Cares Like A Mom Quotes

No. Sorry. You have spent months being the biggest jerk to me. You don't get to decide to like me one day and think I will forget that. I want someone to care for me like my dad cared for my mom. And you aren't him.

For what it’s worth, I’ll share my intentions. You and me, we aren’t practice for the real thing. It isn’t that too much is at stake with family and friends, it’s because I love you. You’re funny, beautiful and you care about people. I like the way you look at me, especially when you think I don’t notice it. I like that we have history and our kids will have a big family and share that history because there was never a time when their Mom and Dad weren’t together. If you were a terrible lay, I might have second thoughts but you and I are dynamite together. I intend to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. If that freaks you out, tough, because now we’ve started this, there’s no goin’ back.

Hello? This is Clary Fairchild.” “Clary? It’s me, Emma.” “Oh, Emma, hi! I haven’t heard from you in ages. My mom says thanks for the wedding flowers, by the way. She wanted to send a note but Luke whisked her away on a honeymoon to Tahiti.” “Tahiti sounds nice.” “It probably is — Jace, what are you doing with that thing? There is no way it’ll fit.” “Is this a bad time?” “What? No! Jace is trying to drag a trebuchet into the training room. Alec, stop helping him.” “What’s a trebuchet?” “It’s a huge catapult.” “What are they going to use it for?” “I have no idea. Alec, you’re enabling! You’re an enabler!” “Maybe it is a bad time.” “I doubt there’ll be a better one. Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do?” “I think we have your cat.” “What?” “Your cat. Big fuzzy Blue Persian? Always looks angry? Julian says it’s your cat. He says he saw it at the New York Institute. Well, saw him. It’s a boy cat.” “Church? You have Church? But I thought — well, we knew he was gone. We thought Brother Zachariah took him. Isabelle was annoyed, but they seemed to know each other. I’ve never seen Church actually likeanyone like that.” “I don’t know if he likes anyone here. He bit Julian twice. Oh, wait. Julian says he likes Ty. He’s asleep on Ty’s bed.” “How did you wind up with him?” “Someone rang our front doorbell. Diana, she’s our tutor, went down to see what it was. Church was in a cage on the front step with a note tied to it. It said For Emma. This is Church, a longtime friend of the Carstairs. Take care of this cat and he will take care of you. —J.” “Brother Zachariah left you a cat.” “But I don’t even really know him. And he’s not a Silent Brother any more.” “You may not know him, but he clearly knows you.” “What do you think the J stands for?” “His real name. Look, Emma, if he wants you to have Church, and you want Church, you should keep him.” “Are you sure? The Lightwoods —“ ‘They’re both standing here nodding. Well, Alec is partially trapped under a trebuchet, but he seems to be nodding.” “Jules says we’d like to keep him. We used to have a cat named Oscar, but he died, and, well, Church seems to be good for Ty’s nightmares.” “Oh, honey. I think, really, he’s Brother Zachariah’s cat. And if he wants you to have him, then you should.” “Why does Brother Zachariah want to protect me? It’s like he knows me, but I don’t know why he knows me.” “I don’t exactly know … But I know Tessa. She’s his — well, girlfriend seems not the right word for it. They’ve known each other a long, long time. I have a feeling they’re both watching over you.” “That’s good. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.” “Emma — oh my God. The trebuchet just crashed through the floor. I have to go. Call me later.” “But we can keep the cat?” “You can keep the cat.

But this is my fucking life! My mom died and some reporter wanted a story.” I heaved for air. “And all I cared about was playing in some game. Like that was what mattered. She was dying, and I was mad. I’m still fucking pissed. Criminals survive every day. Murderers and rapists and lunatics. But not her.” “Life, in all the years I’ve been living it, son, doesn’t make a lick of sense where that’s concerned.

Father has a strengthening character like the sun and mother has a soothing temper like the moon.

Back when I was five, I thought my mom was being mean to me, so I decided to run away. Carried my slingshot with me because I was a big strong man, you see. Could take care of myself. I believe I also took a flashlight and a package of Oreos." Despite my embarrassement, I couldn't help smiling. "I think you packed better than I did." I swaggered out of the house where we were staying and took myself all the way to...the far corner of the backyard. There I made my stand. Stayed out there all day, until it started to reain. I hadn't thought about taking an umbrella." The best laid plans." I sighed. I know. It's tragic. I came back in, all wet and my stomach aching from eating about twenty Oreo, and my mom--who is a smart lady even is she drives me nuts--well, she acted like nothing happened." Lucas shrugged.

I hope I’ll be able to come home, someday. But there are things I need to do first. I just want you to know I love you and Mom, and I’m not doing any of this to hurt you.” “We love you, too, Jake, and if it’s drugs, or whatever it is, we don’t care. We’ll get you right again. Like I said, you’re confused.” “No, Dad. I’m peculiar.

He was just a kid. He didn’t care. He was like, “I’m getting in my mom’s van and I’m going home.” I was just a kid, too. But I cared. With him gone, who was I going to play Plato and Socrates with?


He came back up with a brighter smile. "And I'm proven right, again! You guys should hire me for this talent I have. Mom, I bet you have a better sex life with that Garrett dude than you did with dad." "Logan!" He turned towards James. "And dad, I bet your sex life is pretty good with Analise. She strikes me as the slutty type." "Logan!" He grinned broadly. "And David…I don't know you that well, but you strike me as conservative. You're only going to be with a conservative woman, maybe one that looks exotic though. I can tell you have control issues. You don't like anyone who is wilder than you, probably why you had problems with your ex, huh? As for the current one, she's hot under the covers, but I don't know if you want her to be." He shook his head in sympathy. "You might want to take care of that.

Sorry,” Kiersten says to Lake and I. “Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cusswords just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn’t be considered cusswords anymore and no one would ever be offended by them” This kid is hard to keep up with! “Your mother encourages you to cuss?” Gavin says. Kiersten nods. “I don’t see it that way. It’s more like she’s encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word. That’s all they are, mixed up letters. Like, take the word “butterfly” for example. What if someone decided one day that butterfly is a cussword? People would eventually start using butterfly as an insult, and to emphasize things in a negative way. The actual WORD doesn’t mean anything. It’s the negative association people give these words that make them cusswords. So if we all just decided to keep saying butterfly all the time, eventually people would stop caring. The shock value would subside…and it would just become another word again. Same with every other so-called bad word. If we would all just start saying them all the time, They wouldn’t be bad anymore. That’s what my mom says anyway.” “Kiersten?” Eddie says. “Will you be my new best friend?” Lake grabs a french fry off her plate and throws it at Eddie, hitting her in the face with it. “That’s Bullshit,” Lake says. “Oh, go BUTTERFLY yourself,” Eddie says. She returns a fry in Lakes direction.

We love men because they can never fake orgasms, even if they wanted to. Because they write poems, songs, and books in our honor. Because they never understand us, but they never give up. Because they can see beauty in women when women have long ceased to see any beauty in themselves. Because they come from little boys. Because they can churn out long, intricate, Machiavellian, or incredibly complex mathematics and physics equations, but they can be comparably clueless when it comes to women. Because they are incredible lovers and never rest until we’re happy. Because they elevate sports to religion. Because they’re never afraid of the dark. Because they don’t care how they look or if they age. Because they persevere in making and repairing things beyond their abilities, with the naïve self-assurance of the teenage boy who knew everything. Because they never wear or dream of wearing high heels. Because they’re always ready for sex. Because they’re like pomegranates: lots of inedible parts, but the juicy seeds are incredibly tasty and succulent and usually exceed your expectations. Because they’re afraid to go bald. Because you always know what they think and they always mean what they say. Because they love machines, tools, and implements with the same ferocity women love jewelry. Because they go to great lengths to hide, unsuccessfully, that they are frail and human. Because they either speak too much or not at all to that end. Because they always finish the food on their plate. Because they are brave in front of insects and mice. Because a well-spoken four-year old girl can reduce them to silence, and a beautiful 25-year old can reduce them to slobbering idiots. Because they want to be either omnivorous or ascetic, warriors or lovers, artists or generals, but nothing in-between. Because for them there’s no such thing as too much adrenaline. Because when all is said and done, they can’t live without us, no matter how hard they try. Because they’re truly as simple as they claim to be. Because they love extremes and when they go to extremes, we’re there to catch them. Because they are tender they when they cry, and how seldom they do it. Because what they lack in talk, they tend to make up for in action. Because they make excellent companions when driving through rough neighborhoods or walking past dark alleys. Because they really love their moms, and they remind us of our dads. Because they never care what their horoscope, their mother-in-law, nor the neighbors say. Because they don’t lie about their age, their weight, or their clothing size. Because they have an uncanny ability to look deeply into our eyes and connect with our heart, even when we don’t want them to. Because when we say “I love you” they ask for an explanation.

But Carrie had told her friend once, during high school, not to model herself on Julia. "I like your mom a lot," Carrie had said, "but anyone that dresses and does their hair as carefully as your mom does every single day is unhappy on the inside. She's trying to hide all her messiness, and I want better than that for you.

I wish I worried about my uncle's opinions, and had problems to work out with my mom. Hell, I'd settle for knowing what her voice sounded like." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Trite but true—you don't know what you have until it's gone. People change. The world changes. And sooner or later you lose people you care about. If you don't mind some advice from someone who doesn't know much about families, I can tell you this: Don't take yours for granted. It might feel like all of them will always be there. But they won't.

Because you have no survival instinct, Grace. You're like a tank, you just chug along< thinking nothing can stop you, until you meet up with a bigger tank. Are you sure you want to go out with someone with that kind of history?" mom seemed to warm her theory. " he couldhave a psychotic break. I read that people get those when they're twenty-eight. he could be almost normal and then suddenly go slasher. I mean, you know I've never told you what to do with your life before now. But what if-I told you not to see him?" I hadn't been expecting that. My voice was brittle. "I would say that by virtue of your not acting parental up to this point, you've relinquished your abiblity to wield any power now. Sam and I are together. It's not an option." Mom threw her hands up as if trying to stop the Grace-tank from running over her. "Okay. Fine. Just be careful, okay? Whatever. I'm going to get a drink." And just like that her parental engergies were expendede.

He was just upset Dad liked you the best. I didn’t care. Everybody has favorite things. Mom liked me best anyway.

Mom." I couldn't believe she was doing this again. She was taking this moment, this time when I was strongest, away from me. "I don't care what I have to do," she said, her voice low and even. "I don't care if I have to send you away or switch schools. I don't care if I have to follow you twenty-four hours a day, you will not see him, Halley. You will not destroy yourself this way." "Why are you just assuming I'm going back to him?" I asked her, just as she was drawing in breath to make another point. "Why don't you ask me what I said to him out there?" She shut her mouth, caught off guard. "What?" "Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a chance." "Yes, I do," she said indignantly. "No," I said. "You don't. And then you wonder why I never tell you anyone or share anything with you. I can never trust you with anything or share anything with you. I can never trust you with anything, give you any piece of me without you grabbing it to keep for yourself." "That's not true," she said slowly, but it was just now hitting her, I could see it. "Halley, you don't always know what's at stake, and I do." "I will never learn," I said to her slowly, "until you let me." And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.

Suddenly I realized, horrified, that Darry was crying. He didn’t make a sound, but tears were running down his cheeks. I hadn’t seen him cry in years, not even when Mom and Dad had been killed. (I remembered the funeral. I had sobbed in spite of myself; Soda had broken down and bawled like a baby; but Darry had only stood there, his fists in his pockets and that look on his face, the same helpless, pleading look that he was wearing now.) In that second what Soda and Dally and Two-Bit had been trying to tell me came through. Darry did care about me, maybe as much as he cared about Soda, and because he cared he was trying too hard to make something of me. When he yelled “Pony, where have you been all this time?” he meant “Pony, you’ve scared me to death. Please be careful, because I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.” Darry looked down and turned away silently. Suddenly I broke out of my daze. “Darry!” I screamed, and the next thing I knew I had him around the waist and was squeezing the daylights out of him. “Darry,” I said, “I’m sorry . . .” He was stroking my hair and I could hear the sobs racking him as he fought to keep back the tears. “Oh, Pony, I thought we’d lost you . . . like we did Mom and Dad . . .” That was his silent fear then—of losing another person he loved. I remembered how close he and Dad had been, and I wondered how I could ever have thought him hard and unfeeling. I listened to his heart pounding through his T-shirt and knew everything was going to be okay now. I had taken the long way around, but I was finally home. To stay.

I like Daniel. He takes care of you." I blinked. "Oh my God. Did you really just say that? He takes care of me?" Dad flushed. "I didn't mean it like-" "Takes care of me? Did I go to sleep and wake up in the nineteenth century?" I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt. "Ack! I can't go to school like this. Where's my corset? My bonnet?" Dad sighed as Mom walked in with her empty teacup. "What did I miss?" She said. "Dad's trying to marry me off to Daniel." I looked at him. "You know, if you offer him a new truck for a dowry, he might go for it.

MY MOTHER GETS DRESSED It is impossible for my mother to do even the simplest things for herself anymore so we do it together, get her dressed. I choose the clothes without zippers or buckles or straps, clothes that are simple but elegant, and easy to get into. Otherwise, it's just like every other day. After bathing, getting dressed. The stockings go on first. This time, it's the new ones, the special ones with opaque black triangles that she's never worn before, bought just two weeks ago at her favorite department store. We start with the heavy, careful stuff of the right toes into the stocking tip then a smooth yank past the knob of her ankle and over her cool, smooth calf then the other toe cool ankle, smooth calf up the legs and the pantyhose is coaxed to her waist. You're doing great, Mom, I tell her as we ease her body against mine, rest her whole weight against me to slide her black dress with the black empire collar over her head struggle her fingers through the dark tunnel of the sleeve. I reach from the outside deep into the dark for her hand, grasp where I can't see for her touch. You've got to help me a little here, Mom I tell her then her fingertips touch mine and we work her fingers through the sleeve's mouth together, then we rest, her weight against me before threading the other fingers, wrist, forearm, elbow, bicep and now over the head. I gentle the black dress over her breasts, thighs, bring her makeup to her, put some color on her skin. Green for her eyes. Coral for her lips. I get her black hat. She's ready for her company. I tell the two women in simple, elegant suits waiting outside the bedroom, come in. They tell me, She's beautiful. Yes, she is, I tell them. I leave as they carefully zip her into the black body bag. Three days later, I dream a large, green suitcase arrives. When I unzip it, my mother is inside. Her dress matches her eyeshadow, which matches the suitcase perfectly. She's wearing coral lipstick. "I'm here," she says, smiling delightedly, waving and I wake up. Four days later, she comes home in a plastic black box that is heavier than it looks. In the middle of a meadow, I learn a naked more than naked. I learn a new way to hug as I tighten my fist around her body, my hand filled with her ashes and the small stones of bones. I squeeze her tight then open my hand and release her into the smallest, hottest sun, a dandelion screaming yellow at the sky.

You don’t care what anyone thinks. You know?” My ears burned. “I care what everyone thinks, Sohrab.” “No you don’t. Not really. You don’t try to change yourself. You know who you are.” He bumped shoulders with me. “I wish I was like that. I always try to be what my mom needs. What my amou needs. What you need. But you are the opposite. You are happy with who you are.” I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s really me. You’ve never seen what it’s like back home. How everyone treats me.” “They don’t know you, Darioush.” Sohrab grabbed my shoulder. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.” “I wish you could see yourself too.” I swallowed. “You’re the only person who never wanted me to change.

I’m right here,” he said. “Dad’s right here. I’m going nowhere. Just gonna wait until you’re ready to come out into the world, and then your mom and I are going to take care of you. So you hang tight, we clear? Do your thing, and we’ll wait for however long it takes.” With his free hand, he took Layla’s palm, and put it over his own. “Your family is right here. Waiting for you…and we love you.” It was totally stupid to talk to what was, no doubt, nothing but a bundle of cells. But he couldn’t help it. The words, the actions…they were at once totally his, and yet coming from a place that was foreign to him. Felt right, though. Felt…like what a father was supposed to do.

When I was a kid I used to drink from the tap all the time. I'd run back into the flat all hot and sweaty from playing and didn't even bother putting it in a glass, just turned the tap on and stuck my mouth underneath it. If my mom caught me doing it she used to scold me, but my dad just said that I had to be careful. 'What if a fish jumped out?' he used to say. 'You'd swallow it before you knew it was there.' Dad was always saying stuff like that and it wasn't until I was seventeen that I realised it was because he was stoned all the time.

My mom says, "Do you know what the AIDS memorial quilt is all about?" Jump to how much I hate my brother at this moment. I bought this fabric because I thought it would make a nice panel for Shane," Mom says. "We just ran into some problems with what to sew on it." Give me amnesia. Flash. Give me new parents. Flash. Your mother didn't want to step on any toes," Dad says. He twists a drumstick off and starts scraping the meat onto a plate. "With gay stuff you have to be so careful since everything means something in secret code. I mean, we didn't want to give people the wrong idea." My Mom leans over to scoop yams onto my plate, and says, "Your father wanted a black border, but black on a field of blue would mean Shane was excited by leather sex, you know, bondage and discipline, sado and masochism." She says, "Really, those panels are to help the people left behind." Strangers are going to see us and see Shane's name," my dad says. "We didn't want them thinking things." The dishes all start their slow clockwise march around the table. The stuffing. The olives. The cranberry sauce. "I wanted pink triangles but all the panels have pink triangles," my mom says. "It's the Nazi symbol for homosexuals." She says,"Your father suggested black triangles, but that would mean Shane was a lesbian. It looks like female pubic hair. The black triangle does." My father says, "Then I wanted a green border, but it turns out that would mean Shane was a male prostitute." My mom says, "We almost chose a red border, but that would mean fisting. Brown would mean either scat or rimming, we couldn't figure which." Yellow," my father says, "means watersports." A lighter shade of blue," Mom says, "would mean just regular oral sex." Regular white," my father says, "would mean anal. White could also mean Shane was excited by men wearing underwear." He says, "I can't remember which." My mother passes me the quilted chicken with the rolls still warm inside. We're supposed to sit and eat with Shane dead all over the table in front of us. Finally we just gave up," my mom says, "and I made a nice tablecloth out of the material." Between the yams and the stuffing, Dad looks down at his plate and says, "Do you know about rimming?" I know it isn't table talk. And fisting?" my mom asks. I say, I know. I don't mention Manus and his vocational porno magazines. We sit there, all of us around a blue shroud with the turkey more like a big dead baked animal than ever, the stuffing chock full of organs you can still recognize, the heart and gizzard and liver, the gravy thick with cooked fat and blood. The flower centerpiece could be a casket spray. Would you pass the butter, please?" my mother says. To my father she says, "Do you know what felching is?

She took care of me and my brothers, I’m sure that was really hard for her.’ ‘That was her job.’ I feel interrogated, like I can’t say the right thing. I speed up, trying to explain myself. ‘Well, but I mean this was different from most parents.’ Shit. I hated how that came out. ‘How so?’ I pause to compose myself. Laura won’t rattle me. I speak in an even, measured tone. ‘She sacrificed everything for me. She constantly went without so she could take care of me. She put me first, ahead of herself.’ ‘Hmm. And do you think that’s healthy?’ What kind of fresh hell is this? What is this impossible-to-ace quiz? I have no idea how I’m supposed to be answering to make Mom look good.

I have an intense nighttime skin care routine. I don’t like to miss it, and it doesn’t all fit in a handbag.” My mom used to say, You can’t control the passage of time, but you can soften its blow to your face.

It is an honor that Mom cares about me so much that something like me having my own favorite color would devastate her. True love.

I wish I could explain how I feel, but nothing can explain this moment. Not a vase of stars. Not a book. Not a song. Not even a poem. Nothing can explain the moment when the woman you would give your life for sees her daughter for the very first time. Tears are streaming down her face. She’s stroking our baby girl’s cheek, smiling. Crying. Laughing. “I don’t want to count her fingers or toes,” Lake whispers. “I don’t care if she has two toes or three fingers or fifty feet. I love her so much, Will. She’s perfect.” She is perfect. So perfect. “Just like her mom,” I say. I lean my head against Lake’s and we just stare. We stare at the daughter who is so much more than I could have asked for. The daughter who is so much more than I dreamt of. So much more than I ever thought I would have. This girl. This baby girl is my life. Her mother is my life. These girls are both my life. I reach down and pick up her hand. Her tiny fingers reflexively wrap around my pinky and I can’t choke back my tears any longer. “Hey, Julia. It’s me. It’s your daddy.

all my life I have never heard a mother call out to her child as he or she goes off to school, “Take a lot of risks today, darling.” She is more likely to convey to her child, “Be careful, darling.” This “Be careful” carries with it a double message: “The world is really dangerous out there” … and … “you won’t be able to handle it.” What Mom is really saying, of course, is, “If something happens to you, I won’t be able to handle it.” You see, she is only passing on her lack of trust in her ability to handle what comes her way.

The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had. If your mother is anything like mine, after all, there are a lot of important things she probably didn't teach you: how to use a vibrator; how to go to a loan shark and pull a loan at 17 percent that's due in thirty days; how to hire your first divorce attorney; what to look for in a doula (a birth coach) should you find yourself alone and pregnant. My mother never taught me how to date three people at the same time or how to interview a nanny or what to wear in an ashram in India or how to meditate. She also failed to mention crotchless underwear, how to make my first down payment on an apartment, the benefits of renting verses owning, and the difference between a slant-6 engine and a V-8 (in case I wanted to get a muscle car), not to mention how to employ a team of people to help me with my life, from trainers to hair colorists to nutritionists to shrinks. (Luckily, New York became one of many other moms I am to have in my lifetime.) So many mothers say they want their daughters to be independent, but what they really hope is that they'll find a well-compensated banker or lawyer and settle down between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight in Greenwich, Darien, or That Town, USA, to raise babies, do the grocery shopping, and work out in relative comfort for the rest of their lives. I know this because I employ their daughters. They raise us to think they want us to have careers, and they send us to college, but even they don't really believe women can be autonomous and take care of themselves.

