge of dreams. The flowers painted the canvas in shades of blue, purple, and pink, their petals swaying in a tender breeze. Dew-kissed blades of grass formed a sea of diamonds, reflecting the soft glow of an unseen moon. As the girl stirred in her slumber, a distant echo of horse steps reached her ears, a melody that danced through the flowered meadow. Slowly, she rose from her flowery bed, the veil slipping away like morning mist to unveil her enchanting presence. Her gown, a masterpiece of celestial elegance, cascaded around her. A floor-length creation in light blue, it cradled her form with a sweetheart neckline, the bodice adorned in gold, floral designs. Layers of tulle formed the flowing skirt, adorned with accents of blueish flowers, and a train that trailed behind her like a comet's tail. Around her neck hung a pendant, a crescent moon cradling a star, both crafted from silver and adorned with blue gemstones, a twin to the one she wore in the enchanted garden. Her golden locks, a cascade of loose curls, framed her face with ethereal grace, flowing like strands of sunlight. Awakening from the meadow's embrace, her deep blue eyes sought the source of the approaching steps. With a sense of dreamlike purpose, she floated towards the sound, the forest mist enveloping her like a lover's caress. In the heart of the foggy woodland, a clearing revealed itself, trees standing sentinel in the distance. From the shroud of mist emerged a figure on horseback, a man in the regalia of a medieval warrior. The horse, a noble steed of white, carried him forward with determined grace. His attire, a tapestry of dark fabric and gilded accents, spoke of a history steeped in honor and battle. High collars and embroidered shoulder pads, buttons, and chains of gold, all adorned his form. His cape billowed behind him, a canvas of golden threads dancing in the breeze. Their eyes met innocence and determination woven together in the tapestry of fate. As he approached, still astride his noble mount, he extended a hand, a silent invitation. With an innocence that matched the morning dew, she lifted her hand to meet his, and at that moment, the world seemed to swirl and dance around them. Yet, just as the dance was about to begin, Princess Mehjabeen's eyes fluttered open, the enchanting dream slipping away like mist beneath the twilight.

There was a time when people kept their fly buttons fastened. And man’s freedom was boiling off. And even childhood was no good any more—not the way it was. No worry then but how to find a good stone, not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped, to use in a sling pouch cut from a discarded shoe. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity? A man’s mind vagued up a little, for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them. An elder man might truly recall through water the delicate doctor-testing of little girls, but such a man forgets, and wants to, the acid emotion eating at the spleen so that a boy had to put his face flat down in the young wild oats and drum his fists against the ground and sob “Christ! Christ!” Such a man might say, and did, “What’s that damned kid lying out there in the grass for? He’ll catch a cold.

A “working girls’ hotel,” which is what some called them, was usually on a second floor, with a “big bouncer” always stationed at the bottom step where the line began. “A good romp in the hay would generally set a sailor back between two and three dollars. Believe me… there was an endless line to make payments.” Each house had an alarm system to call Shore Patrol if trouble occurred. And every room had an emergency button to ring a bell if a girl needed help.

The girl was slender and frail, with hair that was ashen under the moon and honey-coloured under the sputtering gas-lamps of the porch.

Besides, Shawn was right, was he not? Brandt is quite–" "Crazy." "'Attractive' was what I was going for." "He made Carl scream." "I heard." "Carl. The very large assassin who could kill me with a button and a teapot." "Yes" "Made him scream like a little girl." "Sí, eso–" "Repeatedly." "Nikolaus!

The expression in Steven’s eyes showed both understanding and amusement, and he watched with undisguised interest as Emma hastily covered her still-pulsing bosom. “I know,” he sighed, with a crooked, teasing grin. “You’re not that kind of girl.” Emma knew her face was crimson with embarrassment and umbrage, and only then, when it was too late, did she think to do her buttoning with her back turned. “I most certainly am not!” “You liked it,” Steven said, settling back with a smug sigh. “And from now until the day I take you, you’re going to be wondering what else I might have made you feel.” “You are insufferably arrogant, Mr. Fairfax!” “But right, nonetheless,” he responded easily. And then he had the bald effrontery to yawn. “You’re all warm and wet, and certain parts of you are feeling downright disappointed, whether you’ll admit to the fact or not.” A lame protest died in her throat. Everything Steven said was true, and she couldn’t deny it because she knew he’d see through the lie. “Emma the librarian,” he said huskily. Then he chuckled as though he found her occupation extraordinarily humorous. Emma’s knees felt weak as noodles, and a soft whimper rose in her throat at the brazen truth of his words. She swallowed it. “You overestimate your appeal, Mr. Fairfax,” she said. And then she turned on one heel and left the room, slamming the door shut behind her. Only