Mom, I feel like you don’t care about me,” I wrote. “You never answer the phone when I call, but I know you’re always talking to Jodi. I just feel ignored. I feel like you don’t love me.

We aren't fighting right now." I blurted out. He gave me a sidelong look. "Do you want to fight?" "No. I hate fighting with you. Verbally, I mean. I don't mind in the gym." I thought I detected the hint of a smile. Always a half-smile for me. Rarely a full one. "I don't like fighting with you either." Sitting next to him there, I marveled at the warm and happy emotions springing up inside me. There was something about being around him that felt so good, that moved me in a way Mason couldn't. You can't force love, I realized, It's there or it isn't. If it's not there, you've got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you've got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love. The next words that came out of my mouth astonished me, both because they were completely unselfish and because I actually meant them. "You should take it." He flinched. "What?" "Tasha's offer. You should take her up on it. It's a really great chance." I remembered my mom's words about being ready for children. I wasn't. Maybe she hadn't been. But Tasha was. And I knew Dimitri was too. They got along really well. He could go be her guardian, have some kids with her...it would be a good deal for both of them. "I never expected to hear you say anything like that," he told me, voice tight. "Especially after-" "What a bitch I've been? Yeah." I tugged his coat tighter against the cold. It smelled like him. It was intoxicating, and I could half-imagine being wrapped in his embrace. Adrian might have been onto something about the power of scent. "Well. Like I said, I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want us to hate each other. And...well..." I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them. "No matter how I feel about us...I want you to be happy." Silence yet again. I noticed then that my chest hurt. Dimitri reached out and put his arm around me. He pulled me to him, and I rested my head on his chest. "Roza," was all he said. It was the first time he'd really touched me since the night of the lust charm. The practice room had been something different...more animal. This wasn't even about sex. It was just about being close to someone you cared about, about the emotion that kind of connection flooded you with. Dimitri might run off with Tasha, but I would still love him. I would probably always love him. I cared about Mason. But I would probably never love him. I sighed into Dimitri, just wishing I could stay like that forever. It felt right being with him. And-no matter how much the thought of him and Tasha made me ache-doing what was best for him felt right. Now, I knew, it was time to stop being a coward and do something else that was right. Mason had said I needed to learn something about myself. I just had. Reluctantly, I pulled away and handed Dimitri his coat. I stood up. He regarded me curiously, sensing my unease. "Where you going?" he asked. "To break someone's heart," I replied. I admired Dimitri for a heartbeat more-the dark, knowing eyes and silken hair. The I headed inside. I had to apologize to Mason...and tell him there'd never be anything between us.

How is he?" "Who?" "Your father." Of all the things Claire had expected, that wasn't it, and it took her a minute of honest puzzlement to try to work out why someone like Frank Collins would even care. She finally said,"He's doing okay. I talked to my mom yesterday; the doctors think they can fix his heart problem. He's feeling a lot better." Frank nodded. "Good. Family's important," he said. "Maybe too important, sometimes. Iknow how much I screwed it up with Shane. Can't blame the kid for hating me now." It was almost a . . . question? And if it was a question, what could Claire say? Yeah, he hates your guts. That probably wasn't what Frank was hoping to hear. "Just take care of him," she said. "That's what you're supposed to do. Stop using him, and start protecting him. I know he thinks he doesn't need it, but sometimes he does. Sometimes we all do." Now Frank did look up, and Claire felt a blush building in her face as he stared at her like he was actually seeing her for a change. "He did okay," Shane's dad finally said. "Picking you.

I can’t let Mom know I’m into purple, since Mom prefers pink. She would be heartbroken if I suddenly announce that I’ve switched my favorite color to one that isn’t also hers. It is an honor that Mom cares about me so much that something like me having my own favorite color would devastate her. True love.

As indicated by the increase in maternal mortality in 2010, right now it's more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia. Amnesty International reports that women in [the United States] have a higher risk of dying due to pregnancy complications than women in forty-nine other countries (black women are almost four times as likely to die as white women). The United States spends more than any other country on maternal health care, yet our risk of dying or coming close to death during pregnancy or in childbirth remains unreasonably high.

Adam ” Lori called loudly enough for me to hear her but not so loud that her voice would carry up to my mom in the marina office- or to her dad who might be listening from their screened porch facing the water. “I came over to get some tips from the boys about teaching Tammy and Rachel to board. Of course I did not come over here to see you. How could you think such a thing That would be disobedient.” I held up the wax. “For my own disobedience I have to buff the boat. Then I’m going for a jog.” She tilted her head. Probably her eyes widened but I couldn’t see them behind her sunglasses. I hated not being able to see her eyes. She asked “In this heat?” I didn’t mind jogging in the heat. The heat was a big friendly animal that liked to wrestle and only occasionally sat on me until I lost my breath. Anyway she was missing the point. I repeated carefully ”I am GOING for a JOG.” “I HEARD you the FIRST time ” she said. “It’s late afternoon in the middle of June. It’s ninety-five degrees out here.” “He means he’s GOING for a JOG” Rachel and Tammy said at the same time. “He’s GOING for a JOG.” Lori still didn’t get it. Normally her blondeness was one of the things I loved about her. At the moment not so much. Exasperated Cameron told her “Adam wants you to go for a jog too.” She said “Oh ” “If you two airheads have to hook up secretly for very long ” Sean said “you’re not going to make it.

I told her if she really cared about me, then she’d let me do whatever I wanted for my birthday, just like Mom did when I was twelve.” “What happened when you were twelve?” “Oh, Mom offered to take us all out for dinner—us girls, Dad was out of town—to celebrate, but I didn’t want to. This book I’d been waiting for had just come out, and the only thing I wanted to do was read it all night.” “My God,” I said, touching the top of her nose. “You’re adorable.” She swatted me away. “Anyway, Carly and Zoe really wanted to go out so that they could score a meal, but Mom just said, ‘It’s her birthday. Let her do whatever she wants.’” “Your mom is cool.

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

We should teach our kids that they're blessing and not a burden and that they're valuable beyond what they can imagine - in God's eyes, in the world's eyes - that they're purpose is so important to fulfill and it's gonna make a difference in the world. And they're the only ones that can make the difference that they can make, in the way that they can make it. That's why we all have different fingerprints. And I feel like the message is not clear enough. It's not clear because they go to school and they get challenged and they're bombarded with the idea that abortion is okay, that we can just go ahead and, you know, if we're not ready to have a kid we can just take care of that problem. But kids are not a problem, they're not a mistake, they're not a burden. They're blessing from God and that's what we don't understand. My mom was sixteen when she had me and we both almost died, I was a second kid, she had my brother when she was fifteen. And we both almost died and the doctors told her to abort me and I think that a lot of people gave her that advice. So when I grew up I think I had a sense of being a burden. And I think a lot of kids actually have that sense.

When he cares about someone, he cares about them with everything. And he takes, losing someone he cares about, badly.' 'His mom?' 'Holy crap! He told you about his mom? Shit, he does like you. Just do't break his heart now that he's finally got it working, please.' 'I don't think I have the power to do that.' 'Oh, you'd be surprised.

Life is too hard to behave normal all the time. Just the other day my mom told me I should learn to behave more neurotypically because then I would make more friends. This attitude is truly not great -- insisting that I behave in a way that makes no sense to me. This illustrates the hopelessness of trying to be your own person because this means you must behave like everyone else to be accepted. Being different is not seen as a positive trait. I feel if I have to wear a different face, then I will attract people I don't care to know.

I change the channel to another movie. An old one, but new to me. And, ironically, a thin, gorgeous blonde—Meg Ryan, maybe—rides her bike on a country road. She smiles like she has no cares in the world. Like no one ever judges her. Like her life is perfect. Wind through her hair and sunshine on her face. The only thing missing are the rainbows and butterflies and cartoon birds singing on her shoulder. Maybe I should grab my bike and try to catch up with Mom, Mike, and the kids. They can't be going very fast. I would love to feel like that, even if it's just for a second—free and peaceful and normal. Suddenly, there's a truck. It can't be headed toward Meg Ryan. Could it? Yes. Oh my God. No! Meg Ryan just got hit by that truck. Figures. See what happens when you exercise?

I'm happy you're saying that, because... I mean, I always feel like a freak, because I'm never able to move on like... this! You know. People just have an affair, or even entire relationships... they break up and they forget! They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals! I feel I was never able to forget anyone I've been with. Because each person have... their own, specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That's why I'm very careful with getting involved, because... It hurts too much! Even getting laid! I actually don't do that... I will miss on the other person the most mundane things. Like I'm obsessed with little things. Maybe I'm crazy, but... when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk, or... ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk... Little things. I think it's the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and... will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details. Like I remember the way, your beard has a bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow, that... that morning, right before you left. I remember that, and... I missed it! I'm really crazy, right?

Then I looked right at Mama, for the first time in what seemed like forever, and she wasn't looking at me, but into me. She was pulling me to her with her eyes, like she used to do. All of a sudden I could see the light that was Mama's shining out of her eyes. I couldn't help smiling at it. 'Be careful,' my heart warned me. But I was having a hard time remembering that there as anything to be careful about. Because if I just looked at Mama's eyes...I could tell that the part of her I thought had gone away forever was still there and glowing, only from deep down inside her.

To emphasize how truly backward our society is...let's finish with a little quiz. Let's do it like Jeopardy. In 1990, this government required companies to give a new mother a year's leave at 90% pay. Answer: What was Sweden? This country provided nurseries for most children over eighteen months. Answer: What was Sweden? Nearly half of the children under three in this country were in publicly financed nurseries, and nearly 95% of children three to six were (and are). Answer: What is Denmark? In this country, 95% of children aged three to five are in preschool. Answer: What is France? This country provides care for one quarter of children under three in wholly or partially subsidized nurseries. Answer: What is France? In 1984, this country gave workers twelve weeks of maternity leave with pay. Answer: What is Brazil? (Yes, Brazil!) This country mandated eight weeks of maternity leave WITH PAY. Answer: What is Kenya? (You heard us, Kenya!) This country provided none of these things; instead, to help mothers and small children, its magazines featured profiles of rich celebrity moms who could show women how to do it all. Answer: What was the United States?

It wasn't a good-looking scar. The flesh looked gnarled and silver-white against my healthy skin. After four different surgeries, I'd stopped caring what it looked like. Seeing it in the mirror didn't bother me anymore but I hated the looks I'd get from people. Like I was broken. Like there was something wrong with me. I lost the name my mom had so carefully chosen and became a medical term.

The Stain That Conner left on our lives will not vanish as easily. I don’t care about Mom and her birds. Their estimation of my brother doesn’t bother me at all. Neither do I worry about Dad and what his lobbyist buddies think. His political clout has not diminished. As twins go, Conner and I don’t share a deep affection, but we do have a nine-months-in-the-same-womb connection. Not to mention a crowd of mutual friends. God, I’ll never forget going to school the day after that ugly scene. The plan was to sever the gossip grapevine from the start with an obvious explanation— accident. Mom’s orders were clear. Conner’s reputation was to be protected at all costs. When I arrived, the rumors had already started, thanks to our neighbor, Bobby Duvall. Conner Sykes got hurt. Conner Sykes was shot. Conner Sykes is in the hospital. Is Conner Sykes, like, dead? I fielded every single question with the agreed fabrication. But eventually, I was forced to concede that, though his wounds would heal, he was not coming back to school right away. Conner Sykes wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t exactly “okay.

Touch her again and I’ll fucking kill you, Gareth. I’ll make it look like an accident and have my hand on Mom’s shoulder while she cries at your funeral. I’ll even become Dad’s golden boy and make him forget you ever existed. A few years from now, no one will visit your grave anymore and I’ll be the only child this time. You’ll be erased so effortlessly that not a memory of you will be left. So think carefully about that bleak ending next time you consider touching what’s fucking mine.

This is what makes me crazy in this family, Dad. I don't care that you hit us. I really don't. That's over and there's nothing any of us can do about it. But I can't stand it when I state a simple fact about this family's history and I'm told by you or Mom that it didn't happen. But you've got to know, Dad, and I'm saying this as a son who loves you, that you were a shit to your kids. Not all the time. Not every day. Not every month. But we never knew what would set you off. We never knew when your temper would explode and we'd have the strongest shrimper on the river knocking us around the house. So we learned to be afraid without making a sound. And Mom was a loyal wife to you, Dad. She would never let us tell a soul that you were hitting us. Most of the time, she was like you and would simply tell us it didn't happen the way we remembered it.

His vulnerability allowed me to let my guard down, and gently and methodically, he tore apart my well-constructed dam. Waves of tender feelings were lapping over the top and slipping through the cracks. The feelings flooded through and spilled into me. It was frightening opening myself up to feel love for someone again. My heart pounded hard and thudded audibly in my chest. I was sure he could hear it. Ren’s expression changed as he watched my face. His look of sadness was replaced by one of concern for me. What was the next step? What should I do? What do I say? How do I share what I’m feeling? I remembered watching romance movies with my mom, and our favorite saying was “shut up and kiss her already!” We’d both get frustrated when the hero or heroine wouldn’t do what was so obvious to the two of us, and as soon as a tense, romantic moment occurred, we’d both repeat our mantra. I could hear my mom’s humor-filled voice in my mind giving me the same advice: “Kells, shut up and kiss him already!” So, I got a grip on myself, and before I changed my mind, I leaned over and kissed him. He froze. He didn’t kiss me back. He didn’t push me away. He just stopped…moving. I pulled back, saw the shock on his face, and instantly regretted my boldness. I stood up and walked away, embarrassed. I wanted to put some distance between us as I frantically tried to rebuild the walls around my heart. I heard him move. He slid his hand under my elbow and turned me around. I couldn’t look at him. I just stared at his bare feet. He put a finger under my chin and tried to nudge my head up, but I still refused to meet his gaze. “Kelsey. Look at me.” Lifting my eyes, they traveled from his feet to a white button in the middle of his shirt. “Look at me.” My eyes continued their journey. They drifted past the golden-bronze skin of his chest, his throat, and then settled on his beautiful face. His cobalt blue eyes searched mine, questioning. He took a step closer. My breath hitched in my throat. Reaching out a hand, he slid it around my waist slowly. His other hand cupped my chin. Still watching my face, he placed his palm lightly on my cheek and traced the arch of my cheekbone with his thumb. The touch was sweet, hesitant, and careful, the way you might try to touch a frightened doe. His face was full of wonder and awareness. I quivered. He paused just a moment more, then smiled tenderly, dipped is head, and brushed his lips lightly against mine. He kissed me softly, tentatively, just a mere whisper of a kiss. His other hand slid down to my waist too. I timidly touched his arms with my fingertips. He was warm, and his skin was smooth. He gently pulled me closer and pressed me lightly against his chest. I gripped his arms. He sighed with pleasure, and deepened the kiss. I melted into him. How was I breathing? His summery sandalwood scent surrounded me. Everywhere he touched me, I felt tingly and alive. I clutched his arms fervently. His lips never leaving mine, Ren took both of my arms and wrapped them, one by one, around his neck. Then he trailed one of his hands down my bare arm to my waist while the other slid into my hair. Before I realized what he was planning to do, he picked me up with one arm and crushed me to his chest. I have no idea how long we kissed. It felt like a mere second, and it also felt like forever. My bare feet were dangling several inches from the floor. He was holding all my body weight easily with one arm. I buried my fingers into his hair and felt a rumble in his chest. It was similar to the purring sound he made as a tiger. After that, all coherent thought fled and time stopped.

You don’t look like a mom,” Isabelle observed. “What does a mom look like to you?” “I don’t know.” She smiled. “Cartier Love bracelet? Lululemon?” I laughed at that, her referencing the staples of private-school carpool lanes. There were so many things I wanted to teach her. That being a mother did not have to mean no longer being a woman. That she could continue to live outside the lines. That forty was not the end. That there was more joy to be had. That there was an Act II, an Act III, an Act IV if she wanted it … But at thirteen, I imagined, she did not care. I imagined she just wanted to feel safe. I could not blame her. We had already shaken her ground. “Am I a mom?” I asked her then, kissing her forehead. She nodded. “Well, then, this is what a mom looks like.

I have a stand-up routine I do about masturbation and the unwanted thoughts that go through women's heads when they put their hands under their sheets. I need a story to think about. I need a fantasy that makes sense. I can't just finger myself and picture Johnny Depp's face. It needs a sense of realism, like how did I meet Johnny Depp? He lives in France. I don't have a work visa. Besides, he has children and I've made it quite clear that I don't want to be a mom and I don't want to be stepmom either.

Dear Mommy I’m doing really good, I get all A’s in school And I don’t cry at bedtime anymore, Though my new mom said I could. I remember how much you hate tears, You slapped them out of me To make me strong, I think it worked. I learned to use a microscope And my hair grew two inches. It’s pretty, just like yours. I’m not allowed to clean the house, Only my own room, Isn’t that a funny rule? You say kids are so much trouble Getting born, they better pay it back. I’m not supposed to take care Of the other kids, only me, I sort of like it. I still get the hole in my stomach When I do something wrong, I have a saying on my mirror “Kids make mistakes, It’s OK,” I read it every day, Sometimes I even believe it. I wonder if you ever think of me Or if you’re glad the troublemaker’s gone, I never want to see you again. I love you, Mommy.

I didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings, but the past had created rifts that would likely never go away. I never confronted these demands head-on. I never explained to Mom that no matter how nice and caring she was at any given time—and while I had mono, she couldn’t have been a better mother—I just felt uncomfortable around her.

You aren't like your mom." "I am.But I don't want to be like that anymore,I want what I want." He turns to me again,his face anxious. "I told my father's friends that I'm studying at Berkeley next year.It worked.He's really,really angry with me,but it worked.You told me to go for his pride.You were right." "So." I'm cautious,hardly daring to believe. "You're moving to California?" "I have to." "Right." I swallow hard. "Because of your mom." "Because of you. I'll only be a twenty-minute train ride from your school,and I'll make the commute to see you every night.I'd take a commute ten times that just to be with you every night." His words are too perfect.It must be a misunderstanding,surely I'm misunderstanding- "You're the most incredible girl I've ever known.You're gorgeous and smart, and you make my laugh like no one else can.And I can talk to you. And I know after all this I don't deserve you,but what I'm trying to say is that I love you,Anna.Very much." I'm holding my breath.I can't talk,but my eyes are filling with tears. He takes it the wrong way. "Oh God.And I've mucked things up again,haven't I? I didn't mean to attack you like this.I mean I did but...all right." His voice cracks. "I'll leave.Or you can go down first,and then I'll come down,and I promise I'll never bother you again-" He starts to stand,but I grab his arm. "No!" His body freezes. "I'm so sorry," he says. "I never mean to hurt you." I trail my fingers across his cheek. He stays perfectly still for me. "Please stop apologizing,Etienne." "Say my name again," he whispers. I close my eyes and lean forward. "Etienne." He takes my hands into his.Those pefect hands,that fit mine just so. "Anna?" Our foreheads touch. "Yes?" "Will you please tell me you love me? I'm dying here." And then we're laughing.And them I'm in his arms,and we're kissing,at first quickly-to make up for lost time-and then slowly,because we have all the time in the world.And his lips are soft and honey sweet,and the careful, passionate way he moves them against my own says that he savors the way I taste,too. And in between kisses,I tell him I love him. Again and again and again.

You make me feel cared for, feel listened to, and the other stuff I don’t even know how to put into words properly. You make me feel valued, for who I am as me, not who I am as team captain or whatever.” “I do value you.” “That isn’t a feeling I’ve had in a long time. Not since my mom was alive. I love the guys, but it’s not the same thing. I can’t think how to describe it… it’s like there’s a spot in your life you keep just for me. One I don’t have to share, one where you don’t expect anything from me. Do you know how amazing it is? How lucky I feel to know you? You make me want to be the best I can be.

You've always been a know-it-all. Well, you're about to find out how much you don't know." "Believe me," I muttered, "I'm the first one to admit that I have no clue about any of this stuff. I had nothing to do with it. This isn't my baby." "Then give it to Social Services." She was getting agitated. "Whatever happens to him will be your fault, not mine. Get rid of him if you can't handle the responsibility." "I can handle it," I said, my voice quiet. "It's okay, Mom. I'll take care of him. You don't have to worry about anything." She subsided like a child who had just been mollified by a lollipop. "You'll have to learn the way I did," she said after a moment, reaching down to adjust her toe ring. A hint of satisfaction edged her tone as she added, "The hard way.