But first a description: Clara Bowden was beautiful in all senses except maybe, by virtue of being black, the classical. Clara Bowden was magnificently tall, black as ebony and crushed sable, with hair plaited in a horseshoe which pointed up when she felt lucky, down when she didn’t. At this moment it was up. It is hard to know whether that was significant. She needed no bra – she was independent, even of gravity – she wore a red halterneck which stopped below her bust, underneath which she wore her belly button (beautifully) and underneath that some very tight yellow jeans. At the end of it all were some strappy heels of a light brown suede, and she came striding down the stairs on them like some kind of vision or, as it seemed to Archie as he turned to observe her, like a reared-up thoroughbred. Now, as Archie understood it, in movies and the like it is common for someone to be so striking that when they walk down the stairs the crowd goes silent. In life he had never seen it. But it happened with Clara Bowden. She walked down the stairs in slow motion, surrounded by afterglow and fuzzy lighting. And not only was she the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, she was also the most comforting woman he had ever met. Her beauty was not a sharp, cold commodity. She smelt musty, womanly, like a bundle of your favorite clothes. Though she was disorganized physically – legs and arms speaking a slightly different dialect from her central nervous system – even her gangly demeanour seemed to Archie exceptionally elegant. She wore her sexuality with an older woman’s ease, and not (as with most of the girls Archie had run with in the past) like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it or when to just put it down. ‘Cheer up, bwoy,’ she said in a lilting Caribbean accent that reminded Archie of That Jamaican Cricketer, ‘it might never happen.’ ‘I think it already has.’ Archie, who had just dropped a fag from his mouth which has been burning itself to death anyway, saw Clara quickly tread it underfoot. She gave him a wide grin that revealed possibly her one imperfection. A complete lack of teeth in the top of her mouth. ‘Man…dey get knock out,’ she lisped, seeing his surprise. ‘But I tink to myself: come de end of de world, d’Lord won’t mind if I have no toofs.’ She laughed softly.

Cecy, this is hardly the time and place for—” “A tryst?” She laughed. “You think I mean to trap you in this secluded cottage and have my wicked way with you? You should be so lucky. No, remove your shirt. I want a look at your arm.” “My arm?” His eyes narrowed. “Which one?” “Which one do you think?” She crossed to him and began unknotting the cravat at his neck. “The one you injured while wrestling the boar last night.” Oh, the look on his face . . . Cecily wanted to kiss him. He was so adorably befuddled. At last, he’d let slip that hard mask of indifference he’d been wearing since his arrival at Swinford Manor. And in its place—there was Luke. Engaging green eyes, touchable dark brown hair, those lips so perfectly formed for roguish smiles and tender kisses alike. This was the man she’d fallen in love with. The man she still loved now. Yes, he’d changed, but she had too. She was older, wiser, stronger than the girl she’d been. This time, she wouldn’t let him go. “You knew?” She smiled. “I knew.” His breath hitched as she slipped the cravat from his neck. Attempting to ignore the wedge of bare chest it revealed, and the mad pounding of her blood that view inspired, Cecily set to work on his waistcoat buttons. “How?” he asked, obeying her silent urgings to shed the garment. “How did you know?” “It’s a fortunate thing you weren’t assigned to espionage. You’ve no talent for disguise whatsoever. If I hadn’t suspected already, I would have figured it out this afternoon. My stocking was found in this remote cottage, and you just happen to know the secrets of the door latch? Then there’s the fact that you’ve been favoring your arm since breakfast.” She undid the small closure of his shirtfront before turning her attention to his cuffs. “But I knew you last night. I’d know your voice anywhere, not to mention your touch.” She gave a shaky sigh, unable to meet his questioning gaze. “It’s like you said, Luke. You still make me tremble, even after all these years.” His voice was soft. “I don’t even know why I followed you. The way we’d parted so angrily . . . I just couldn’t let you go, not like that.” “And I’m glad of it. You saved my life.