You and me, we aren’t practice for the real thing. It isn’t that too much is at stake with family and friends. It’s because I love you. You’re funny, beautiful and you care about people. I like the way you look at me, especially when you think I don’t notice it. I like that we have history and our kids will have a big family and share that history because there was never a time when their Mom and Dad weren’t together. If you were a terrible lay, I might have second thoughts, but you and I are dynamite together. I intend to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. If that freaks you out, tough, because now that we’ve started this, there’s no goin’ back.

when we were old enough, Mom felt like she had given us all the tools she could to have happy lives, and she wanted us to do just that. Live. Make our own mythology, not be swallowed up by hers. Live the kind of happy, drama-free, painful and joyful mortal life she couldn't, and at the end of it come home to be ushered into our next life by the two people who brought us here in the first place. I know you think mortality is evidence that they don't care, but giving us the the ability to grow and change and progress and then finish? That was the greatest gift two ageless, eternal, very very stuck gods could think to give the children they love more than anything.

When my grandpa died, I had this same fear. I love Grandpa so much. He was Mom's dad, and he was my favorite person in the whole world. He lived up north, between Grayling and the Mackinaw Bridge. He had, like, twenty acres. He had horses and dirt bike and all this awesome stuff. I'd go up there for weeks at a time during the summers, and he'd let me do whatever I wanted. We'd go hunting and fishing and four-wheeling, and I'd stay up till midnight every night. Then one day, he died. All of a sudden, just like that that. I cried for days. Dad kicked the shit out of me for crying, but I didn't care. I loved Grandpa, and he was gone. Then, like a month after he'd died, I had this panic attack. I couldn't remember what he looked like. I thought it meant I didn't love him, or that I'd forgotten about him. It was the only time Dad was anything like helpful. He told me you have to forget what they look like. Otherwise, you can't learn to live without them. Forgetting is your brain's way of telling you it's time to try and move on. Not forget who they were, just...keep living.

Telling Mom was one thing. Telling Dad is another. He’s in the living room smoking and watching what he claims is a very important Yankees game. It’s in the ninth inning and the teams are tied. I consider backing out, maybe waiting another week or so, but maybe he won’t actually care when I tell him. Maybe all that stuff he said when I was younger, about never acting like a girl or playing with any female action figures, will go away once he realizes I am the way I am without any choice. Maybe he’ll accept me. Mom follows me into the living room and sits down on Eric’s bed. “Mark, do you have a minute? Aaron has something he wants to talk about.” He exhales cigarette smoke. “I’m listening.” He never looks away from the game.

were running down his cheeks. I hadn’t seen him cry in years, not even when Mom and Dad had been killed. (I remembered the funeral. I had sobbed in spite of myself; Soda had broken down and bawled like a baby; but Darry had only stood there, his fists in his pockets and that look on his face, the same helpless, pleading look that he was wearing now.) In that second what Soda and Dally and Two-Bit had been trying to tell me came through. Darry did care about me, maybe as much as he cared about Soda, and because he cared he was trying too hard to make something of me. When he yelled “Pony, where have you been all this time?” he meant “Pony, you’ve scared me to death. Please be careful, because I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.” Darry looked down and turned away silently. Suddenly I broke out of my daze. “Darry!” I screamed, and the next thing I knew I had him around the waist and was squeezing the daylights out of him. “Darry,” I said, “I’m sorry . . .” He was stroking my hair and I could hear the sobs racking him as he fought to keep back the tears. “Oh, Pony, I thought we’d lost you . . . like we did Mom and Dad . . .” That was his silent fear then—of losing another person he loved. I remembered how close he and Dad had been, and I wondered how I could ever have thought him hard and unfeeling. I listened to his heart pounding through his T-shirt and knew everything was going to be okay now. I had taken the long way around, but I was finally home. To stay. Chapter 7

Not a one of us can be everything somebody else wants us to be. Trouble comes when we try to pretend we can. Or when people see it like a betrayal. You know. That somebody won’t meet all their needs. My mom used to say it’s because we weren’t put here on earth to take care of each other. And that it’s silly to get mad at someone for letting you down when they’re just being who they are. She said it’s like getting mad at your dog for not being a cat.

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple and even simultaneous careers: I've been a chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I've been a painter. A furniture restorer. A personal shopper. A veterinarian's assistant and sometimes the veterinarian. I've been an accountant, a banker and on occasion, a broker. I've been a beautician. A map. A psychic. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The T.V. Guide. A movie reviewer. An angel. God. A nurse and a nursemaid. A psychiatrist and psychologist. Evangelist. For a long time I have felt like I inadvertently got my master's in How To Take Care of Everybody Except Yourself and then a Ph.D. in How to Pretend Like You Don't Mind. But I do mind.

People called Mom that a lot, probably because she had a hard time holding her tongue and could be brutally blunt when she disagreed with you. She’d explode like a thunderstorm, and then be fine again. Anyhow, she didn’t care that people called her a bitch. “It’s just another word for feminist,” she told me with pride.

You’re sure you want to do this,” Galen says, eyeing me like I’ve grown a tiara of snakes on my head. “Absolutely.” I unstrap the four-hundred-dollar silver heels and spike them into the sand. When he starts unraveling his tie, I throw out my hand. “No! Leave it. Leave everything on.” Galen frowns. “Rachel would kill us both. In our sleep. She would torture us first.” “This is our prom night. Rachel would want us to enjoy ourselves.” I pull the thousand-or-so bobby pins from my hair and toss them in the sand. Really, both of us are right. She would want us to be happy. But she would also want us to stay in our designer clothes. Leaning over, I shake my head like a wet dog, dispelling the magic of hairspray. Tossing my hair back, I look at Galen. His crooked smile almost melts me where I stand. I’m just glad to see a smile on his face at all. The last six months have been rough. “Your mother will want pictures,” he tells me. “And what will she do with pictures? There aren’t exactly picture frames in the Royal Caverns.” Mom’s decision to mate with Grom and live as his queen didn’t surprise me. After all, I am eighteen years old, an adult, and can take care of myself. Besides, she’s just a swim away. “She keeps picture frames at her house though. She could still enjoy them while she and Grom come to shore to-“ “Okay, ew. Don’t say it. That’s where I draw the line.” Galen laughs and takes off his shoes. I forget all about Mom and Grom. Galen, barefoot in the sand, wearing an Armani tux. What more could a girl ask for? “Don’t look at me like that, angelfish,” he says, his voice husky. “Disappointing your grandfather is the last thing I want to do.” My stomach cartwheels. Swallowing doesn’t help. “I can’t admire you, even from afar?” I can’t quite squeeze enough innocence in there to make it believable, to make it sound like I wasn’t thinking the same thing he was. Clearing his throat, he nods. “Let’s get on with this.” He closes the distance between us, making foot-size potholes with his stride. Grabbing my hand, he pulls me to the water. At the edge of the wet sand, just out of reach of the most ambitious wave, we stop. “You’re sure?” he says again. “More than sure,” I tell him, giddiness swimming through my veins like a sneaking eel. Images of the conference center downtown spring up in my mind. Red and white balloons, streamers, a loud, cheesy DJ yelling over the starting chorus of the next song. Kids grinding against one another on the dance floor to lure the chaperones’ attention away from a punch bowl just waiting to be spiked. Dresses spilling over with skin, matching corsages, awkward gaits due to six-inch heels. The prom Chloe and I dreamed of. But the memories I wanted to make at that prom died with Chloe. There could never be any joy in that prom without her. I couldn’t walk through those doors and not feel that something was missing. A big something. No, this is where I belong now. No balloons, no loud music, no loaded punch bowl. Just the quiet and the beach and Galen. This is my new prom. And for some reason, I think Chloe would approve.

MY MOM SAYS IT’S TIME for me to give up now, and that what I’m doing is futile. She’s upset, so her accent is thicker than usual, and every statement is a question. “You no think is time for you to give up now, Tasha? You no think that what you doing is futile?” She draws out the first syllable of futile for a second too long. My dad doesn’t say anything. He’s mute with anger or impotence. I’m never sure which. His frown is so deep and so complete that it’s hard to imagine his face with another expression. If this were even just a few months ago, I’d be sad to see him like this, but now I don’t really care. He’s the reason we’re all in this mess.

Anyways, it made me think. Who the hell cares if Michael Phelps can swim across a pool at like warp speed? Or that some sixteen-year-old waif can spell the entire Chinese alphabet with a stupid ribbon on a stick above her head? You know who’s holding this world together and leaping buildings in a single bound every day? Moms, that’s who.

She helps me to the bathroom, helps me wash, then helps me put a gazillion tangles in my hair while she shampoos it. And she actually thinks we’re going to leave it that way. “I’m not going downstairs looking like a hobo,” I tell her. “We have to comb it.” “That thick mess will break this flimsy comb. Can’t you just run your fingers through it?” It’s weird to be arguing about my hair when we still haven’t discussed my wound, how I got it, and how I came to be snoring in Galen’s bed. We both seem to appreciate the bizarreness at the same time. Mom raises a brow. “Don’t think you get special treatment just because you can make a whale do the tango. I’m still your mother.” We both laugh so hard I think I feel a tiny rip in my newly dressed wound. Without warning, Mom throws her arms around me, careful to avoid touching it. “I’m so proud of you, Emma. And I know your father would be, too. Your grandfather can’t stop talking about it. You were amazing.” Ah, the bonding power of tangled hair and dancing whales. She releases me the second before it gets awkward. “Let’s get you dressed. We have a lot to discuss. And I get you’re starving. Rachel made you…uh…Upchuck Eggs.” “She gets an A for effort.

I do love it. That big, demonstrative moment where nothing else matters but making sure the person you care about knows it. That you’re in. You’re all in and you want everyone to know, no matter how wild or risky it is. Weddings are like that. The vows are, at least.” Something about the soft look in Annie’s eyes, wistful almost, compelled him to keep going. To confess what he’d never told anyone before. “I don’t have a single memory of my mom and dad saying I love you to each other.” Annie made a soft noise, but he soldiered on, wanting to get this out. “Maybe those movies aren’t perfect, but for most of my life, they were the best proof I had that people could wind up happy together.

She’s hysterical, like I was in the Hollywood Homicide audition. Her hysteria frightens me and demands to be taken care of. ‘Never mind,’ I say loudly so Mom can hear it through her sobs. Her crying stops immediately, except for one leftover sniffle, but as soon as that sniffle is over, it’s complete silence. I’m not the only one who can cry on cue.

I don’t think I deserve him.” Audrey shrugged. “Probably not. But he doesn’t deserve you, either. Maybe that’s why you’re perfect for each other.” “Do you think it could last?” “Who cares?” “I care.” Audrey sucked up her drink and tossed the empty cup onto the ground. There was no way we were going to be able to hide the fact that we’d had a party from Mom. Fuck it. “You like bacon, right?” Audrey asked. “Duh.” “So, when you’re offered bacon for breakfast, do you refuse because you’re worried about what’s going to happen when it’s gone?” “No.” “No!” Audrey smacked me in the chest. “You eat that bacon and you love it because it’s delicious. You don’t fret over whether you’ll ever have bacon again. You just eat the bacon.” Audrey stood in front of me and held my face between her hands. Her expression was so solemn that it was difficult not to laugh. “Eat the bacon, Henry.

I feel him beside me, hear the even sound of his breathing, smell the delicious saltiness of his skin. I have missed him. I move to face him, and that’s when the pain reminds me that I’ve recently been stabbed. I bury my face in the pillow, but it doesn’t quite muffle my yelp. “Emma?” Galen says groggily. I feel his hand in my hair, stroking the length of it. “Don’t move, angelfish. Stay on your stomach. I’ll go tell Rachel you’re ready for more pain medicine.” Immediately I disobey and turn my face up to him. He shakes his head. “I’ve recently learned where your stubbornness comes from.” I grimace/smile. “My mom?” “Worse. King Antonis. The resemblance is uncanny.” He leans down and presses his lips to mine and all too quickly springs back up. “Now, be a good little deviant and stay put while I go get more pain meds.” “Galen,” I say. “Hmmm?” “How bad am I hurt?” He caresses the outline of my cheek. His touch could disintegrate me. “Hurt at all is bad enough for me.” “Yeah, but you’ve always been a baby about this stuff.” I grin at his faux offense. “Your mother says it’s only a flesh wound. She’s been treating it.” “Mom is here?” “She’s downstairs. Uh…You should know that Grom is here, too.” Grom left the tribunal and headed for land? Did that mean it all ended badly? Well, even worse than my getting impaled? An urgent need to know everything about everything shimmies through me. “Whoa. Sit. Talk. Now.” He laughs. “I will, I promise. But I want to make you comfortable first.” “Well, then, you need to come over here and switch places with the bed.” A blush fills my cheeks, but I don’t care. I need him. All of him. It feels like forever since we’ve talked like this, just me and him. But talking usually doesn’t last long. Lips were made for other things, too. And Galen is especially good at the other things. He walks back and squats by the bed. “You have no idea how tempting that is.” It seems like the violet of his eyes gets darker. It’s the color they get when he has to pull away from me, when we’re about to violate a bunch of Syrena laws if we don’t stop. “But you’re not well enough to…” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll go get Rachel. Then we can talk.” I’m a little surprised that his argument didn’t begin with “But the law…” That is what has stopped us in the past. Now the only thing that appears to be stopping us is my stabby condition. What’s changed? And why am I not excited about it? I used to get so frustrated when he would pull away. But a small part of me loved that about him, his respect for the law and for the tradition of his people. His respect for me. Respect is a hard thing to come by when picking from among human boys. Is that respect gone? And is it my fault?

She'll be honest regardless of whether anybody gets hurt, which is hard when you've spent your whole life like, I don't care if I get hurt, if this repression hurts me, I just can't transition and hurt my mom that way, or I can't upset my father's standing in our quiet little community that way. It is second nature, or maybe just her nature, for Maria to put other people ahead of herself.

Mom's friends were worried that their son isn't talking as much as other six-year-olds. They, like many parents, were concerned with how "smart" their kid is. "Should we be reading to him more?" they asked me. I thought of how lonely I felt trying to teach myself how to read as a foster kid. "Yeah," I replied. "But not because it will expand his vocabulary. Read to him because it will remind him that you love him.

Thank you, Daylight Savings Time, for making people wax on about the wonder of an extra hour of sleep, only to serve as an especially depressing reminder to parents that kids don’t care about farmers and harvests and extra hours of daylight. I enjoy my kids standing at my bedside at 4:30 a.m. like creepy, wide-awake Children of the Corn. Naptimes are also jacked, so there’s that. With all due respect-ish, A Tired Mom.

I glance at Mom. She looks pained. I know she doesn't care what I wear to lunch, but she doesn't want to contradict her mother. Actually, that's not quite true. Mom will go against Nana's wisheds where big enormous things are concerned, like who she marries and what kind of house she lives in. But when it comes to these smaller things- my appearance at lunch when Nana comes over- Mom often gives in. I do not understand this. I think these little things are supposed to be peace offerings, but for what? For running a boardinghouse or for something else, some adult thing I am not part of? ~pgs 20-21; Hattie on growing up and mothers

He kisses me and for that kiss, for that moment, I forget how worried I am. It comes back, of course, but with Caleb, I feel more whole—I am more whole—than I have been since Mom died. I love him. I love him because of who he is, who he really is past what everyone else sees; the lost boy, the druggie, the car thief. I love him because he is strong and caring. I love him because he broke and put himself back together again. I love him because he is beautiful inside and out. I love him for being here with me. I love him for not telling me that everything will be all right. I love him because he knows what life is like, what it can do, and is always honest about it.

They say that true love always brings with it great and generous acts. Sometimes, amazing things happen to people and nobody knows about it. Nobody knows or cares. Someday many years from now in the faraway future, I will look back and say, “That year when I was in seventh grade, I knew a boy named Henderson Elliot, and what he did for me was extraordinary and who he was and how he won my heart was nothing short of incredible.” Some people in peril don’t get saved, like Marty Hoey or my mom, and some people in peril do get saved, like me. Maybe it was because Henderson bought a chunk of a falling star, a gold-flecked quiet and ever-hopeful star. I hold it now tightly in my palm.

I like your mom a lot,” Carrie had said, “but anyone that dresses and does their hair as carefully as your mom does every single day is unhappy on the inside. She’s trying to hide all her messiness, and I want better than that for you.

In that moment, I let myself entertain the idea of just putting the sword down and lying on the ground. It would feel good, and really, if I’d lost everything, who cared what this tiny homicidal person did to me? But just as quickly, I shut that thought right the heck down. No way had I survived demon attacks, and ghoul duels, and demonglass explosions to end up murdered by Raggedy Ann. Whether Mom was here or not, I was going to survive this. My fingers tightened on the sword’s hilt until I felt the metal cut into my skin. It hurt, but that was good. That might actually keep me from passing out, which in turn would keep Izzy from dissecting me, or whatever it was Brannicks did to demons. Former demons. Whatever. “So you guys have a compound,” I said, trying to will my brain into working. “That’s…cool. I bet it has bunkers and barbed wire.” Izzy rolled her eyes. “Duh.” “Right, so this compound. Where exactly…” My words trailed off as the ground started swaying. Or was it me weaving from side to side? And was everything getting dimmer because the flashlight was dying, or was it my eyes that had stopped working? “No. No, I am not going to faint.” “Um…okay?” I shook my head. “Did I say that out loud?” Izzy rose to her feet slowly. “You don’t look so good.” I would have glared at her if my eyes hadn’t been involved in more important things like not falling out of my skull. A loud clattering noise filled my head, and I realized it was my teeth. Great. I was going into shock. That was just…so inconvenient.

We are supposed to consume alcohol and enjoy it, but we're not supposed to become alcoholics. Imagine if this were the same with cocaine. Imagine we grew up watching our parents snort lines at dinner, celebrations, sporting events, brunches, and funerals. We'd sometimes (or often) see our parents coked out of our minds the way we sometimes (or often) see them drunk. We'd witness them coming down after a cocaine binge the way we see them recovering from a hangover. Kiosks at Disneyland would see it so our parents could make it through a day of fun, our mom's book club would be one big blow-fest and instead of "mommy juice" it would be called "mommy powder" There'd be coke-tasting parties in Napa and cocaine cellars in fancy people's homes, and everyone we know (including our pastors, nurses, teachers, coaches, bosses) would snort it. The message we'd pick up as kids could be Cocaine is great, and one day you'll get to try it, too! Just don't become addicted to it or take it too far. Try it; use it responsibly. Don't become a cocaine-oholic though. Now, I'm sure you're thinking. That's insane, everyone knows cocaine is far more addicting than alcohol and far more dangerous. Except, it's not...The point is not that alcohol is worse than cocaine. The point is that we have a really clear understanding that cocaine is toxic and addictive. We know there's no safe amount of it, no such thing as "moderate" cocaine use; we know it can hook us and rob us of everything we care about...We know we are better off not tangling with it at all.

Sometimes I picture my heart like the carry-on suitcase I dream I carry around the world. There's not enough room for everything in that carry-on. So I must choose carefully, wisely. I could pack the pain I have felt in the past, especially dealing with Mom. I could stuff all those grievances into my bag and drag them with me on my adventure-but that's a lot of weight to carry. So I carry with me the things I do love about my mom-her whimsical, childlike spirit, her positive attitude, her love for animals, her love for me.

Then, while the other members of my family were waiting in the living room, my mom pulled me aside at the top of the stairs. "Before it gets too crazy, I need to tell you something," she said... "Elizabeth, what this man has done is terrible. There aren't any words that are strong enough to describe how wicked and evil he is! He has taken nine months of your life that you will never get back again. But the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy. To move forward with your life. To do exactly what you want. Because, yes, this will probably go to trial and some kind of sentencing will be given to him and that wicked woman. But even if that's true, you may never feel like justice has been served or that true restitution has been made. "But you don't need to worry about that. At the end of the day, God is our ultimate judge. He will make up to you every pain and loss that you have suffered. And if it turns out that these wicked people are not punished here on Earth, it doesn't matter. His punishments are just. You don't ever have to worry. You don't ever have to even think about them again. ... “You be happy, Elizabeth. Just be happy. If you go and feel sorry for yourself, or if you dwell on what has happened, if you hold on to your pain, that is allowing him to steal more of your life away. So don't you do that! Don't you let him! There is no way he deserves that. Not one more second of your life. You keep every second for yourself. You keep them and be happy. God will take care of the rest.” It's been ten years since my mother said those words. The years have proved she was right.

She CAN’T say it. To tell someone who cares about you that you’re being teased is really hard to do. I…couldn’t say it either. But after a while my mom found out and then…I would apologize to her like I was stupid. I would feel so pathetic. I would think that I was so pathetic for being teased. I was ashamed when my mom found out. I wondered…what would I do if she started to hate me? I was so scared. I was so scared I didn’t want anyone to know I was like that. I would desperately make up stories to try and hide it. And then I’d feel even more pathetic and ashamed so when mom told me, “It’s okay” I was so relieved. When she told me, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” I was so relieved that I started crying again. Kisa-san might be feeling the same way. She didn’t want you to hate her. It’s because she loves you…that she couldn’t tell you.

It's the way it works," she said in clipped tones. "For one rise, another must fall." "But why? Why can't we just rise, and everybody else can stay where they are? I wouldn't care!" "And you think I would?" Keisha demanded. She glared at me, the visibly pulled herself back. When she exhaled, her nostrils flared. "Say you've taken a math test. Or an English test, since you love books so much. And you get a hundred. You're psyched, right? 'Mom, I got a hundred! I got the highest grade in the class!'" She raised her eyebrows. "But say everybody else gets a hundred, too. Are you still as proud?" "Of course," I said stubbornly. "I'd still have my A." "Bullshit. You like your As because other people get Cs. Because that means you're smarted than they are. Better than they are." "I don't think I'm better than anyone." "Then you're and idiot.