Oh, God, it's early," he groaned. "Hell. Well, at least I can grab the bathroom first." Claire jumped to her feet. "What time is it?" "Nine," he said, and yawned again. She reached over him, pushed the hidden button, dashed past him to the door, barely remembering to shed the afghan on the way. "Hey! Dibs on the bathroom! I mean it!" She grabbed her clothes and jumped in the bathroom just as Shane, still yawning, stumbled out of the hidden room. "But I called dibs!" he said, and knocked on the door. "Dibs! Damn girls don't understand the rules....

You look nice." His words were flat and noncommittal, but his voice and gaze were laced with sex. I looked down at myself. Button-down floral shirt. Slacks. Sensible flats. Work clothes. I'd tucked my hair into a clip before I arrived and made sure none of my lunch was still stuck in my teeth, but my appearance wasn't worth mentioning. "What's a girl got to do to look like crap around here?" [...] "Be somebody else, I guess.

Culture is a vehicle for true self-expression. The flowering of individual creativity takes place in the context of culture. When a child becomes peer-oriented, the transmission lines of civilization are downed. The new models to emulate are other children or peer groups or the latest pop icons. Appearance, attitudes, dress, and demeanor all adapt accordingly. Even children's language changes — more impoverished, less articulate about their observations and experience, less expressive of meaning and nuance. Peer-oriented children are not devoid of culture, but the culture they are enrolled in is generated by their peer orientation. Although this culture is broadcast through media controlled by adults, it is the children and youth whose tastes and preferences it must satisfy. They, the young, wield the spending power that determines the profits of the culture industry — even if it is the parents’ incomes that are being disposed of in the process. Advertisers know subtly well how to exploit the power of peer imitation as they make their pitch to ever-younger groups of customers via the mass electronic media. In this way, it is our youth who dictate hairstyles and fashion, youth to whom music must appeal, youth who primarily drive the box office. Youth determine the cultural icons of our age. The adults who cater to the expectations of peer-oriented youth may control the market and profit from it, but as agents of cultural transmission they are simply pandering to the debased cultural tastes of children disconnected from healthy adult contact. Peer culture arises from children and evolves with them as they age. Peer orientation breeds aggression and an unhealthy, precocious sexuality. The result is the aggressively hostile and hypersexualized youth culture, propagated by the mass media, to which children are already exposed by early adolescence. Today's rock videos shock even adults who themselves grew up under the influence of the “sexual revolution.” As the onset of peer-orientation emerges earlier and earlier, so does the culture it creates. The butt-shaking and belly-button-baring Spice Girls pop phenomenon of the late 1990s, as of this writing a rapidly fading memory, seems in retrospect a nostalgically innocent cultural expression compared with the pornographically eroticized pop idols served up to today's preadolescents.

Kate Sperry, of Winchester, wrote in her diary on October 26, “Bell Boyd [sic], from Martinsburg, called this afternoon, and of all fools I ever saw of the womankind, she certainly beats all — Perfect insane on the subject of men — a dark green riding dress with brass buttons down the front, a pair of Lieut. Col.’s shoulder straps — a small riding hat with a row of brass buttons on the rim from every state in the Confederacy. She is the fastest girl in Virginia or anywhere else for that matter. Since the army has been around, her senses are perfectly gone.” Boyd

The children hadn't any Mamma. She had died when Phil was a baby, four years before my story began. Katy could remember her pretty well; to the rest she was but a sad, sweet name, spoken on Sunday, and at prayer-times, or when Papa was especially gentle and solemn. In place of this Mamma, whom they recollected so dimly, there was Aunt Izzie, Papa's sister, who came to take care of them when Mamma went away on that long journey, from which, for so many months, the little ones kept hoping she might return. Aunt Izzie was a small woman, sharp-faced and thin, rather old-looking, and very neat and particular about everything. She meant to be kind to the children, but they puzzled her much, because they were not a bit like herself when she was a child. Aunt Izzie had been a gentle, tidy little thing, who loved to sit as Curly Locks did, sewing long seams in the parlor, and to have her head patted by older people, and be told that she was a good girl; whereas Katy tore her dress every day, hated sewing, and didn't care a button about being called "good," while Clover and Elsie shied off like restless ponies when any one tried to pat their heads. It was very perplexing to Aunt Izzie, and she found it hard to quite forgive the children for being so "unaccountable," and so little like the good boys and girls in Sunday-school memoirs, who were the young people she liked best, and understood most about.