Oh, you're right. I'm just a human with thick skin, purple eyes, and hard bones. Which means you can go home. Tell Galen I said hi." Toraf opens and shuts his mouth twice. Both times it seems like he wants to say something, but his expression tells me his brain isn't cooperating. When his mouth snaps shut a third time, I splash water in his face. "Are you going to say something, or are you trying to catch wind and sail? A grin the size of the horizon spreads across his face. "He likes that, you know. Your temper." Yeahfreakingright. Galen's a classic type A personality-and type A's hate smartass-ism. Just ask my mom. "No offense, but you're not exactly an expert at judging people's emotions." "I'm not sure what you mean by that." "Sure you do." "If you're talking about Rayna, then you're wrong. She loves me. She just won't admit it." I roll my eyes. "Right. She's playing hard to get, is that it? Bashing your head with a rock, splitting your lip, calling you squid breath all the time." "What does that mean? Hard to get?" "It means she's trying to make you think she doesn't like you, so that you end up liking her more. So you work harder to get her attention." He nods. "Exactly. That's exactly what she's doing." Pinching the bridge of my nose, I say, "I don't think so. As we speak, she's getting your mating seal dissolved. That's not playing hard to get. That's playing impossible to get." "Even if she does get it dissolved, it's not because she doesn't care about me. She just likes to play games." The pain in Toraf's voice guts me like the catch of the day. She might like playing games, but his feelings are real. And can't I relate to that? "There's only one way to find out," I say softly. "Find out?" "If all she wants is games." "How?" "You play hard to get. You know how they say. 'If you love someone, set them free. If they return to you, it was meant to be?'" "I've never heard that." "Right. No, you wouldn't have." I sigh. "Basically, what I'm trying to say is, you need to stop giving Rayna attention. Push her away. Treat her like she treats you." He shakes his head. "I don't think I can do that." "You'll get your answer that way," I say, shrugging. "But it sounds like you don't really want to know." "I do want to know. But what if the answer isn't good?" His face scrunches as if the words taste like lemon juice. "You've got to be ready to deal with it, no matter what." Toraf nods, his jaw tight. The choices he has to consider will make this night long enough for him. I decide not to intrude on his time anymore. "I'm pretty tired, so I'm heading back. I'll meet you at Galen's in the morning. Maybe I can break thirty minutes tomorrow, huh?" I nudge his shoulder with my fist, but a weak smile is all I get in return. I'm surprised when he grabs my hand and starts pulling me through the water. At least it's better than dragging me by the ankle. I can't but think how Galen could have done the same thing. Why does he wrap his arms around me instead?

Do you want to hold her?” Qhuinn asked. Xcor recoiled as if someone had inquired whether he’d like a hot poker in his hands. Then he recovered, shaking his head as he made a manly show of scrubbing his tears away like they were permanent marker on his cheeks. “I don’t think I’m quite ready for that. She looks…so delicate.” “She’s strong, though. She’s got her mahmen’s blood in her, too.” Qhuinn looked at Blay. “And she’s got good parents. They both do. We’re in this together, people, three fathers and one mom, two kids. Bam!” Xcor’s voice got low. “A father…?” He laughed softly. “I went from having no family, to having a mate, a brother, and now…” Qhuinn nodded. “A son and a daughter. As long as you are Layla’s hellren, you are their father, too.” Xcor’s smile was transformative, so wide that it stretched his face into something she had never seen. “A son and a daughter.” “That’s right,” Layla whispered with joy. But then instantly that expression on his face was gone, his lips thinning out and his brows dropping down like he was ready to go on the attack. “She is never dating. I don’t care who he is—” “Right!” Qhuinn put his palm out for a high five. “That’s what I’m talking about!” “Now, hold on,” Blay interjected as they clapped hands. “She has every right to live her life as she chooses.” “Yes, come on,” Layla added. “This double-standard stuff is ridiculous. She’s going to be allowed…” As the argument started up, she and Blay fell in beside each other, and Qhuinn and Xcor lined up shoulder to shoulder, their massive forearms crossed over their chests. “I’m good with a gun,” Xcor said like that was the end of things. “And I can handle the shovel,” Qhuinn tacked on. “They’ll never find the body.” The two of them pounded knuckles and looked so dead serious that Layla had to roll her eyes. But then she was smiling. “You know something?” she said to the three of them. “I really believe…that it’s all going to be okay. We’re going to work it out, together, because that’s what families do.” As she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed her male, she said, “Love has a way of fixing everything…even your daughter starting to date.” “Which is not going to happen,” Xcor countered. “Ever.” “My man,” Qhuinn said, backing him up. “I knew I liked you—” “Oh, for the love,” Layla muttered as the debate resumed, and Blay started laughing and Qhuinn and Xcor continued bonding. -Qhuinn, Xcor, Layla, & Blay

A boy who cares too little about the future and frets too much about the past: nothing could depress a mother more…The boy with the most handsome face, the saddest eyes, and the wildest heart…His mom knows, because she married a man who looked just the same, and nothing but trouble lies ahead for men like that.

They had found out. Before I could panic, I made myself stretch my fingers wide and take a calming breath. You already knew this was bound to happen. At least that’s what I told myself. The more I thought about it, the more I should have been appreciative that the people at the chapel in Las Vegas hadn’t recognized him. Or that people on the street had been oblivious and hadn’t seen us going in and out of there. Or that the receptionist at the acupuncturist hadn’t snapped a picture on her phone and posted it online. Because I might not understand all people, much less most of them, but I understood nosey folks. And nosey folks would do something like that without a second thought. Yet, I reminded myself that there was nothing to be embarrassed about. It would be fine. So, one gossip site posted about us getting married. Whoop-de-do. There was probably a thousand sites just like it. I briefly thought about Diana hearing about it, but I’d deal with that later. There was no use in getting scared now. She was the only one whose reaction I cared about. My mom and sisters’ opinions and feelings weren’t exactly registering at the top of my list now… or ever. I made myself shove them to the back of my thoughts. I was tired of being mad and upset; it affected my work. Plus, they’d made me sad and mad enough times in my life. I wasn’t going to let them ruin another day. Picking my phone up again, I quickly texted Aiden back, swallowing my nausea at the same time. Me: Who told you? Not even two minutes passed before my phone dinged with a response. Miranda: Trevor’s blowing up my phone. Eww. Trevor. Me: We knew it was going to happen eventually, right? Good luck with Trev. I’m glad he doesn’t have my number. And I was even gladder there wasn’t a home phone; otherwise, I’m positive he would have been blowing it up too. I managed to get back to looking at images on the screen for a few more minutes—a bit more distracted than usual—when the phone beeped again. It was Aiden/Miranda. I should really change his contact name. Miranda: Good luck? I’m not answering his calls. What? Me: That psycho will come visit if you don’t. Was that me being selfish? Yes. Did I care? No. Aiden: I know. Uh. Me: You’re always at practice… Aiden: Have fun. This asshole! I almost laughed, but before I could, he sent me another message. Aiden: I’ll get back to him in a couple days. Don’t worry. Snorting, I texted back. Me: I’m not worried. If he drops by, I’ll set him up in your room. Aiden: You genuinely scare me. Me: You don’t know how many times you barely made it through the day alive, for the record. He didn’t text me back after that

I hurried over to Conrad, walking so fast I kicked up sand behind me. “Hey, I’m gonna get a ride,” I said breathlessly. The blond Red Sox girl looked me up and down. “Hello,” she said. Conrad said, “With who?” I pointed at Cam. “Him.” “You’re not riding with someone you don’t even know,” he said flatly. “I do so know him. He’s Sextus.” He narrowed his eyes. “Sex what?” “Never mind. His name is Cam, he’s studying whales, and you don’t get to decide who I ride home with. I was just letting you know, as a courtesy. I wasn’t asking for your permission.” I started to walk away, but he grabbed my elbow. “I don’t care what he’s studying. It’s not gonna happen,” he said casually, but his grip was tight. “If you want to go, I’ll take you.” I took a deep breath. I had to keep cool. I wasn’t going to let him goad me into being a baby, not in front of all these people. “No, thanks,” I said, trying to walk away again. But he didn’t let go. “I thought you already had a boyfriend?” His tone was mocking, and I knew he’d seen through my lie the night before. I wanted so badly to throw a handful of sand in his face. I tried to twist out of his grip. “Let go of me! That hurts!” He let go immediately, his face red. It didn’t really hurt, but I wanted to embarrass him the way he was embarrassing me. I said loudly, “I’d rather ride with a stranger than with someone who’s been drinking!” “I’ve had one beer,” he snapped. “I weigh a hundred and seventy-five pounds. Wait half an hour and I’ll take you. Stop being such a brat.” I could feel tears starting to spark my eyelids. I looked over my shoulder to see if Cam was watching. He was. “You’re an asshole,” I said. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “And you’re a four-year-old.” As I walked away, I heard the girl ask, “Is she your girlfriend?” I whirled around, and we both said “No!” at the same time. Confused, she said, “Well, is she your little sister?” like I wasn’t standing right there. Her perfume was heavy. It felt like it filled all the air around us, like we were breathing her in. “No, I’m not his little sister.” I hated this girl for being a witness to all this. It was humiliating. And she was pretty, in the same kind of way Taylor was pretty, which somehow made things worse. Conrad said, “Her mom is best friends with my mom.” So that was all I was to him? His mom’s friend’s daughter? I took a deep breath, and without even thinking, I said to the girl, “I’ve known Conrad my whole life. So let me be the one to tell you you’re barking up the wrong tree. Conrad will never love anyone as much as he loves himself, if you know what I mean-“ I lifted up my hand and wiggled my fingers. “Shut up, Belly,” Conrad warned. The tops of his ears were turning bright red. It was a low blow, but I didn’t care. He deserved it. Red Sox girl frowned. “What is she talking about, Conrad?” To her I blurted out, “Oh, I’m sorry, do you not know what the idiom ‘barking up the wrong tree’ means?” Her pretty face twisted. “You little skank,” she hissed. I could feel myself shrinking. I wished I could take it back. I’d never gotten into a fight with a girl before, or with anyone for that matter. Thankfully, Conrad broke in then and pointed to the bonfire. “Belly, go back over there, and wait for me to come get you,” he said harshly. That’s when Jeremiah ambled over. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?” he asked, smiling in his easy, goofy way. “Your brother is a jerk,” I said. “That’s what’s going on.” Jeremiah put his arm around me. He smelled like beer. “You guys play nice, you hear?” I shrugged out of his hold and said, “I am playing nice. Tell your brother to play nice.” “Wait, are you guys brother and sister too?” the girl asked. Conrad said, “Don’t even think about leaving with that guy.

I like to save things. Not important things like whales or people or the environment. Silly things. Porcelain bells, the kind you get at souvenir shops. Cookie cutters you’ll never use, because who needs a cookie in the shape of a foot? Ribbons for my hair. Love letters. Of all the things I save, I guess you could say my love letters are my most prized possession. I keep my letters in a teal hatbox my mom bought me from a vintage store downtown. They aren’t love letters that someone else wrote for me; I don’t have any of those. These are ones I’ve written. There’s one for every boy I’ve ever loved—five in all. When I write, I hold nothing back. I write like he’ll never read it. Because he never will. Every secret thought, every careful observation, everything I’ve saved up inside me, I put it all in the letter. When I’m done, I seal it, I address it, and then I put it in my teal hatbox. They’re not love letters in the strictest sense of the word. My letters are for when I don’t want to be in love anymore. They’re for good-bye. Because after I write my letter, I’m no longer consumed by my all-consuming love. I can eat my cereal and not wonder if he likes bananas over his Cheerios too; I can sing along to love songs and not be singing them to him. If love is like a possession, maybe my letters are like my exorcisms. My letters set me free. Or at least they’re supposed to.

The sickest part of this whole story is that I tried really hard to make up for what I thought I did to her, after she started talking to me again. I loaned her money whenever she needed it, I gave her rides whenever she called and needed to get somewhere, I did my best to pretend like David wasn't in the room with us when I was at her house, I did whatever I could that I thought might show her that I loved her and cared about her, and I never meant to hurt her. It took a while before I realized that would never happen. She'd never love me like a mom is supposed to. She would never be there for me like I tried to be for her. She would never apologize for anything or admit that she was wrong.

In those olden times you didn't have to be a space scientist to manage the gadget that flicked your TV on and off, that ridiculous thingamabob that now comes with twenty push buttons, God knows what for. Doctors made house calls. Rabbis were guys. Kids were raised by their moms instead of in child-care pens like piglets. Software meant haberdashery.

I guess getting out of homelessness doesn’t happen all at once, either. We were lucky. Some people live in their cars for years. I’m not looking on the bright side. It was pretty scary. And stinky. But my parents took care of us the best they could. After a month, my dad got a part-time job at a hardware store. My mom picked up some extra waitressing shifts, and my dad kept singing for tips. Every time his fishing sign got wet, I made him a new one. Slowly they started saving money, bit by bit, to pay for a rental deposit on an apartment. It was sort of like getting over a cold. Sometimes you feel like you’ll never stop coughing. Other times you’re sure tomorrow is the day you’ll definitely be well.

But seriously – how is this a good example of womanhood? How is this something we should be propping up and praising? Think about the women in your life – your mom, your aunts, your grandmothers, your sisters, your daughters, your nieces, your friends. Would you like ANY of them reduced to one small part of their anatomy? Would you tell them to their faces that they are nothing more than a walking life support system for their vaginas? ‘Cause that’s the message that feminism is sending to women the world over.I thought feminists cared more about a woman’s mind and heart, and less about her body parts....Ladies, we are so much more than our body parts. Don’t take Hollywood airheads like Cate Blanchett as your life example.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights. “Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back. “You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice. “Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…” “I know, I believe you.” At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket. “Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger. Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces. “Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?” I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself. “You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—” I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!” “You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.” “No!” I shrieked. “No!” He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door. I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them. But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room. “—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!

Fuck, he’d opened himself all the way for Nick, given Nick everything he was. Showed him all the parts and pieces that made up his soul. He’d wanted Nick to know him like no one else ever had, not his mom, not Wes, not anyone. He’d wanted Nick to like him—no, to love him. To love what he saw when Colton showed him his carefully concealed heart, cradled in the palms of his hands.

You could sit down with another mom, even one halfway around the world whose life was very different from your own, and find easy conversation, shared spirit, someone who understood why you might bring your ten-year-old into a malarial jungle rather than leave him behind, someone who understood what unspeakable things sometimes befell children and to what lengths you might go to fend them off, someone who saw the horrors and the threats and the carving up and the carving out and also how hard they were to schedule around and how little they cared about your job and how much they wanted just to be touching you all the time and what they looked like when they first woke up in the morning and how they learned to talk and walk and read and how quickly they outgrew their clothes and how it was to live every moment of every day in that world—even the moments when someone else’s kid was shitting thousands of tiny larva into a bucket, even the moments when someone else’s kid was shaking with a fever whose cause you could not discern, even the moments when someone else’s kid had her own baby stuck against her pelvis, draining her life in its efforts to be born.

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don’t have a partner. They were right. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled “Make Your Partner a Real Partner” about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms who live with 100/0. My understanding and expectation of what a family looks like has shifted closer to reality. Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent—84 percent of whom are women. I

thought, even as my head told me nothing good would come of posting pictures of myself online. I should probably also admit to her that I was going to need… extra help. But I couldn’t. Not if it meant I would lose this opportunity, which it might. This was my chance. More than likely my last one. I could be safe. Couldn’t I? I could watch what I posted. Be more careful. I could be smart about it if things started happening again. Especially if this opportunity was real and mine. I could record our sessions so I could practice them more later on by myself. I’d done it before. My mom and siblings would help if I asked. I could be more focused and make Ivan skate everything first once we got to doing choreography. I could figure it out. I could make it work without telling them.

What I can make people do . . . it’s not what they want to do. It may sound corny, but I want people to like me for me, not because I can force them to or because of who my mom is or who I am in the Family. You know?” He raised his green gaze to my blue one. “That’s one of the things I like about you, Lila. You don’t care about any of that.” “Just one of the things?” I teased, trying to make him laugh a little, just so he’d forget his guilt and grief, if only for a few moments. “Just one.” His voice took on a low, husky note. “I could list all the others, if you want.” My gaze locked with his and my soulsight kicked in, showing me all of his emotions. And I felt them, too—more intensely than I ever had before. His heart still ached with that soul-crushing guilt, and it always would. But that hot spark I’d seen inside him that first day at the Razzle Dazzle had finally ignited into a roaring fire, burning as hot and bright as my own emotions were right now. Devon hesitated, then leaned in, just a little. My breath caught in my throat. He inched forward a little more. I wet my lips. He came even closer, so close that his warm breath brushed my cheek and his scent flooded my nose, that sharp, fresh tang of pine. Clean and crisp, just like he was, inside and out. I sighed. Suddenly, my hands itched to touch him, to trace my fingers over the sharp planes of his face, and then slide them lower, over all of his warm, delicious muscles . . . “Lila,” he whispered. I shivered, loving the sound of my name on his lips—lips that were heartbreakingly close to mine—

I have no problem with being fabulous. My problem comes when you won't allow yourself to be an ordinary woman with a decent apartment and an okay job. When only the mom is allowed to be boring—because her life is so rich with meaning. When I carefully choreographed the story of how amazing I was, I was acting like one of those helicopter parents—you know, the ones who refuse to admit that their Jackson might suck at math or Stella might not be the world's greatest violinist. 'You are special! You are special!' they cry to their children, hoping this will boost their confidence. But the real message is one of panic: You must be special. Ordinary is not okay. When I walked into a party projecting the Shiny Girl—she of the lighthearted flings and glitzy job—I was essentially doing the same thing.

Suddenly, I missed Jenna so much that it was almost a physical ache. I wanted to hold her hand, and hear her say something that would make this whole situation funny instead of incredibly screwed up. Archer would’ve been nice, too. He probably would’ve raised an eyebrow in that annoying/hot way he had, and made a dirty joke about Elodie possessing me. Or Cal. He wouldn’t say anything, but just his presence would make me feel better. And Dad- “Sophie,” Mom said, shaking me out of my reverie. “I don’t…I don’t even know how to start explaining all of this to you.” She looked at me, her eyes red. “I meant to, so many times, but everything was always so…complicated. Do you hate me?” I took a deep breath. “Of course not. I mean, I’m not thrilled. And I totally reserve the right to angst over all this later. But honestly, Mom? Right now, I’m so happy to see you that I wouldn’t care if you’re secretly a ninja sent from the future to destroy kittens and rainbows.” She chuckled, a choked and watery sound. “I missed you so much, Soph.” We hugged, my face against her collarbone. “I want the whole story, though,” I said, my words muffled. “All of it on the table.” She nodded. “Absolutely. After we talk to Aislinn.” Pulling back, I grimaced. “So how exactly are you related to her? Are you guys like, cousins?” “We’re sisters.” I stared at her. “Wait. So you’re like, a Brannick Brannick? But you don’t even have red hair.” Mom got off the bed, twisting her ponytail into a bun. “It’s called dye, Soph. Now, come on. Aislinn is already in a mood.” “Yeah, picked up on that,” I muttered, shoving the covers off and standing up

He was always worrying about me – even when we were kids. If I scraped my knee or fell off my bike, he was the first one to help me up and make sure Mom got a Band-Aid.” “I remember.” I smile. “He was the quintessential big brother.” “He was. But that’s just it – he’s not here to protect me anymore, Anna. And you don’t have to be, either. I know I let stuff get crazy. I didn’t mean to be like that – it just kind of happened. You couldn’t have changed that. I – it was something I had to go through myself.” My throat tightens. “I felt like I let him down,” I say. “All that stuff with smoking and Johan and Jake – I didn’t take care of you. I couldn’t even keep that one simple promise.” “Anna, my brother died. There’s no way you could protect me from that. It’s up to me, now. I let him down. I let me down.

Mom promised she’d buy groceries today, but it looks like we’re out of luck. Again. I’ll worry about dinner later. Annie ate most of her giant slice of pizza plus a cookie, so she’ll probably be fine for another hour or so. I plop onto our sagging couch, replaying the scene from this afternoon in my mind one more time. “Robin,” my mother said as she pressed a bill into my hand, “take your sister to the mall. This should cover the bus ride and lunch at the food court.” A million questions popped into my head, but I was speechless at this unprecedented gift. I forced myself to close my gaping mouth. “I’ll be out late, kiddo. Take care of supper.” Placated by her familiar words, I nodded. When she says she’ll be out late, that can mean she’ll arrive home shortly after the bars close, or sneak in just in time for breakfast.

She’s gotten more desperate these past few months. She’s gotten more desperate and I’ve gotten more angry. I don’t know if my anger is a direct result of her desperation, but it’s at least a partial result of it. I can’t fucking handle how desperate she is. The sicker she gets, the cuter she becomes in her intonation, the more innocent she becomes, the more she pleads with me. It’s like she’s begging me to not slip away, and I want to scream, YOU’RE THE ONE SLIPPING AWAY! I could swear she can tell that I want to scream because she doubles down on the cuteness. Which makes me want to double down on the scream. But I don’t. I keep it in. And then she looks at me with her big eyes and I know she doesn’t, she couldn’t, but I almost feel like she’s enjoying this. I almost feel like she’s enjoying the pain. Like it’s a representation to her of how much I care.

Well,” I said, trying to keep my tone light as I walked over to put my arms around his neck, though I had to stand on my toes to do so. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You told me something about yourself that I didn’t know before-that you didn’t, er, care for your family, except for your mother. But that didn’t make me hate you…it made me love you a bit more, because now I know we have even more in common.” He stared down at him, a wary look in his eyes. “If you knew the truth,” he said, “you wouldn’t be saying that. You’d be running.” “Where would I go?” I asked, with a laugh I hoped didn’t sound as nervous to him as it did to me. “You bolted all the doors, remember? Now, since you shared something I didn’t know about you, may I share something you don’t know about me?” Those dark eyebrows rose as he pulled me close. “I can’t even begin to imagine what this could be.” “It’s just,” I said, “that I’m a little worried about rushing into this consort thing…especially the cohabitation part.” “Cohabitation?” he echoed. He was clearly unfamiliar with the word. “Cohabitation means living together,” I explained, feeling my cheeks heat up. “Like married people.” “You said last night that these days no one your age thinks of getting married,” he said, holding me even closer and suddenly looking much more eager to stick around for the conversation, even though I heard the marina horn blow again. “And that your father would never approve it. But if you’ve changed your mind, I’m sure I could convince Mr. Smith to perform the ceremony-“ “No,” I said hastily. Of course Mr. Smith was somehow authorized to marry people in the state of Florida. Why not? I decided not to think about that right now, or how John had come across this piece of information. “That isn’t what I meant. My mom would kill me if I got married before I graduated from high school.” Not, of course, that my mom was going to know about any of this. Which was probably just as well, since her head would explode at the idea of my moving in with a guy before I’d even applied to college, let alone at the fact that I most likely wasn’t going to college. Not that there was any school that would have accepted me with my grades, not to mention my disciplinary record. “What I meant was that maybe we should take it more slowly,” I explained. “The past couple years, while all my friends were going out with boys, I was home, trying to figure out how this necklace you gave me worked. I wasn’t exactly dating.” “Pierce,” he said. He wore a slightly quizzical expression on his face. “Is this the thing you think I didn’t know about you? Because for one thing, I do know it, and for another, I don’t understand why you think I’d have a problem with it.” I’d forgotten he’d been born in the eighteen hundreds, when the only time proper ladies and gentlemen ever spent together before they were married was at heavily chaperoned balls…and that for most of the past two centuries, he’d been hanging out in a cemetery. Did he even know that these days, a lot of people hooked up on first dates, or that the average age at which girls-and boys as well-lost their virginity in the United States was seventeen…my age? Apparently not. “What I’m trying to say,” I said, my cheeks burning brighter, “is that I’m not very experienced with men. So this morning when I woke up and found you in bed beside me, while it was really, super nice-don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much-it kind of freaked me out. Because I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of thing yet.” Or maybe the problem was that I wasn’t prepared for how ready I was…

On my days off I leave my apartment explore the city or grab coffee with a friend. The grocery stores here don’t make my hands sweat. I haven’t had the urge since I moved. I know who to call if I’m feeling sad. No, I haven’t even thought of it. I hurt myself once in high school, but not since. I have enough money to make it. I’m not nervous about moving. Yes, I ate dinner. I run five miles because I like it. I only hurt myself the one time in middle school, but that’s it. No, sex never scares me. I can tell my mom anything. I don’t really feel sad, I guess. I don’t care. I don’t need her. I never fight with my girlfriend. Yeah, I must’ve been. It was kind of an accident. Everyone in seventh grade. I’m friends with everyone. I know what that means. No, I didn’t read that in a book. I like having two bedrooms cause I have lots of toys. Yes, I understand why I’m here.

Mom, you spent two and a half decades telling me to focus on school and work and not to think about boys. Maybe the reason I’m not married is because I’m such a guai nui.” Such a good girl. It’s one of the only Cantonese phrases she knows, the one her parents and her grandparents would say to her as a compliment—when they were in front of their friends, when she did something they approved of, when they were reassuring each other in hushed tones after the funeral that Helen would never do something like this. Helen has always been a good girl. She remembers her frustration watching Michelle move through the world and finding ways to upset everyone, all the time. She had envied it a little bit too—the idea of just not caring seemed so foreign to her, she sometimes couldn’t believe they had the same parents. She recognizes an uncharitable feeling of resentment rise against her little sister, even all these years later.

I WAS ON the phone one afternoon with Robin DiAngelo, the white writer who coined the expression “white fragility,” when she took a personal digression from the topic we were discussing. DiAngelo and her two sisters were raised in poverty by their single mom. “She was not able to feed, house, or clothe us,” DiAngelo recalled. “I mean, we were flat out. We lived in our car. We were not bathed. My mother could not take care of us. And yet, anything I ever wanted to touch, like food someone left out—I was hungry, right?—I was reprimanded: ‘Don’t touch that. You don’t know who touched it, it could have been a colored person.’ ‘Don’t sit there. You don’t know who sat there, it could have been a colored person.’ That was the language—this was the sixties. The message was clear: If a colored person touched it, it would be dirty. But I was dirty. Yet in those moments, the shame of poverty was lifted. I wasn’t poor anymore. I was white.

A nightmare that’s a memory. Jay really did leave me and Trey at our grandparents’ house. She couldn’t take care of us and her drug habit, too. That’s when I learned that when people die, they sometimes take the living with them. I saw her in the park a few months later, looking more like a red-eyed, scaly-skinned dragon than my mommy. I started calling her Jay after that—there was no way she was my mom anymore. It became my own habit that was hard to break. Still is.

I never wanted it to end. I wondered if it felt like this the first time. Seeing him. Really seeing him. He wiped his eyes. “You really want to know, don’t you.” “Yeah.” “Why?” I gave in. I couldn’t not. I reached over and put my hand on his knee. He tensed briefly but settled when I curled my fingers over his leg, just letting my hand rest there. I couldn’t look at him. I thought my face was on fire. He said, “That’s….” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “After the hunters came, something shifted. Between us. I don’t know how or why exactly. You stopped being weird around me.” “Seems like I’ve picked that right up again.” He chuckled. “A little. It’s okay, though. It’s like… a beginning. You came to me one day. You were sweating. I remember thinking something bad had happened because you kept wringing your hands until I thought you were going to break your bones. I asked you what was wrong. And you know what you said? “Probably something stupid.” “You said that you didn’t think you could ever give up on me. That no matter how long it took, you would be there until I told you otherwise. That you weren’t going to push me for anything but you thought I should know that you had… intentions.” “Oh dear god,” I said in horror. “And that worked?” Kelly snorted, and I felt his hand on the back of mine. “Not quite. But what you said next did.” I looked over at him. “What did I say?” He was watching me with human eyes, and I thought I could love him. I saw how easy it could be. I didn’t, not yet, but oh, I wanted to. “You said you thought the world of me. That we’d been through so much and you couldn’t stand another day if I didn’t know that. You told me that you were a good wolf, a strong wolf, and if I’d only give you a chance, you’d make sure I’d never regret it.” I had to know. “Have you?” “No,” he whispered. “Not once. Not ever.” He looked away. “It was good between us. We took it slow. You smiled all the time. You brought me flowers once. Mom was pissed because you ripped them up from her flower bed and there were still roots and dirt hanging from the bottom, but you were so damn proud of yourself. You said it was romantic. And I believed you.” He plucked a blade of grass and held it in the palm of his hand. “There was something… I don’t know. Endless. About you and me.” He took my hand off his knee and turned it over. He set the blade of grass in my palm and closed his hand over mine. He looked toward the sky and the stars through the canopy of leaves. “We came here sometimes. Just the two of us. And you would pretend to know all the stars. You would make up stories that absolutely weren’t true, and I remember looking at you, thinking how wonderful it was to be by your side. And if we were lucky, there’d be—ah. Look. Again.” His voice was wet and soft, and it cracked me right down the middle. Fireflies rose around us, pulsing slowly. At first there were only two or three, but then more began to hang heavy in the air. They were yellow-green, and I wondered how this could be real. Here. Now. This moment. How I ever could have forgotten this. Forgotten him. It had to have been the strongest magic the world had ever known. That was the only way I’d have ever left his side. He reached out with his other hand, quick and light, and snatched a firefly out of the air. He was careful not to crush it. He leaned his head toward mine like he was about to tell me a great secret. Instead he opened his hand between us. The firefly lay near the bottom of his ring finger. Its shell was black with a stripe down the middle. It barely moved. “Just wait,” Kelly whispered. I did. It only took a moment. The firefly pulsed in his hand. “There it is,” he said. He pulled away and lifted his hand. The firefly took to its wings, lifting off and flying away. He stared after it. I only had eyes for him.

Mom told me about a same-sex couple back in Carolina who’d been shunned to the point that they were driven out of town. I’d never cared for that story. It sounded to me like way too many people had it hard when she was growing up. Why would anyone go out of their way to make someone’s life any harder? Regardless, same-sex couples tended to live in the shadows, on the outskirts of society, and unfortunately that was still the case today. This made Ean’s acceptance of not finding love in his life much more understandable. But Hale?

She’s a single mother with three daughters, but it’s this seventeen-year-old boy who worries her more than anything. A boy who cares too little about the future and frets too much about the past: nothing could depress a mother more. Her little Benjamin, the fighter with whom it’s far too easy for the girls of Beartown to fall in love. The boy with the most handsome face, the saddest eyes, and the wildest heart they’ve ever seen. His mom knows, because she married a man who looked just the same, and nothing but trouble lies ahead for men like that. *

In those olden times you didn't have to be a space scientist to manage the gadget that flicked your TV on and off... Doctors made house calls. Rabbis were guys. Kids were raised by their moms instead of in child-care pens like piglets. Software meant haberdashery. There wasn't a different dentist for gums, molars, fillings and extractions - one nerd managed the lot. If a waiter spilled hot soup on your date, the manager offered to pay her cleaning bill and sent over drinks, and she didn't sue for a kazillion dollars, claiming "loss of enjoyment of life.

Dating yes. But she thinks we're, uh, more than dating." "Oh," he says, thoughtful. Then he grins. "Oh." The reason her lips are turning his favorite color is because Emma's mom thinks they've been dating and mating. The blush extends down her neck and disappears into her T-shirt. He should probably say something to make her feel more comfortable. But teasing her seems so much more fun. "Well then, the least she could do is give us some privacy-" "Ohmysweetgoodness!" She snatches her backpack from the seat and marches around her car to the driver's side. Before she can get the door unlocked, he plucks the key from her fingers and tucks it into his jeans' pocket. She moves to retrieve it, but stops when she realizes where she's about to go fishing. He's never seen her this red. He laughs. "Calm down, Emma. I'm just kidding. Don't leave." "Yeah, well, it's not funny. You should have seen her this morning. She almost cried. my mom doesn't cry." She crosses her arms again but relaxes against her door. "She cried? That's pretty insulting." She cracks a tiny grin. "Yeah, it's an insult to me. She thinks I would...would..." "More than date me?" She nods. He steps toward her and puts his hand beside her on the car, leaning in. A live current seems to shimmy up his spine. What are you doing? "But she should know that you don't even think of me like that. That it would never even cross your mind," he murmurs. She looks away, satisfying his unspoken question-it has crossed her mind. The same way it crosses his. How often? Does she feel the voltage between them, too? Who cares, idiot? She belongs to Grom. Or are you going to let a few sparks keep you from uniting the kingdoms? He pulls back, clenching his teeth. His pockets are the only safe place for his hands at the moment. "Why don't I meet her then? You think that would make her feel better?" "Um." She swipes her hair to the other side of her face. Her expression falls somewhere between shock and expectation. And she had every right to expect it-he's been entertaining the idea of kissing her for over two weeks now. She fidgets the door handle. "Yeah, it might. She won't let me go anywhere-especially with you-if she doesn't meet you first." "Should I be afraid?" She sighs. "Normally I would say no. But after this morning..." She shrugs. "How about I follow you to your house so you can drop off your car? Then she can interrogate me. When she sees how charming I am, she'll let you ride to the beach with me." She rolls her eyes. "Just don't be too charming. If you're too smooth, she'll never believe-just don't overdue it, okay?" "This is getting complicated," he says, unlocking her car. "Just remember, this is your idea and your fault. Now would be the time to back out." He chuckles and opens the door for her. "Don't lose me on the road.

Believe me when I say, I don’t want any other woman but you. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t explain it. All I know is that you make me think things I haven’t thought about since Brooke’s mom died. You make me feel things I thought had died inside of me long ago. Now that you woke me up, babe, you’re gonna live life with me. I figure I can teach you how to pull that stick out of your ass to live wild and free. In return, you can teach me how to go from day to day havin’ someone in my life that I care about like this without worryin’ they’re gonna leave me again.

As I walked away, I heard the girl ask, “Is she your girlfriend?” I whirled around, and we both said “No!” at the same time. Confused, she said, “Well, is she your little sister?” like I wasn’t standing right there. Her perfume was heavy. It felt like it filled all the air around us, like we were breathing her in. “No, I’m not his little sister.” I hated this girl for being a witness to all this. It was humiliating. And she was pretty, in the same kind of way Taylor was pretty, which somehow made things worse. Conrad said, “Her mom is best friends with my mom.” So that was all I was to him? His mom’s friend’s daughter? I took a deep breath, and without even thinking, I said to the girl, “I’ve known Conrad my whole life. So let me be the one to tell you you’re barking up the wrong tree. Conrad will never love anyone as much as he loves himself, if you know what I mean-“ I lifted up my hand and wiggled my fingers. “Shut up, Belly,” Conrad warned. The tops of his ears were turning bright red. It was a low blow, but I didn’t care. He deserved it. Red Sox girl frowned. “What is she talking about, Conrad?” To her I blurted out, “Oh, I’m sorry, do you not know what the idiom ‘barking up the wrong tree’ means?” Her pretty face twisted. “You little skank,” she hissed. I could feel myself shrinking. I wished I could take it back. I’d never gotten into a fight with a girl before, or with anyone for that matter. Thankfully, Conrad broke in then and pointed to the bonfire. “Belly, go back over there, and wait for me to come get you,” he said harshly. That’s when Jeremiah ambled over. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?” he asked, smiling in his easy, goofy way. “Your brother is a jerk,” I said. “That’s what’s going on.” Jeremiah put his arm around me. He smelled like beer. “You guys play nice, you hear?” I shrugged out of his hold and said, “I am playing nice. Tell your brother to play nice.” “Wait, are you guys brother and sister too?” the girl asked. Conrad said, “Don’t even think about leaving with that guy.” “Con, chill out,” Jeremiah said. “She’s not leaving. Right, Belly?” He looked at me, and I pursed my lips and nodded. Then I gave Conrad the dirtiest look I could muster, and I shot one at the girl, too, when I was far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to reach out and grab me by the hair.

Gene put his hand on mine and told me what went on at the hospital, “I don’t know what happened to me, Mom. When I saw that baby it was like a whole part of me that I didn’t even know existed woke. My mind hasn’t been off her for a split second ever since. I thought that I could never love anyone the way I love Evelyn, but that baby has changed my mind. I don’t care if she does belong to someone else, she’s mine. Does that make any sense at all?” I rocked and nodded. “It’s a funny thing, that feeling. It doesn’t always come when it’s supposed to, and sometimes it happens when you weren’t even looking for it.

My mom raised Audrey and me not to care about appearances. She and Dad never talked about how we looked. And I know why she did it—and for my sister, I think it even worked—but the truth is, without makeup and hair dye and nice clothes, my mom has always been stunningly pretty. And my sister looks just like her: big green eyes, gold hair, little pointed chin, petite with curves. I’ve always taken more after Dad. Tall, lanky, with only the faintest strawberry undertone to my generally mousy hair. Maybe it’s easier to say looks don’t matter when you look like Hollywood’s version of a hardworking, outdoorsy woman with a heart of gold.

Oh shit, I wouldn’t use that towel if I were you,” Gavin mumbles. I ignore him scrubbing every inch of my face, hoping that maybe I can rub away the memory of the words my mother spoke to me. “Seriously dude, give me that thing,” Gavin says, Interrupting my thoughts. I pull the towel away and glare at his reflection in the mirror. He’s standing behind me with a look of disgust on his face and his hand out. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I just found out that my mom was a slut and has no idea who my dad is and all you’re worried about is your precious towel?” I ramble, my voice getting that hysterical squeak to it. “What’s wrong? Is this one of Charlotte’s ‘good’ towels, reserved for guests or some shit? Fuck, are you pussy whipped.” Gavin shakes his head at me and tries reaching over my shoulder to take the towel. I snatch it away and turn to face him. “What is your fucking deal? It’s a Goddamn towel!” I yell. “Yeah, it’s a jizz towel, dude.” I look at him in confusion, glancing down at the towel and back up at him when what he said finally sinks in. He’s biting his lip and I can’t tell if he’s trying not to laugh or if he’s trying to think of a way to run out of here as fast as he can. “Hey, what are you guys doing in the bathroom?” Charlotte asks, suddenly appearing in the doorway. “Oh, my God! Did you just use that towel, Tyler?” I quickly throw the towel away from me like it’s on fire and it lands in the toilet. “Dammit, don’t throw it in the toilet, you’ll ruin it!” Charlotte scolds. “I’m pretty sure you ruined it by putting jizz on it!” I scream. “Why the fuck would you leave a jizz towel on the sink where anyone could use it?” “I’d never use it. I knew it was a jizz towel,” Gavin replies with a shrug. “Oh, my God! I scrubbed my fucking face with a towel that had your dry, crusty jizz on it!” I can’t believe this is happening right now. My mom had a foursome, my dad isn’t my dad and now I have jizz face. Moving as fast as I can, I jump into the shower and turn on the water, not even caring that I’m fully clothed. “Do you want us to leave so you can take your clothes off?” Charlotte asks, as the water rains down on me, soaking my t-shirt and jeans. “I am NOT taking my clothes off. There could be trace particles of jizz on them! I’m going to have to burn these clothes!” I complain. I keep my face under the scalding hot water, taking in large mouthfuls, swishing and then spitting on the shower floor. “Eeew, don’t spit in our shower!” Charlotte scolds. “I HAVE GAVIN’S JIZZ ON MY FACE! I WILL SPIT WHEREVER THE FUCK I WANT!

Eventually she got around to asking about where I was living. They’d told her it was a farm, so she wanted to know how fun was that, were there animals to pet and such. Mind you, she never had one good thing to say about being raised in foster care herself, and now she thinks it’s all rainbows? I told her, Yeah, Mom, it’s exactly like a petting zoo where the main animals are roaches and mice. I told her for fun times we shoveled cow shit, and my foster was a creepy old man that threatened to file down my teeth. I didn’t mention I’d started doing drugs. As far as I was concerned, drugs were not the problem in that home. Just the opposite.

The view was, to say the least, incredible. And the feeling of it all - of being so small and insignificant - was a lot like the feeling I got when Burn and I would stand on the cliff in the mornings and watch the sun kiss the world awake. I felt...unimportant. I felt light, and airy, and free. I felt like nothing mattered - not my grades, not my college future, not my awful spying on the Blackthorns - nothing. I'd done nothing wrong up here. I had no responsibilities up here - not to Dad, not to Mom, not even to myself. For a few minutes, I felt untouchable. Nothing could get me in the sky, not even my problems. I watched the sun as I fell. So what, I thought, if Mom and Dad divorced? Would it really be the end of the world? This was the world - this huge thing below me, reduced to nothing more than toy-like dioramas of forests and towns. There were a hundred million problems waiting for me when I landed, but when you got high enough, all those problems seemed so small and insignificant. The sun didn't care about divorce. The sky didn't care about grades. No one cared, except me and the people in the below-world. I wasn’t a scholarshipper up here; I wasn’t a teacher’s pet, a wannabe psychologist, a girl who left her friends behind, or an attempted good-daughter. I was just…me.

It is not too late... there is time still." I am dying. There are tears in my eyes. Please cradle my head in your hand. Let me look into the stars. Are they really in the sky? Or are they just in my mind because what is there I cannot see? The woman tilted her head, revealing a rim of bruising around a clean-tucked hole in her head. There was blood. Dry blood. This is more pain than a human heart can bear. Like fistfuls of fear, cries shoot from my eyes. There are tears running down my face. It is a salty, bitter taste. My wounds need care. I look up to my mom, but can think of nothing to say. I am dying. I need you. Embrace me. I am dying... "Shhhh...

People just have an affair, or even entire relationships. They break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with because each person had their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved because it hurts too much. Even getting laid, I actually don’t do that because I will miss of the person the most mundane things, like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy, but when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk or ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk. Little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details. Like, I remember the way your beard has a bit of red in it and how the sun was making it glow that morning right before you left. I remembered that, and I missed it. I'm really crazy, right?”.

People just have an affair, or even entire relationships. They break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with because each person had their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved because it hurts too much. Even getting laid, I actually don’t do that because I will miss of the person the most mundane things, like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy, but when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk or ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk. Little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details. Like, I remember the way your beard has a bit of red in it and how the sun was making it glow that morning right before you left. I remembered that, and I missed it. I'm really crazy, right?”.

I wished Adam weren’t jumping in for his turn. Because watching Adam wakeboard was not relaxing. He wasn’t careful when wakeboarding. Or in general. He was the opposite of careful. His life was one big episode of Jackass. He would do anything on a dare, so the older boys dared him a lot. My role in this game was to run and tell their mom. If I’d been able to run faster when we were kids, I might have saved Adam from a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and a couple of snake bites. Knowing this, it might not make a lot of sense that Mr. Vader let us wakeboard for the marina. But we’d come to wakeboarding only gradually. When we first started out, it was more like, Look at the very young children on water skis! How adorable. One time the local newspaper ran a photo of me and Adam waterskiing double, each of us holding up an American flag. It’s okay for you to gag now. I can take it. But Mr. Vader was no fool. He understood things changed. After the second time Adam broke his collarbone, Mr. Vader put us under strict orders not to get hurt, because it was bad for business. Customers might not be so eager to buy a wakeboard and all the equipment if they witnessed our watery death. To enforce this rule, the punishment for bleeding in the boat was that we had to clean the boat. Adam cleaned the boat a lot last summer.