I am with Victor, the two of us holding hands and laughing and somehow I know it is in the future—whether years or weeks, I can’t say. We are walking along the beach at noon—the sun hot and bright overhead, the sunshine warming my skin as it hasn’t in many long years. I look up at it, squinting the way you do on a bright day, but I am not afraid. The sun is no longer my enemy but a warm, benevolent friend. Victor says something I can’t hear. I looked over and asked him to repeat it. “I said, I think she’s hungry…” “Who?” I ask but then I look down and realize I am pushing a baby stroller. Victor is already kneeling on the sandy beach, cooing to whoever is inside the stroller. “Daddy’s little princess is hungry?” he says, picking up a baby who looks to be about one and a half years old. He brings her to me and I look at her in wonder. She has Victor’s big chocolate brown eyes and my dark brown hair. Her little face is heart shaped and delicate with a button nose and a sweetly pursed candy pink mouth—perfect in every way. “She’s beautiful,” I whisper, in awe of the precious little girl. “Just like her mom,” Victor says proudly. He holds her out to me and she puts up chubby little arms, eager for me to take her. “Momma!” she says when I hold her. She nuzzles close and presses her chubby little cheek to mine. “Momma… love you.” “Oh, sweetie,” I whisper, holding her tight. “I love you too. Momma loves her little girl so much.” Victor puts his arms around both of us. “And I love you both. My two sweet girls,” he rumbles and I feel loved and protected and perfect in every way. The waves shush along the beach, the sand is rough and warm under my feet, my little girl is safe in my arms and my husband loves me—loves both of us completely. The sun beams down on us like a golden blessing and I feel a joy like I have never known, a joy I never expected to feel after Celeste… after she… she…

Many girls become vegetarians. They love animals and actively work for animal rights. I think this cause is popular with girls because they so easily identify with the lack of speech and powerlessness of animals. One girl I know wore a button that said 'If animals are to talk, we must be their voices.' Girls identify with gentle, defenseless creatures. And they will work with great idealism and energy to save them.

He came off so lost, which of course hit all my buttons because who doesn’t dream of finding an incredibly hot boy and fixing him? Straight guys may have cars and gadgets, but girls and gay boys, we like to fix broken boys.

My mother, Woman with Many Robes, asks if you want to eat?” Loretta gave an emphatic shake of her head, pressing closer to his chest. In a toss-up, she chose to stay with Hunter. He leaned forward so he could look into her eyes. “You will not be afraid. My mother will crack heads. Your good friend, eh? You will trust.” Loretta scanned the wall of leather-clad bodies and, for the first time, hugged her captor’s arm more closely around her. The dark depths of his eyes shifted, warming on hers. A ghost of a smile flitted across his harsh mouth, and his fingertips tightened their hold on her ribs. Looking up, he said something in Comanche. The woman nodded and turned to shoo the onlookers out of the way, her spoon tapping a hollow tattoo on slow-moving heads. Hunter chuckled, his chest vibrating against Loretta’s shoulder blades as he steered the mare along the path his mother cleared. The crowd formed walls on each side of them, hanging back only when Hunter drew up before a lodge. When he began to dismount, Loretta clutched his wrist, terrified he might abandon her. “Yo-oh-hobt pa-pi! Yo-oh-hobt pa-pi!” a small girl cried, dancing around the mare’s legs, her button eyes gleaming, her plump brown bottom jiggling so hard that she was about to lose her breechcloth. “Ein mah-heepicut?” Hunter pried Loretta’s frantic fingers from his arm and slid off the horse. Smiling at the child, he leaned over and retied her breechcloth thong. “Huh, yes.” Glancing up at Loretta, he said, “She is a yellow-hair, and she is mine.

Yo-oh-hobt pa-pi! Yo-oh-hobt pa-pi!” a small girl cried, dancing around the mare’s legs, her button eyes gleaming, her plump brown bottom jiggling so hard that she was about to lose her breechcloth. “Ein mah-heepicut?” Hunter pried Loretta’s frantic fingers from his arm and slid off the horse. Smiling at the child, he leaned over and retied her breechcloth thong. “Huh, yes.” Glancing up at Loretta, he said, “She is a yellow-hair, and she is mine.

lies Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of Chile. There, in 1830, Captain Robert Fitzroy docked an exploration vessel, and as part of hostile negotiations seized three Fuegians, boys named el’leparu and o’run-del’lico, and a girl named yok’cushly. They were given absurd English names—York Minster, Jemmy Button, Fuegia Basket—as part of a bizarre colonial experiment to see if these savages could be “civilized.” Fitzroy took them to England (a fourth named Boat Memory was also taken, but died of smallpox after they arrived; his real, Fuegian name is lost).