Nadine began to ask: If that is the wrong approach, what’s the right way to respond? How could she help Robert, and all the other kids in her care like him? She told me that she starts by explaining to parents: “I believe this [inability to focus] is being caused by your [child’s] body making too many stress hormones. So here’s how we fix them. We have to create an environment. We have to limit the amount of scary or stressful things that [your child] is experiencing and witnessing. And we have to layer on lots of buffering, lots of caregiving, lots of nurturing. In order for you to be able to do that, you, Mom, have to recognize and address your own history of what’s gone on in your life.

Why do you wear eye makeup?” I asked. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but I was just curious. I hoped I hadn’t sounded like I was judging. I was just curious. “It’s just me. It’s who I am. It makes me feel more like myself. You know? Why? Does it bother you?” “No, not at all. Why would it bother me? I was just curious because you weren’t wearing any before. You know. At lunch.” “My mom told me I couldn’t.” “Oh. She thought I would care?” “I think she thought your mother might mind. And we really need to rent out that room. We need the money.” “Oh. That must be weird to have somebody tell you not to do a thing that makes you feel like yourself.” “It is,” he said. “It’s also the story of my life.

Carrie? Hello?” “Keer-ee-eh,” I said, emphasizing the middle vowel.  Normally, I don’t care if people mispronounce my name, unusual as it is, but I was annoyed at the distraction. “Like the song?” Turning, I leveled a glare at my interrupter.  Not very good of me, customer-service wise, but I was not feeling myself. “Yes, I was named after the pop song,” I said. “Exactly.” “Why would your mom do that?” Because when you’re eighteen and pregnant and unmarried and homeless and that song comes on the radio, it holds a lot of spiritual and emotional meaning to your immature and overwhelmed little self.  But I didn’t say that.  Instead I shrugged. “Lots of parents name their kids after songs.

My parents were going out to dinner when I was six or so, and before they left, I felt instantly desperate and went to the bathroom and grabbed my mom's lipstick and put red dots all over my body and then begged them not to go. "I have chicken pox, you can't leave," I said. I remember they both laughed and laughed and then they left. And I cried and couldn't stop. They laughed at me like a was a wacky little child pulling a wacky stunt: kids say the darnedest things, etc. But I think about that night all the time, that little kid desperate for someone to love her, take care of her, spend any time at all with her, make her feel connected to literally anyone or anything and they just laughed. And left.

He smiled, and some of the knots in my stomach loosened. He would keep my secret. Devon hesitated, then reached over and put his hand on top of mine. His skin was warm, as though the sun had soaked into his body. I breathed in, and the crisp, clean scent of him filled my nose, the one that made me want to bury my face in his neck and inhale the essence of him over and over again. But I forced myself to exhale and step back, putting some distance between us, even though our hands were still touching. “Look,” I said, my voice carefully neutral. “You’re a nice guy, a great guy. But I’m going to . . . be here for a while. You’re an important member of the Family, and I’m your bodyguard, so it’s my job to protect you, and we’re going to have to work together. But I don’t think there should be anything . . . else.” “Because of your mom, right?” he asked in a low voice. “Because you blame me for her death?” I sucked in a breath, so rattled that I couldn’t even pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about. First, my magic, and now this. Somehow, Devon knew all my secrets. “How do you know about my mom?” I croaked out. “I remember everything about that day in the park,” he said. “Including the girl with the blue eyes who helped save me.” I didn’t say anything. I could barely even hear him over the roar of my own heartbeat in my ears. “It took me a while to figure out why you seemed so familiar. When I realized you reminded me of the girl in the park, I knew it had to be you. Mom would never have brought you here otherwise. Plus, there are several photos of your mother in the library. You look just like her. I know what happened to her. I’m sorry that she died because of me—so sorry.” His green gaze locked with mine, that old, familiar guilt flaring to life in his eyes and punching me in the gut. And once again, I found myself wanting to comfort him. “I don’t blame you for her death,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault. It was all the Draconis.” “Do you really mean that?” he whispered. “I do.” Devon closed the distance between us and stared down at me. I let myself look into his eyes for another heartbeat. Then I pulled my hand out from under his and stepped away. Hurt flashed in his gaze before he could hide it. I wanted to stop. I wanted to tell him that I felt this thing, this attraction, this heat between us just as much as he did. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck, pull his lips down to mine, and lose myself in him. But I couldn’t. Not when I was planning on leaving the mansion, the Family, and him, the second I thought it was safe. I already cared about Devon way too much. And Felix and Oscar and even Claudia. I didn’t need to fall any farther down that rabbit hole, especially where Devon was concerned, because I knew exactly where I would end up—with my heart broken.

Elspeth wasn’t keen. She’d lived with someone once and hated it. I think she felt differently towards the end, when I was taking care of her all the time. I think she realised that it could have worked, us living together. I’m fairly self-sufficient and so was she. She liked to be alone, knowing I was nearby if she wanted me.” “Our mom is like that.” “Is she?” “I think Dad is always kind of confused, you know, sometimes Mom seems like she’s just visiting, she’s super detached, and then she’ll be, like, really fun and sort of more present, you know?” Valentina peered up at him. “Was Elspeth like that?” Robert paused to sort out her syntax. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes she was far away, even when she was right there.

My mother would always ask us if anyone wanted to learn how to cook or to sew or to iron clothes. I always ran to her—“Me! Me! Me!” So, my mom would teach me. I secretly feared that I might be condemning myself to a life of sissyhood. One day she said it was good that I learned these things because I was never going to be strong or handsome or smart or popular like my older brother, Jesús. He was “el molde” (the mold) I would never be a good copy of him. She said that I might never find a girlfriend or get married—so it was good that I was learning to take care of myself. It freaked me out. I wanted to be strong, handsome, smart, and popular like my brother, Jesús. I never felt like I was. I was just a bad copy...

My huge generalities touched on millennials’ oversensitivity, their sense of entitlement, their insistence that they were always right despite sometimes overwhelming proof to the contrary, their failure to consider anything within its context, their joint tendencies of overreaction and passive-aggressive positivity—incidentally, all of these misdemeanors happening only sometimes, not always, and possibly exacerbated by the meds many this age had been fed since childhood by overprotective, helicopter moms and dads mapping their every move. These parents, whether tail-end baby boomers or Gen Xers, now seemed to be rebelling against their own rebelliousness because they felt they’d never really been loved by their own selfish narcissistic true-boomer parents, and who as a result were smothering their kids and not teaching them how to deal with life’s hardships about how things actually work: people might not like you, this person will not love you back, kids are really cruel, work sucks, it’s hard to be good at something, your days will be made up of failure and disappointment, you’re not talented, people suffer, people grow old, people die. And the response from Generation Wuss was to collapse into sentimentality and create victim narratives, instead of grappling with the cold realities by struggling and processing them and then moving on, better prepared to navigate an often hostile or indifferent world that doesn’t care if you exist.

Lela’s love affair with nuptials was born at the age of eleven, when she watched two epic weddings on TV. In July of 1981, Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles of Wales were wed in London. Back home in Wisconsin, Lela watched every minute of it with her mom, perched on the edge of their brown pleather sectional. Then, in November, fictional couple Luke and Laura tied the knot on every teenage girl’s favorite soap opera, General Hospital. Actress Genie Francis wore a bizarre head-hugging veil and a dress that looked like a marshmallow. Her groom, Anthony Geary, rocked his deceptively fluffy ‘80s hair. Lela couldn’t help but be transfixed. It all felt larger than life. And her little eleven year-old heart gave into it lock, stock and barrel.

Would you rather a god who listens or a god who speaks?” Be careful with the answer. It’s as important as every word from Scheherazade’s mouth that saved her life. And everybody’s got an answer. A god who listens is like your best friend, who lets you tell him about all the people you don’t like. A god who speaks is like your best teacher, who tells Brandon Goff he has to leave the room if he’s going to call people falafel monkeys. A god who listens is your mom who lets you sit in a kitchen and tell her stories about castles in the mountains. A god who speaks is your dad who calls on the phone with advice for your life in America. There are gods all over the world who just want you to express yourself. Look inside and find whatever you think you are and that’s all it takes to be good. And there are gods who are so alien to us, with minds so clear, the only thing to do would be to sit at their feet and wait for them to speak, to tell us what is good. A god who listens is love. A god who speaks is law. At their worst, the people who want a god who listens are self-centered. They just want to live in the land of do-as-you-please. And the ones who want a god who speaks are cruel. They just want laws and justice to crush everything. I don’t have an answer for you. This is the kind of thing you live your whole life thinking about probably. Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love. Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious, the answer is both. God should be both. If a god isn't, that is no God.

Flash forward to the 1980s and 1990s and it is not foreign fascists we have to put out of our minds in order to fall asleep at night, even if we do fantasize about hostile forces doing us great harm. (Witness the immediate presumption after the Oklahoma City bombing and the crash of TWA Flight 800 that Middle Eastern terrorists were to blame.) Mostly our fears are domestic, and so are the eerie invaders who populate them—killer kids, men of color, monster moms. The stories told about them are, like “War of the Worlds,” oblique expressions of concern about problems that Americans know to be pernicious but have not taken decisive action to quash—problems such as hunger, dilapidated schools, gun proliferation, and deficient health care for much of the U.S. population.

A friend of yours?” I shake my head but then nod. “I don’t know. I think so.” I tip my head in the direction of the office next door. “It was the guy, Gabe, from the waiting room. He pulled me into the boys’ room so the girls wouldn’t see me cry. Then he helped to sneak me out the visitors’ gate so I wouldn’t have to go back to class.” Laura offers an empathetic smile. “What did it feel like to have someone care about your feelings?” “I think it helped. My mom and sister have been trying to comfort me, but sometimes that makes me feel worse. They worry so much about me and I feel like I need to reassure them I’m going to be okay. I can’t just let it out.” “With Gabe you can?” “I guess. He helped me and then he made me laugh.” I feel my cheeks burn a little with embarrassment

What do you want to be?” “A mother,” I said simply, because it was true. That’s what I wanted first and foremost. “And a really excellent wife and partner. And homemaker. I want to have a family to take care of, to love and fuss over and think about. That’s what I want. I know it’s not progressive, or flashy, and I know people don’t place much importance on that stuff anymore, just like people don’t put much importance on humility and kindness, forgiveness and compassion. But those things are important to me. I know people will look down their noses at me for being just a mom, but I’m used to being marginalized for what I do and what I look like. And I think being a great mother is the most difficult and most important job in the world. So people can just take their judgmental crap and—

We were able to successfully downplay the whole going-to-the-dance-together thing to our parents. I guess our history of acting like we despise each other worked in our favor, because they actually believed that I changed my mind at the last minute and called Ryder to take me--just because he lives down the street. And then, since I didn’t have an escort, Ryder offered to stand in. Mama saw this as a perfect opportunity to remind me what a gentleman Ryder is--how selfless and generous and downright perfect he is. Only, this time, I agreed wither. Secretly, of course. I have no idea how Ryder and I are going to manage this from here on out. We didn’t talk about it last night. We didn’t really talk, period. We danced. We laughed. We had fun with our friends. We saved the kissing for later, when Ryder brought me home. He parked the Audi at the end of our road, far away from prying eyes. We leaned against the car under the bright moonlight and kissed until we were breathless, until my lips were swollen and my cheeks were flushed and I thought I was going to melt into a puddle of goo from the sheer rightness of it all. And then we’d driven up to the house and he’d walked me to the front door. We were careful then, keeping our distance. I figured my mom had her nose pressed to the glass, waiting for us. She probably did, considering how quickly she’d burst into the living room when I walked in the front door, firing a barrage of questions at me before I’d even made it out of the mudroom. And now I’m just lying in bed, purportedly napping since I’d gotten up early to go to church, but really texting with Ryder.

If Daddy got fired,” Claire began thoughtfully, “what would... what would change? I’m not sure …” “We would have to be very careful with our money,” said Mom. “We couldn’t buy extras or go on trips. And your dad would stay at home and look for a new job. He wouldn’t be happy about that,” she added. “Why not?” asked Margo. “Because looking for a new job, especially when you’ve been fired, is not easy. Dad will have to hear people say no to him a lot. He might start applying for jobs that are below the level of the one he’s got now, and people still might say no. He’ll call companies and hear other people say that there aren’t any jobs at all. It would be like going over to your friends’ houses and hearing each one of them say they don’t want to play with you.” “Ooh,” said Claire softly. That had hit home.

RULES TO TEACH YOUR SON 1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down. 2. Don’t enter a pool by the stairs. 3. The man at the BBQ Grill is the closest thing to a king. 4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer. 5. Request the late check-out. 6. When entrusted with a secret, keep it. 7. Hold your heroes to a higher standard. 8. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas. 9. Play with passion or don’t play at all… 10. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look them in the eye. 11. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be. 12. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point. 13. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her. 14. You marry the girl, you marry her family. 15. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath. 16. Experience the serenity of traveling alone. 17. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room. 18. Never turn down a breath mint. 19. A sport coat is worth 1000 words. 20. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising. 21. Thank a veteran. Then make it up to him. 22. Eat lunch with the new kid. 23. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it. 24. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win. 25. Manners maketh the man. 26. Give credit. Take the blame. 27. Stand up to Bullies. Protect those bullied. 28. Write down your dreams. 29. Take time to snuggle your pets, they love you so much and are always happy to see you. 30. Be confident and humble at the same time. 31. If ever in doubt, remember whose son you are and REFUSE to just be ordinary! 32. In all things, give glory to God.

It’s different for dads. Nobody judges dads for their kids’ behavior like they do moms. Dads are rewarded just for being around. When Davis took Harper to the grocery store and she freaked out in the checkout lane over not getting candy or a cheap toy, nobody looked at him like he should have her under control or like he was responsible for her misbehavior. People bent over backward to help him all the time. That’s what usually happens with dads. But moms? I can’t count the number of snotty looks I’ve gotten in stores when Harper’s thrown a fit. I’ve never once had someone offer to help me with anything, even in those times when I was clearly struggling and on the verge of bursting into tears. And believe me, there’ve been plenty of those times. So Genevieve’s not alone in worrying about how her kid’s actions will reflect on her.

And Ghostly, everyone thinks they know Paleandghostly, everyone thinks Paleandghostly doesn’t need anything, doesn’t feel anything, can take care of herself and doesn’t need a thing. She is the single most terrifying woman Draxie has ever met, yes, she’s read every book Draxie knows of and a hell of a lot more of them that she couldn’t even understand, she’s got a mind like diamond-edged steel, she is awesome in a sense of the word older than the internet - and she lives with her mom, in her trailer, in the middle of nowhere, because there’s no-one else to look after her. She sits watching her mom’s mind slowly crumble from its edges inwards while she forgets to drink unless she’s told to and wants to go for a walk down streets she hasn’t lived anywhere near in decades, and Ghostly who should be - Draxie doesn’t even know, running the CIA, creating entire new disciplines of thought, running the country, Ghostly helps her mom wash and cleans the trailer and spends her mind, her ravenous, razor-bright, vicious mind, defending him from everyone on the internet. Even from other fanghosts half the time when she points out that they’re being creepy as all fuck and look maybe you can justify using a character with that name but don’t pretend for one second that you know who he is, because he’s a person you’ll never know the inside of and you don’t get to act like you’re entitled to that. Draxie doesn’t know what Ghostly would do without him. Hate the world, while her mind flayed itself to pieces from the inside. Hate the world and all the injustice in it, and no-one to give a fuck about it. But there’s him. And she says, Oh, good, at least someone’s being sensible …

Have you found it different having girls in the house?” He cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah.” “Would you care to elaborate?” “Nope.” I looked up from my writing. “If you don’t elaborate, it’s going to be a very short article.” “Look, I’ve already gotten into it once tonight--” “Are you implying I’m hard to live with? Is that why you won’t comment further? Because you think I’ll be offended? I won’t be.” “No further comment.” I sighed, tempted to toss the recorder at him. “Okay, then, we’ll move on. What’s been the most difficult aspect of living with us?” There was silence, but it was the kind where you can sense someone wants to speak but doesn’t. Jason was so incredibly still, as though he was weighing consequences. “Not kissing you,” he finally said, quietly. My heart did this little stutter. I just stared at him as the recorder continued to run, searching for sound. My hand was shaking when I reached over and turned it off. “But you did kiss me, and you said it was a mistake.” “Because getting involved with you is a bad idea, on so many levels.” “Care to share one of those levels?” “I’m living in your house. Your parents are giving me a roof over my head. Your mom brings home extra takeout. I’m here only for the summer. Then I’m back at school.” He reached up, removed the ice pack from around his shoulder, and set it on the table. “And Mac? After we went to Dave and Bubba’s, he comes out to the mound and tells me he thinks you’re hot. And I know you like him, so I was willing to bunt.” “Bunt?” “Willing to sacrifice my happiness.” “You thought you’d be happy being with me?” “Are you kidding? You’re cute, easy to talk to. You love baseball. You make me smile, make me laugh. And we won’t even mention how much I liked kissing you.” Only he had mentioned it. And now I was thinking about it when I really shouldn’t be.

Motherhood often feels like a game of guilt management. Sometimes the guilt is overwhelming and debilitating. Sometimes just a low simmer, but it always feels right there. There is never any shortage of fuel to feed the beast, so the whole mechanism is constantly nourished to administer shame and a general feeling of incompetency. Add our carefully curated social media world, which not only affects our sense of success and failure, but also furnishes our children with an unprecedented brand of expectations, and BOOM – we’re the generation that does more for our kids than ever in history, yet feels the guiltiest. Virtually every one of my friends provides more than they had growing up, and still the mantra we buy into is ‘not enough, not enough, not enough.’ Meanwhile, if we developed the chops to tune out the ordinary complaints of children, we’d see mostly happy kids, loved and nurtured, cared for and treasured.

An hour later after I had waved Leigh and Neil off, and Cordelia was using the bathroom before they left, Isaac pulled me aside. “You have enough money, yeah?” he asked in a hushed tone while my mom tried to give Vivi a bottle. She was over-stimulated, and a little nap wouldn’t do her any harm. “Because if you need-” “I’m fine,” I cut him off. I tried not to sound irritated, but he must’ve picked up on it from my expression. “Ok,” He frowned. “But if you did need some money, you know you can ask me. Ok?” “Isaac,” I shook my head. “I’ve got this.” He raised one eyebrow. I had to laugh. “First Leigh, now you. Do I look like a pauper?” He shrugged. “I’ve seen you in that exact outfit more times than I care to remember, and your nails are raggedy. When last have you had a manicure? Your nails were always on point before.” I let out a low gasp of…playful outrage or acute embarrassment? “Whatever. You clown. I’m not on the poverty line just yet.

Come on,” I hooked my arm through Aphrodite’s and started to pull her to the Street Cats tent. “You haven’t been good enough to watch.” Before Aphrodite could argue, we were at the Street Cats booth, facing a beaming Sister Mary Angela. “Oh, good, Zoey and Aphrodite. I need the both of you.” The nun made a gracious gesture to the young family standing beside one of the kitten cages. “This is the Cronley family. They have decided to adopt both of the calico kittens. It’s so lovely that the two of them have found their forever homes together—they are unusually close, even for littermates.” “That’s great,” I said. “I’ll start on their paperwork.” “I’ll help you. Two cats—two sets of paperwork,” Aphrodite said. “We came with a note from our veterinarian,” the mom said. “I just knew we’d find our kitten tonight.” “Even though we didn’t expect to find two of them,” her husband added. He squeezed his wife’s shoulder and smiled down at her with obvious affection. “Well, we didn’t expect the twins, either,” his wife said, glancing over at the two girls who were still looking in the kitten cage and giggling at the fluffy calicos that would be joining their family. “That surprise turned out great, which is why I think the two kittens will be perfect as well,” said the dad. Like seeing Lenobia and Travis together—this family made my heart feel good. I had started to move to the makeshift desk with Aphrodite when one of the little girls asked, “Hey mommy, what are those black things?” Something in the child’s voice had me pausing, changing direction, and heading to the kitten cage. When I got there I instantly knew why. Within the cage the two calico kittens were hissing and batting at several large, black spiders. “Oh, yuck!” the mom said. “Looks like your school might have a spider problem.” “I know a good exterminator if you need a recommendation,” the dad said. “We’re gonna need a shit ton more than a good exterminator,” Aphrodite whispered as we stared into the kitten cage. “Yeah, uh, well, we don’t usually have bug issues here,” I babbled as disgust shivered up my back. “Eesh, Daddy! There are lots more of them.” The little blond girl was pointing at the back of the cage. It was so completely covered with spiders that it seemed to be alive with their seething movements. “Oh, my goodness!” Sister Mary Angela looked pale as she stared at the spiders that appeared to be multiplying. “Those things weren’t there moments ago.” “Sister, why don’t you take this nice family into the tent and get their paperwork started,” I said quickly, meeting the nun’s sharp gaze with my own steady one. “And send Damien out here to me. I can use his help to take care of this silly spider problem.” “Yes, yes, of course.” The nun didn’t hesitate. “Get Shaunee, Shaylin, and Stevie Rae,” I told Aphrodite, keeping my voice low. “You’re going to cast a circle in front of all of these

At six years old we didn't have any money; there was my mother, my brother and I. We had a deadbeat dad; left us before we were two, but she took us at Christmas-time to downtown Los Angeles. We had little cars going around in circles, it was pretty cool, and decorations in the window. She gave my brother and I a dime and told us, "Boys whole half of it each, give it to the man ringing the bell in the bucket." We put it in this bucket, we said, "Mom, why did we give that man a dime? That's like two soda pops." This is 1951, two soda pops, three candy bars. And mom said, "Boys, that's the Salvation Army. They take care of people that have no place to live and no food. And we don't have a lot of money, but we can afford a dime this year. Boys, always remember in life: give a little something to those in need, they'll always be somebody that's not as well-off as you are. No matter where you are or how far down you are, try and help someone along the way." It stuck with me.