Behind every powerful man is a woman who knows how to push his buttons.

Sunday dinner at the Marsdens’ is more than a meal--it’s an occasion. I’m dressed accordingly, wearing a pale green sundress with a sweater to ward off the chill of the air-conditioning. “Well, I blame my mama, God rest her soul,” Laura Grace says with a sigh. “She never taught me how to cook. You have no idea how lucky you are, Jemma--you and Nan both. Your mama’s a great cook, and she made sure to teach you. You girls’ husbands are surely going to thank her one day.” It’s impossible to miss the pointed look she gives Ryder. He ignores her and continues to attack his own roast. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt, but his tie is neat and his khakis perfectly pressed. He cuts off a slice of rare meat and brings it to his mouth. Chewing slowly, he fixes his gaze on the wall directly above my mother’s head. It’s clear that he, too, would rather be anywhere else right now--anywhere but here, a helpless victim of our mothers’ machinations. Laura Grace glances from him to me and back to him again. “Next year, when the two of you are off at Oxford, you better promise to drive over together each week for Sunday dinner, you hear?” “Now, c’mon, Laura Grace,” Mr. Marsden chides. “You know Ryder hasn’t made his decision yet. You’ve got to give the boy some space to figure it out.” She waves one hand in dismissal. “I know. But a mama can hope, can’t she? I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine the two of them going off in different directions.” “There’s only one choice for the both of them, as far as I’m concerned,” my mom says. “It’s about time the Rebels get their football program back on track, and Ryder’s just the boy to do it--with Jemma cheering him on.” I can’t help but cringe, staring down at my plate. I mean, is this really what my mom dreams about? Is this the best she can imagine for me? For a moment, everyone continues to eat silently. The tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife, but I doubt Mama or Laura Grace even notice.

Zane moved his horse next to Lucy’s and simply grabbed the girl around the waist. When she settled on the saddle in front of him, he unbuttoned his coat, tucked it around her, then fastened the bottom three buttons. “I wish he could do that with me,” Maya said with a shiver.

In that moment Baja felt something like a hammer blow to his chest. Everyone in those pockets of Air was Felsia to someone. Every life saved there filled someone else with relief and joy. Every life snuffed out was another Katowa, someone somewhere having their heart torn out. Baja could feel the detonator in his hands. The horrible click transferring to his palm as the button depressed. He could feel that terrible shockwave again as the landing pad vanished in fire. He could feel the horror replaced by fear. As some unlucky combinations of events up the shuttle too close to the blast and knocked it from the sky. He could feel all of it so clearly, it was as if it was happening right then, but more than that he felt sorrow. Someone had just tried to do the same thing to his baby girl, had tried to kill her. Not because he hated her, but because she was standing in the path of his political statement. Everyone who had dies on that shuttle had been a Felsia to someone, and with a click of a button he’s killed them. He hadn’t meant to; he’d been trying to save them. That was the little lie that he’d kept close to his heart for months now. But the truth was much worse. Some secret part of him had wanted the shuttle to die, had reveled watching it fall from the sky in flames, had wanted to punish the people trying to take his world away. Except that was a lie, too. The real truth, the truth beneath it all, was that he had wanted to spread his pain around to punish the universe for being a place where his little boy had been killed – to punish other people for being alike when his Katowa was dead. That part of him had watched the shuttle burn and thought now you know how it feels; now you know how I feel. But the people he’d hurt had just saved his daughter because they were the type of people who couldn’t let even their enemies die helpless. The first sob took him by surprise, nearly bending him double with its power. Then he was blind, his eyes filled with water, his throat closed like someone was choking him. He gasped for air, and every gasp turned into another loud sob. …He tried to speak, to reassure (Naomi), but when he tried, the only words he could say were, “I killed them.” He meant the governor and Coop and Kate and the RCE security team, but most of all Katowa. He’d killed his little boy over and over again every time he’d let someone else die to punish them for his son’s death. “I killed them.” “This time you saved them,” Naomi repeated. “These ones you saved.