When she finally reached it, she bent forward and looked through the peephole. Jay was grinning back at her from outside. Her heart leaped for a completely different reason. She set aside her crutches and quickly unbolted the door to open it. "What took you so long?" Her knee was bent and her ankle pulled up off the ground. She balanced against the doorjamb. "What d'you think, dumbass?" she retorted smartly, keeping her voice down so she wouldn't alert her parents. "You scared the crap out of me, by the way. My parents are already in bed, and I was all alone down here." "Good!" he exclaimed as he reached in and grabbed her around the waist, dragging her up against him and wrapping his arms around her. She giggled while he held her there, enjoying everything about the feel of him against her. "What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn't see you till tomorrow." "I wanted to show you something!" He beamed at her, and his enthusiasm reached out to capture her in its grip. She couldn't help smiling back excitedly. "What is it?" she asked breathlessly. He didn't release her; he just turned, still holding her gently in his arms, so that she could see out into the driveway. The first thing she noticed was the officer in his car, alert now as he kept a watchful eye on the two of them. Violet realized that it was late, already past eleven, and from the look on his face, she thought he must have been hoping for a quiet, uneventful evening out there. And then she saw the car. It was beautiful and sleek, painted a glossy black that, even in the dark, reflected the light like a polished mirror. Violet recognized the Acura insignia on the front of the hood, and even though she could tell it wasn't brand-new, it looked like it had been well taken care of. "Whose is it?" she asked admiringly. It was way better than her crappy little Honda. Jay grinned again, his face glowing with enthusiasm. "It's mine. I got it tonight. That's why I had to go. My mom had the night off, and I wanted to get it before..." He smiled down at her. "I didn't want to borrow your car to take you to the dance." "Really?" she breathed. "How...? I didn't even know you were..." She couldn't seem to find the right words; she was envious and excited for him all at the same time. "I know right?" he answered, as if she'd actually asked coherent questions. "I've been saving for...for forever, really. What do you think?" Violet smiled at him, thinking that he was entirely too perfect for her. "I think it's beautiful," she said with more meaning than he understood. And then she glanced back at the car. "I had no idea that you were getting a car. I love it, Jay," she insisted, wrapping her arms around his neck as he hoisted her up, cradling her like a small child." "I'd offer to take you for a test-drive, but I'm afraid that Supercop over there would probably Taser me with his stun gun. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow," he said, and without waiting for an invitation he carried her inside, dead bolting the door behind him. He settled down on the couch, where she'd been sitting by herself just moments before, without letting her go. There was a movie on the television, but neither of them paid any attention to it as Jay reclined, stretching out and drawing her down into the circle of his arms. They spent the rest of the night like that, cradled together, their bodies fitting each other perfectly, as they kissed and whispered and laughed quietly in the darkness. At some point Violet was aware that she was drifting into sleep, as her thoughts turned dreamlike, becoming disjointed and fuzzy and hard to hold on to. She didn't fight it; she enjoyed the lazy, drifting feeling, along with the warmth created by the cocoon of Jay's body wrapped protectively around her. It was the safest she'd felt in days...maybe weeks... And for the first time since she'd been chased by the man in the woods, her dreams were free from monsters.

Anything exciting with your music, dear?” her mom asks. At least she tries to look like she cares. “There’s a big show coming up at the end of the week. I have to prepare an original piece to perform.” Her brow furrows, and I can tell she’s unsure about it. “Sounds exciting,” her mom says with a smile. She tugs on her husband’s sleeve. “Doesn’t it, darling?” He shrugs her hand off his arm. “Sounds like a waste of time.” “Emily’s a talented musician,” I break in. I won’t let them put down her art. “You’ve never even heard her play.” “And you have?” he shoots back. “I might not be able to hear, but I can see the passion in her eyes and feel the joy in her heart when she’s playing, Mr. Madison.” I take a deep breath. “The crowd loves her. And she loves music. So, I love to watch her play.” I lean down and kiss her forehead. “I’ll be at your show, no matter what.” She smiles up at me and lays her head on my arm. “So will we,” her mother declares. I’m not going to hold my breath.

I could talk for hours about her beauty. Describe every freckle, every faint line, every inch of her body. Anastasia is like the sun, warm and blindingly beautiful. But to be honest, it's not what makes her my person. I'm in love with her determination and her commitment, her soft side, the way she manages to tell me exactly how she's feeling and why, no matter how uncomfortable it might make her at first. She's taught me communicating doesn't mean everything is perfect, it doesn't mean we don't disagree. It means we work through the imperfect bit together, and if we don't agree, we at least know why the other feels that way, even if it's not going to change our minds. Were still individuals, but we're individuals together, and I never knew relationships could be like this. Above all else, she cares about me and my happiness. She makes me study, she encourages me to talk about my mom; I could lie here and list all the things she does that push me to be the version of myself I want to be. She's my best friend.

Before talking to my mom about how out of control I felt, I'd spent the night crying alone in the park I grew up going to, chain smoking, because the guy that I liked hadn't texted me back. And even amidst my tears and Camels and repeated utterings of "I'm going to die alone," I knew I looked fucking crazy. I knew if the guy could see me reacting this way, he'd block my number. But I still couldn't stop, and that's what scared me. My emotions had become all-encompassing. Like the night I'd given my landlord notice, I couldn't see or feel anything other than the most extreme version of the worst-case scenario. Because here's the thing: in those polarizing moments of ups or downs, what you're feeling in that moment can't be reasoned with or told to slow down, let alone stop. I looked across the park at the swings my friends and I used to hang out on and wondered what the fuck was wrong with me. Why couldn't I feel the way I used to, once upon a time? I wanted to feel invincible the way I sometimes did -- or better yet, I wanted no feeling at all.

No one called him Fai except his grandmother. What sort of name is Frank? she would scold. That is not a Chinese name. I’m not Chinese, Frank thought, but he didn’t dare say that. His mother had told him years ago: There is no arguing with Grandmother. It’ll only make you suffer worse. She’d been right. And now Frank had no one except his grandmother. Thud. A fourth arrow hit the fence post and stuck there, quivering. “Fai,” said his grandmother. Frank turned. She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that Frank had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of gray hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank’s arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank thought she would yell, or hit him with the box. He’d never done anything this bad before. He’d never felt so angry. Grandmother’s face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank’s mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn’t imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren’t that different. He waited for Grandmother to explode. Maybe he’d be grounded and wouldn’t have to go to the funeral. He wanted to hurt her for being so mean all the time, for letting his mother go off to war, for scolding him to get over it. All she cared about was her stupid collection. “Stop this ridiculous behavior,” Grandmother said. She didn’t sound very irritated. “It is beneath you.” To Frank’s astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. “The car will be here soon,” she said. “We must talk.” Frank was dumbfounded. He looked more closely at the mahogany box. For a horrible moment, he wondered if it contained his mother’s ashes, but that was impossible. Grandmother had told him there would be a military burial. Then why did Grandmother hold the box

I didn’t want a fancy engagement ring or a gaudy wedding band; for me, a plain wedding ring was a perfect symbol. I like simple, especially in a wedding ring: it reminds you that love is about love, nothing else--not money, not appearances, not showing off. But it seemed almost impossible to convince anyone of that. Including Chris. He kept asking me what I wanted, and wouldn’t take “simple” for an answer. Then my mother got into the act. My grandmother had left her a diamond from a ring that she had had. Mom suggested that I use it as the centerpiece of an engagement ring. I told her thanks, but no thanks. “I don’t care whether you wear it as an engagement ring or a belly button ring,” she insisted after we went around a bit. “But I’m sending it.” She did. It was lovely. Chris and I ended up taking it to a local jewelry store. We found a wonderful setting we both loved and had the jeweler set the diamond in it. We got our wedding rings the same day, adding an engraving on the inside. “All of me,” Chris wrote on mine. “My love, my life,” I said on his.

Dear Natasha, if you are reading this, it means something has happened to your dad and me, and I am so sorry that I left you alone, baby, and I really hope you are happy. Happy Fourteenth Birthday, sweetheart. Everything you need to know is in the diaries and if you have any questions, I hope Mark and Anna will be able to answer them. I never meant to leave you like this, but your Dad and I made some very stupid and impulsive decisions and put your life in danger. I hope once you realize why we did what we did, you will forgive us. The world you are going to be exposed to is scary and I hope my diaries and weapons will help you navigate through the labyrinths of obstacles that you will face. They will find you soon, and when they do, remember to make smart and thoughtful decisions—decisions that will depend on your knowledge and wisdom and not feelings or family. Always remember that Luna, we and he are always looking out for you. Remember that I love you and I never meant to do what I did. I am sorry. And if you find him, please take care of each other. Love, Mom

Dear Natasha, if you are reading this, it means something has happened to your dad and me, and I am so sorry that I left you alone, baby, and I really hope you are happy. Happy Fourteenth Birthday, sweetheart. Everything you need to know is in the diaries and if you have any questions, I hope Mark and Anna will be able to answer them. I never meant to leave you like this, but your Dad and I made some very stupid and impulsive decisions and put your life in danger. I hope once you realize why we did 8 what we did, you will forgive us. The world you are going to be exposed to is scary and I hope my diaries and weapons will help you navigate through the labyrinths of obstacles that you will face. They will find you soon, and when they do, remember to make smart and thoughtful decisions—decisions that will depend on your knowledge and wisdom and not feelings or family. Always remember that Luna, we and he are always looking out for you. Remember that I love you and I never meant to do what I did. I am sorry. And if you find him, please take care of each other. Love, Mom

It’ll all work out.” This is directed to both of them, but neither takes it well. “You can’t raise a child flying by the seat of your pants, John. I know you want to do the right thing. You always do, but in this case, if the two of you can’t take care of it, you should think about other options. Have you considered adoption?” Sabrina’s face goes ashen at the implied insult that she’s not up to being a mother. I reach for her. “Sabrina, it’s going to work out⁠—” But she’s already darting out of the kitchen, a sob catching in her throat as she mutters something that sounds like bathroom and sorry. Her feet slap against the wood floors as she moves faster than an eight-month pregnant woman should. I jump out of my chair. “Sabrina⁠—” “Give her some time,” Mom says behind me. A door slams, and I flinch at the sharp sound. I start for the doorway and then stop in the middle of the kitchen and spin around. “Sabrina’s a good person,” I say gruffly. “And she’s going to make a good mother. And even if she was the worst, you’d still have to accept her because that kid in her stomach is half of me.

Every mother has a different story, though we tend to group them together. We like to think that partnered moms have it good and single moms have it rough, but the truth is that we’re a diverse bunch. Some single mothers have lots of child-free time because their kids are regularly in the custody of their fathers. Some seldom get a break. Some partnered mothers split child-care duties with their spouses in egalitarian ways; others might as well be alone. Some mothers of both varieties have parents, siblings, and friends who play active roles in their children’s lives in ways that significantly lighten the load. Others have to pay for every hour another person looks after their kids. Some mothers, single or partnered, can’t afford to pay anyone for anything. Some can and do. Others can and won’t. Some are aided financially by parents, or trust funds, or inheritances; others are entirely on their own. The reality is that, regardless of the circumstances, most moms are alternately blissed out by their love for their children and utterly overwhelmed by the spectacular amount of sacrifice they require.

The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing. A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback? The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at. I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting. It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.” “Emma, run!” Mom yells. Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing. Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.” Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another. I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that. Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs. He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack. Mom has never been girlie. Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.” Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap.

What better way to lose that hangover headache than get drunk again? Oh, the joys of being Canadian with socialized health care and legal drinking age of nineteen. After a year (officially) honing that skill, I imbibed at an Olympic level. The red wine on the modular coffee table gleamed in a shaft of sunlight like its position had been ordained by the gods. I snatched up the crystal decanter, sloshing the liquid into the glass conveniently placed next to it. Once in a while, a girl could actually catch a break. I fanned myself with one hand. The myriad of lit candles seemed a bit much for Ari’s romantic encounter, but wine drinking trumped curiosity so I chugged the booze back. My entire body cheered as the cloyingly-sweet alcohol hit my system, though I hoped it wasn’t Manischewitz because hangovers on that were a bitch. I’d slugged back half the contents when I saw my mom on the far side of the room clutch her throat, eyes wide with horror. Not her usual, “you need an intervention” horror. No, her expression indicated I’d reached a whole new level of fuck-up. “Nava Liron Katz,” she gasped in full name outrage.

Look, nobody’s parents are perfect,” he says finally. “I mean, Niko’s parents let him transition when he was like nine, and they’ve always been super cool about it, but his mom still won’t let him tell his grandpa. And she’s constantly bugging him to move back to Long Island because she wants him to be closer to the family, but he likes it in the city, and they fight about it all the time.” “I didn’t know that.” “Yeah, but at least she’s trying, you know? People like my parents, though, like your mom’s parents—that’s another level. I mean, I wanted to go to art school, and my parents were like, great, you can sketch buildings, and then you can take over the firm one day, and no, we’re not paying for therapy. And when I couldn’t do what they wanted, that was just it. They cut off the money and told me not to come home. They care about how it looks. They care about what they can circle jerk about with their idiot fucking Ivy League friends. But the minute you need something—like, actually need something—they’ll let you know just how much of a disappointment you are for asking.” August has never thought of it quite that way.

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. I refer to the case of Van Jones, the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he got caught on tape saying Republicans are assholes. And they call it news! Now, I know I'm supposed to be all reinjected with yes-we-can-fever after the big health-care speech, and it was a great speech--when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face. It bothers me that Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like dropped "end-of-life counseling" from health-care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page. Crazy morons make up things for Obama to do, and he does it. Same thing with the speech to schools this week, where the president attempted merely to tell children to work hard and wash their hands, and Cracker Nation reacted as if he was trying to hire the Black Panthers to hand out grenades in homeroom. Of course, the White House immediately capitulated. "No students will be forced to view the speech" a White House spokesperson assured a panicked nation. Isn't that like admitting that the president might be doing something unseemly? What a bunch of cowards. If the White House had any balls, they'd say, "He's giving a speech on the importance of staying in school, and if you jackasses don't show it to every damn kid, we're cutting off your federal education funding tomorrow." The Democrats just never learn: Americans don't really care which side of an issue you're on as long as you don't act like pussies When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was paying them a compliment. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they're in the minority, as opposed to the Democrats , who can't seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and Bruce Springsteen. I love Obama's civility, his desire to work with his enemies; it's positively Christlike. In college, he was probably the guy at the dorm parties who made sure the stoners shared their pot with the jocks. But we don't need that guy now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, there are some people who are never going to like you. That's why they voted for the old guy and Carrie's mom. You're not going to win them over. Stand up for the seventy percent of Americans who aren't crazy. And speaking of that seventy percent, when are we going to actually show up in all this? Tomorrow Glenn Beck's army of zombie retirees descending on Washington. It's the Million Moron March, although they won't get a million, of course, because many will be confused and drive to Washington state--but they will make news. Because people who take to the streets always do. They're at the town hall screaming at the congressman; we're on the couch screaming at the TV. Especially in this age of Twitters and blogs and Snuggies, it's a statement to just leave the house. But leave the house we must, because this is our last best shot for a long time to get the sort of serious health-care reform that would make the United States the envy of several African nations.

You're trying to kiss Emma?" Rayna says, incredulous. "But you haven't even sifted yet, Galen." "Sifted?" Emma asks. Toraf laughs. "Princess, why don't we go for a swim? You know that storm probably dredged up all sorts of things for your collection." Galen nods a silent thank you to Toraf as he ushers his sister into the living room. For once, he's thankful for Rayna's hoard of human relics. He almost had to drag her to shore by her fin to get past all the old shipwrecks along this coast. "We'll split up, cover more ground," Rayna's saying as they leave. Galen feels Emma looking at him, but he doesn't acknowledge her. Instead, he watches the beach as Toraf and Rayna disappear in the waves, hand in hand. Galen shakes his head. No one should feel sorry for Toraf. He knows just exactly what he's doing. Something Galen wishes he could say of himself. Emma puts a hand on his arm-she won't be ignored. "What is that? Sifted?" Finally he turns, meets her gaze. "It's like dating to humans. Only, it goes a lot faster. And it has more of a purpose than humans sometimes do when they date." "What purpose?" "Sifting is our way of choosing a life mate. When a male turns eighteen, he usually starts sifting to find himself a companion. For a female whose company he will enjoy and ho will be suitable for producing offspring." "Oh," she says, thoughtful. "And...you haven't sifted yet?" He shakes his head, painfully aware of her hand still on his arm. She must realize it at the same time, because she snatches it away. "Why not?" she says, clearing her throat. "Are you not old enough to sift?" "I'm old enough," he says softly. "How old are you, exactly?" "Twenty." He doesn't mean to lean closer to her-or does he? "Is that normal? That you haven't sifted yet?" He shakes his head. "It's pretty much standard for males to be mated by the time they turn nineteen. But my responsibilities as ambassador would take me away from my mate too much. It wouldn't be fair to her." "Oh, right. Keeping a watch on the humans," she says quickly. "You're right. That wouldn't be fair, would it?" He expects another debate. For her to point out, as she did last night, that if there were more ambassadors, he wouldn't have to shoulder the responsibility alone-and she would be right. But she doesn't debate. In fact, she drops the subject altogether. Backing away from him, she seems intent on widening the space he'd closed between them. She fixes her expression into nonchalance. "Well, are you ready to help me turn into a fish?" she says, as if they'd been talking about this the whole time. He blinks. "That's it?" "What?" "No more questions about sifting? No lectures about appointing more ambassadors?" "It's not my business," she says with an indifferent shrug. "Why should I care whether or not you mate? And it's not like I'll be sifting-or sifted. After you teach me to sprout a fin, we'll be going our separate ways. Besides, you wouldn't care if I dated any humans, right?" With that, she leaves him there staring after her, mouth hanging open. At the door, she calls over her shoulder, "I'll meet you on the beach in fifteen minutes. I just have to call my mom and check in and change into my swimsuit." She flips her hair to the side before disappearing up the stairs. He turns to Rachel, who's hand-drying a pan to death, eyebrows reaching for her hairline. He shrugs to her in askance, mouth still ajar. She sighs. "Sweet pea, what did you expect?" "Something other than that.

You get surprised by looking back and wondering when you started not allowing anyone to approach you, to decide that deep down you did not care about anything. And surprise: all you manage to remember is a chain of small troubles. No earthquake, no gigantic traumatic event, as in the movies, where a significant event explains a whole personality. No dad or mom who left home, no surprised ex-husband in bed with your best friend. Rather: trifles of children, if anything. Minutiae, something that is almost laughable. Very small movements of indifference, of continental drift, that did not really move the floor at all, but that, millimeter after millimeter, they recorded inside you the certainty that it is better not to completely support yourself, because the floor is not stable, and You must always be ready to jump before a crack in the ground opens. And only now that, for a single night, you granted yourself a truce, you let yourself go and relaxed, only now that you finally let someone come to you and - How incredible! - not only did you not die, but you liked it more than what you could imagine, only now that you realize that until this moment everything was terribly exhausting.

The team is showing its appreciation to the host families by taking them to a water park on Sunday. I know Mac is going out of town, but I thought you might still want to go. I mean, not as a date or anything. I’m going to invite the whole family.” “You don’t have to work Sunday?” “I got scheduled off.” “Sounds like fun. We could pack a picnic lunch--” “I’ll take care of that. As my thank you. All you have to do is bring yourself.” “And a bathing suit.” He grinned. “Yeah, and a bathing suit.” “And a towel. And suntan lotion…” “Maybe it’d be simpler if I just said I’ll take care of the tickets and eats.” “Okay, but I’ll go ahead and warn you not to take it personally that Mom and Dad aren’t really into water parks. It’s that whole not-using-the-exercise-equipment-as-intended thing Dad has going.” His grin grew. “I won’t take it personally.” “Okay, then, Sunday.” As though suddenly realized how intimate it seemed to be in my bedroom, he cleared his throat and took a step back. He gave my room one more look and took another step back. “It’s amazing what a room can reveal.” Then he walked down the hallway and knocked on Tiffany’s door. I wondered what he’d discover looking into her room.

I was unhappy there and going through a rough transition, so I was desperate for any friend I could find that I could talk to. I thought that's what he was. We had this secret from my mom, who I didn't like much at the time. It was a harmless secret, so I didn't feel bad about it. All we did was go to the movies and hang out doing fun things all day. It wasn't until much later that the warning signs began, but I was still too young and stupid to see them for what they were at the time. Basically, he was patient as he built up the trust between us. He became a close friend and convinced me that he was on my side somehow. He took total advantage of my ignorance and totally betrayed me a few years later, when he slept with me. After my mom found out, she went psychotic and all she gave a fuck about was what had been done to her. She didn't care about anything except for how hurt she was by what had happened. She blamed me and him equally, telling me that sixteen years old was old enough to know better. Even though I never initiated a goddamn thing with him, and never would have. Even though it happened in the apartment she and I had gotten together, that he was not supposed to be staying in.

Hey!” a voice calls out behind us, and we turn to find Ryder standing beside the row of orange lockers outside Mr. Jepsen’s classroom. I have no idea why he’s out of class early, and I don’t care. “I just heard the announcement--congrats.” “Thanks,” Morgan chirps. “This is epic, right? Both of us.” Ryder nods, his gaze shifting from Morgan to me. I duck my head, averting my eyes. This is worse than when I hated him, I realize. At least then, it wasn’t awkward. I could just ignore him and go about my business. Now I feel all queasy and mad and breathless and guilty. I need to get away from him. Fast. Mercifully, Morgan glances down at her watch. “We gotta get going. There’s a meeting in the media center.” “Right,” Ryder says. “But, uh…Jemma, could I talk to you for a second after school today? Before practice, maybe?” My gaze snaps up to meet his. “I…um, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” “I’ll be quick,” he says. “Actually, maybe I’ll come over to your house after dinner. That way I can say hi to Nan.” “She’s…really not up to visitors.” “Really?” He fixes me with a stare, one brow raised in disbelief. “’Cause your mom said just the opposite.” Crap. Now what? I’m out of excuses. Besides, the last thing I want to do is pique Morgan’s curiosity. “Oh, fine. Whatever.” “Great. See you then.” He turns and heads back into the classroom without a backward glance. I have no clue what he wants to talk about. Things are already uncomfortable enough between us as it is. No use making it worse by discussing things that don’t need to be discussed. We made out, even though I hadn’t bothered to break up with Patrick first. It was a mistake--a big mistake. End of story. The memory of that night hits me full force--his shirt was off; mine was close to it. My cheeks flare with sudden heat as I recall the feel of his fingertips skimming up my sides, moving beneath my bra as he kissed me like no one’s kissed me before. Ho-ly crap. Stop. “What was that about?” Morgan asks me as we continue on our way. “He was acting kinda weird, wasn’t he?” “I didn’t notice,” I say with a shrug, going for nonchalance. “Anyway, we should hurry. We’re probably late already.” “Maybe he wants you to ask him to escort you,” she teases, hurrying her step. I match my pace to hers, needing to take two steps for every one of hers. “Yeah, right,” I say breathlessly. “Hey, you never know.” She looks at me and winks. “Weirder things have happened.” Oh, man. She has no idea.

Princess, stop walking and just talk to me.” “Why? So you can let me know again how much of a slut you think I am?” “I don’t,” he let out a half-growl, half-sigh, “I don’t think you’re a slut. You just caught me on a bad day.” “Let me guess Chase, you hurt me because you were just so damn mad … am I right?” I threw his line from a month ago back in his face and he paled. His hand came up and brushed my hair back, holding it away from my face as he stared into my eyes, “This is why I told you I would never be good enough for you, all I do is hurt you Princess.” “This isn’t about you being, or not being good enough for me. I just want to be your friend, and you’re making that impossible.” Friend, he mouthed and scratched his head before grabbing a fistful of hair, “Okay, fine, we’re friends. But I need you to stop approaching me around my house and at school.” “What? Then that puts us exactly where we’ve been the last three weeks, that doesn’t change anything.” “It needs to be that way.” He released both his hair and mine at the same time and turned away for a second before facing me again, “Sundays are the only day I get you. Those are the only days when you’re here with me.” I opened my mouth but he stopped me, “No, I know you’re not here for me … but you’re here. And he’s not.” He bent his knees so we were eye to eye, “I need these days with you Harper. But every other day, you’re his and it’s not a good idea for us to be around each other then. So stay away. Please.” “Chase …” “If you think acting like you don’t exist isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done, you’re wrong. I hate not talking to you, I hate not bickering like we’re an old married couple and I hate not spending every day right next to you. But this is how it has to be, Brandon hates me, and Princess trust me when I say he has every reason to. So if after everything I’ve done to you, you’ll still even consider being my friend, then it has to be Sundays only.” “Brandon won’t care if we’re friends.” Okay I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. He smiled and shook his head, “I know you’re not that naïve. Now go have lunch with Mom and Bree, then get your ass back here so I can have my few stolen hours with you.” I walked toward the entryway but stopped after a few feet, “Chase?” “Yeah Princess?” Looking over my shoulder, I held his gaze, “Will you please stop hurting me … in every way?” Chase closed the distance and pulled me into a tight hug, “Go eat sweetheart.” That

On Becoming a Poet in the 1950s" There was love and there was trees. Either you could stay inside and probe your emotions or you could go outside and keenly observe nature. Describe the sheen on carapaces, the effect of breeze on grass. What's the fag doing now? Dad would say. Picking the nose of his heart? Wanking off on a daffodil? He's not homosexual, Mom would retort, using her apron as a potholder to remove the apple brown betty from the oven. He's sensitive. He cares. He wishes to impart values and standards to an indifferent world. Wow! said Dad, stomping off to the pantry for another scotch. Two poets in the family. Ain't I a lucky duck? As fate would have it, I became one of your tweedy English teachers, what Dad would call a daffodil-wanker, and Mom ended up doing needlepoint, seventy-two kneelers for St. Fred's before she expired of the heart broken on the afternoon that Dad roared off with the Hell's Angels. We heard a little from Big Sur. A beard. Tattoos. A girlfriend named Strawberry. A boyfriend named Thor. Bars and pot and coffeehouses, stuff like that. After years of quotation by younger poets, admiration but no real notice, Dad is making the anthologies now. Critics cite his primal rage, the way he nails Winnetka.

People just have an affair, or even entire relationships. They break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with because each person had their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved because it hurts too much. Even getting laid, I actually don’t do that because I will miss of the person the most mundane things, like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy, but when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk or ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk. Little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details. Like, I remember the way your beard has a bit of red in it and how the sun was making it glow that morning right before you left. I remembered that, and I missed it. I'm really crazy, right?”.

Jason pulled me into the driveway, turned off the car, and kissed me. Then it got kinda weird. It was like: Where should our last kiss be? In the car? At the door? Inside the foyer? Outside my bedroom? I just didn’t know. I’d avoided giving any real thought to how I would go about having a boyfriend living in my house. I mean, I’d never planned for the guy I fell for to be living in my house, across the hallway. What if my parents figured it out? We would have to be so careful. Jason drew back from the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. “You know I could kiss you all night,” he said. “Me, too.” I was such a romantic, but I was also nervous, because I knew no way we were going to be kissing in my parents’ house all night. “But I’m feeling kinda weird about it,” he said. “That whole liking-the-daughter-of-the-people-who-are-giving-you-a-roof-over-your-head thing?” “Yeah.” “I know. If my parents caught us…” “Yeah.” “Maybe we need house rules.” He pulled back. “Like what?” “No kissing inside the house.” “Ever?” “Well, at least not when Mom and Dad are home. Dad jokes about putting potential boyfriends through an interview process, but he may be serious. It’s hard to tell sometimes with him.” “It felt like he was interviewing me that first night.” “Not to be my boyfriend.” He sighed. “Okay. I see your point.

Being capable and productive feels somewhat beside the point these days. Either you're popular, and therefore exciting and successful and a winner, or you're unpopular, and therefore unimportant and invisible and devoid of redeeming value. Being capable was much more celebrated in the 1970s when I was growing up. People had real jobs that lasted a lifetime back then, and many workers seemed to embrace the promise that if you worked steadily and capably for years, you would be rewarded for it. Even without those rewards, working hard and knowing how to do things seemed like worthwhile enterprises in themselves. "Can she back a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?" my mom used to sing while rolling out pie crust with her swift, dexterous hands. Sexist as its message may have been, the modern version of that song might be worse. It would center around taking carefully staged and filtered photos of your pretty face next to a piece of cherry pie and posting it to your Instagram account, to be rewarded with two thousand red hearts for your efforts. Making food, tasting it, sharing it, understanding yourself as a human who can do things - all of this is flattened down to nothing, now, since only one or two people would ever know about it. Better to feed two thousand strangers an illusion than engage in real work to limited ends.

The market is the first force that has led to the shriveling of citizenship. The classic case is the Wal-Mart effect. A town has a Main Street of small businesses and mom-and-pop shops. The shopkeepers and their customers have relationships that are not just about economic transactions but are set in a context of family, neighborhood, people, and place. Then Wal-Mart comes to town. It offers lower prices. It offers convenience. Because of its scale and might in the marketplace, it can compensate its workers stingily and drive out competition.   The presence of Wal-Mart leads the townspeople to think of themselves primarily as consumers, and to shed other aspects of their identities, like being neighbors or parishioners or friends. As consumers first, they gravitate to the place with the lowest prices. Wal-Mart thrives. The small businesses struggle and lay off workers. They cut back on their sponsorship of tee ball, their support of the food bank. As the mom-and-pops give way to the big box, and commutes become necessary, lives become more frenetic and stressful. People see each other less often. The sense of mutual obligation that townsfolk once shared starts to evaporate. Microhabits of caring and sociability fall away. In this tableau of libertarian citizenship, market forces triumph and everyone gets better deals—yet everyone is now in many senses poorer.

I pushed Mom off me and slapped Audrey across her wet face. I know! But I was just so mad. “I pray for you,” Audrey said. “Pray for yourself,” I said. “My mother’s too good for you and those other mothers. You’re the one everyone hates. Kyle is a juvie who doesn’t do sports or any extracurriculars. The only friends he has are because he gives them drugs and because he’s funny when he’s making fun of you. And your husband is a drunk who has three DUIs but he gets off because he knows the judge, and all you care about is that nobody finds out, but it’s too late because Kyle tells the whole school everything.” Audrey said quickly, “I am a Christian woman so I will forgive that.” “Give me a break,” I said. “Christians don’t talk the way you talked to my mother.” I got into the car, shut the door, turned off Abbey Road, and just started whimpering. I was sitting in an inch of water, but I didn’t care. The reason I was so scared had nothing to do with a sign or a stupid mudslide or because Mom and I didn’t get invited to stupid Whidbey Island, like we’d ever want to go anywhere with those jerks in a million years, but because I knew, I just knew, that now everything was going to be different. Mom got in and shut the door. “You’re supercool,” she said. “You know that?” “I hate her,” I said. What I didn’t say, because I didn’t need to, because it was implied, and really, I can’t tell you why, because we’d never kept secrets from him before, but me and Mom both just understood: we weren’t going to tell Dad.

I think one of the reasons my family survived its difficult times and is so close today is because we are always laughing at one another’s faults and mistakes, and despite whatever injustices are done, we have a good time doing it. We aren’t afraid to poke fun at one another and no one ever takes it personal for long. My brothers and I are highly competitive and world-class trash-talkers, and if you ever walk in while we are playing cards or dominoes--just like our games with Granny and Pa--you probably would think someone is fixing to die. Our neighbor, who was about my parents’ age, came over to our house once looking for my mom. She found my brothers and me playing the card game hearts. She offered to be the fourth. But about midway through the second hand, we looked up and she had tears streaming down her face. She threw her cards in the middle of the table, declared she didn’t want to play anymore, and left the house. We were a bit miffed about it and didn’t realize until later that our trash talking had led to her emotional exit. Another time, I brought a girl from high school down to my parents’ house for supper and cards because she told me she was quite the spades player. Halfway through the game, she was crying hysterically. Her sister later stood nose to nose with me and gave me quite the tongue-lashing. I came to realize that our banter was a bit extreme to people outside of our family. Maybe that is one of the reasons I married a woman who couldn’t care less about winning or losing any game.

Can I ask you something?" Jamie reaches his hand across his chest and scratches his neck. When I nod, he asks, "What do you see when you look at pictures of yourself?" I swallow. Someone who looks too Asian to be pretty. Because being Asian means I can never be as pretty as the other girls at school—the girls like Mom. I know this because people like Henry and Adam and Mom keep telling me I don't have the right face. I know this because when I look in the mirror, I see what they see—a girl who doesn't belong here. A girl who isn't good enough. But I can't tell him that—he wouldn't understand. "Okay. Well, what do you wish you saw?" He tries again when I remain quiet for so long. Someone with bigger eyes. Lighter hair. A smaller nose. "Someone who looks more like everyone else," I say at last. Jamie runs his thumbs over the edge of his camera. "Do you know how many people would love to have your face? Yeah, you don't look like everyone else in town, but that's special. You stand out because you're unique, and people literally never stop trying to be unique." I twist my mouth. "But I don't want to stand out—not at all. I want to be normal. I want to feel like I belong in the same world as everyone else." If I looked like everyone else, it would probably be easier to make friends. I might even have a mom who cared. That last part really stings. "You might feel that way now, but it isn't like that forever. Wait until you see what the world has to offer besides that small town and your high school. People are different out there.

sighed. “I can’t say that you weren’t expected.” “I’m just going to be walking around here and taking some measurements. It says here… you own eighty acres? That is one of the most gorgeous mansions I have ever seen,” he rambled on. “It must have cost you millions. I could never afford such a beauty. Well, heck, for that matter I couldn’t afford the millions of dollars in taxes a house like this would assess, let alone such a pricey property. Do you have an accountant?” Zo opened her mouth to respond, but he continued, “For an estate this size, I would definitely have one.” “I do have an accountant,” she cut in, with frustration. “Furthermore, I have invested a lot of money bringing this mansion up to speed. You can see my investment is great.” “Of course, it would be. The fact of the matter is, Mrs. Kane, a lot of people are in over their heads in property. You still have to pay up, or we take the place. Well, I’ll get busy now. Pay no mind to me.” He walked on, taking notes. “Clairrrrre!” Zo called as soon as she entered the house. “Bring your cell phone!” Two worry-filled months went by and many calls were made to lawyers, before Zoey finally picked one that made her feel confident. And then the letter came with the totals and the due date. “There is no way we can pay this, Mom, even if we sold off some of our treasures, because a lot of them are contracted to museums anyway. I am feeling awfully poor all of a sudden, and insecure.” “Yes, and I did some research, thinking I’d be forced to sell. It’s unlikely that anyone else around here can afford this place. It looks like they are going to get it all; they aren’t just charging for this year. What we have here is a value about equal to a little country. And all the new construction sites for housing developments suddenly popping up on this side of the river, does not help. Value is going up.” Zo put her head in her hands. “Ohhh, oh, oh, oh!” “Yeah, bring out the ice-cream and cake. I need comforting,” sighed Claire. The cell phone rang. “Yes, tonight? You guys have become pretty good to us, haven’t you?! You know, Bob, Mom and I thought we were just going to pig out on ice cream and cake. We found out we are losing this estate and are going to be poor again and we are bummed out.” There was a long pause. “No, that’s okay, I understand. Yeah, okay, bye.” “Well?” Zo ask dryly. “He was appropriately sorry, and he got off the phone fast, saying he remembered he had other business to take care of. Do you want to cry? I do…” “I’ll get the cake and dish the ice cream. You make our tea and we’ll cry together.” A pitter patter began to drum on the window. “Rain again. It seems softer though, dear.” “I thought you said this was going to be a softer rain!” It started to pour. “At least this is not a thunder storm… What was that?” “Thunder,” replied Claire, unmoved and resigned. An hour had gone by when there was a rapping at the door. “People rarely use the doorbell, ever notice that?” Zo asked on the way to the door. She opened it to reveal two wet guys holding a pizza, salad, soft drink, and giant chocolate chip cookies in a plastic container. In a plastic

When you fell sick as a kid, your mom wouldn’t sleep the entire night. You would even catch her secretly crying. As an adult, living away from home, you find yourself standing alone in your kitchen at 1 a.m., trying to find a medicine that would make your fever disappear. Your roommate is asleep and you don’t want to wake them up. You want to call your mom but realize that while it will give you peace, it’ll give her anxiety. You realize you can hang out with people all day long only to stand in the middle of your kitchen at night all alone, trying to find medicines. You haven’t had dinner, but nobody cares. You haven’t slept properly in days, but nobody has noticed. You’ve been perpetually anxious, but nobody has been able to dissect the sadness in your eyes. You go to the doctor’s clinic alone for the first time and a tear drops from your eyes. This is your rendezvous with loneliness. You’re away from home, constantly trying to feel at home. You realize there are people who love you, but nobody in the world loves you to the point where your illness makes their heart heavy. Nobody feels sick in the gut and has tears in their eyes when you’re unwell. You wonder if it’s even possible to find someone like that—someone who is terrified of seeing you in pain. You check your phone and realize you have ten missed calls from Mom, your home. You call back, and she picks up and says, ‘Is everything okay? I had a bad dream last night.’ You respond by saying, ‘Yes, Mom, I’m all right’. It’s funny how adulting makes you yearn for things you kept taking for granted all your life.

To the Mysterious Miss F! Ugh—I’m already regretting starting this letter that way. But I don’t have any extra paper, and crossing it out would look worse, so… I guess we’ll just have to add it to my list of mistakes. And I know you’re going to think that everything I’m about to say should also be on that long list of Keefe Fails. But I swear—that’s NOT what this is. I’m not trying to fix everything or save everyone this time. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t hurt anyone. I can’t tell you more than that without putting you in danger, so just… trust me when I say that the powers my mom gave me are super bad. There seriously aren’t strong enough words to explain how horrible they are. And I CAN’T control them—just like I can’t stop my mom from forcing me to use them. So… this is the only way. I don’t want to do it. But I have to. And I’m not going to ask you not to hate me. In fact, it might be better if you do, because I need you to PROMISE that you won’t try to find me. My mom will be waiting for you to track me down—and since I know how stubborn you are, I want to make sure you understand who you’d be putting in danger. I’m going to be hiding the same way the Black Swan hid you. That’s why you have to stay away. Well, there are lots of reasons. So again, please, just… trust me, okay? And since this is the last time I’ll ever talk to you, I just… I want to say that I’m really going to miss you. You mean a lot to me, Foster. More than you’ll ever know. Please be careful. Please be happy. And PLEASE forget all about me. It’ll be better for everyone that way. You’ll see. Love, Keefe

Jay's downstairs waiting." With her father on one side, and the handrail on the other, Violet descended the stairs as if she were floating. Jay stood at the bottom, watching her, frozen in place like a statue. His black suit looked as if it had been tailored just for him. His jacket fell across his strong shoulders in a perfect line, tapering at his narrow waist. The crisp white linen shirt beneath stood out in contrast against the dark, finely woven wool. He smiled appreciatively as he watched her approach, and Violet felt her breath catch in her throat at the striking image of flawlessness that he presented. "You...are so beautiful," he whispered fervently as he strode toward her, taking her dad's place at her arm. She smiled sheepishly up at him. "So are you." Her mom insisted on taking no fewer than a hundred pictures of the two of them, both alone and together, until Violet felt like her eyes had been permanently damaged by the blinding flash. Finally her father called off her mom, dragging her away into the kitchen so that Violet and Jay could have a moment alone together. "I meant it," he said. "You look amazing." She shook her head, not sure what to say, a little embarrassed by the compliment. "I got you something," he said to her as he reached inside his jacket. "I hope you don't mind, it's not a corsage." Violet couldn't have cared less about having flowers to pin on her dress, but she was curious about what he had brought for her. She watched as he dragged out the moment longer than he needed to, taking his time to reveal his surprise. "I got you this instead." He pulled out a black velvet box, the kind that holds fine jewelry. It was long and narrow. She gasped as she watched him lift the lid. Inside was a delicate silver chain, and on it was the polished outline of a floating silver heart that drifted over the chain that held it. Violet reached out to touch it with her fingertip. "It's beautiful," she sighed. He lifted the necklace from the box and held it out to her. "May I?" he asked. She nodded, her eyes bright with excitement as he clasped the silver chain around her bare throat. "Thank you," she breathed, interlacing her hand into his and squeezing it meaningfully. She reluctantly used the crutches to get out to the car, since there were no handrails for her to hold on to. She left like they ruined the overall effect she was going for. Jay's car was as nice on the inside as it was outside. The interior was rich, smoky gray leather that felt like soft butter as he helped her inside. Aside from a few minor flaws, it could have passed for brand-new. The engine purred to life when he turned the key in the ignition, something that her car had never done. Roar, maybe-purr, never. She was relieved that her uncle hadn't ordered a police escort for the two of them to the dance. She had half expected to see a procession of marked police cars, lights swirling and sirens blaring, in the wake of Jay's sleek black Acura. Despite sitting behind the wheel of his shiny new car, Jay could scarcely take his eyes off her. His admiring gaze found her over and over again, while he barely concentrated on the road ahead of him. Fortunately they didn't have far to go.

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

When everyone is seated, Galen uses a pot holder to remove the lid from the huge speckled pan in the center of the table. And I almost upchuck. Fish. Crabs. And...is that squid hair? Before I can think of a polite version of the truth-I'd rather eat my own pinky finger than seafood-Galen plops the biggest piece of fish on my plate, then scoops a mixture of crabmeat and scallops on top of it. As the steam wafts its way to my nose, my chances of staying polite dwindle. The only think I can think of is to make it look like I'm hiccupping instead of gagging. What did I smell earlier that almost had me salivating? It couldn't have been this. I fork the fillet and twist, but it feels like twisting my own gut. Mush it, dice it, mix it all up. No matter what I do, how it looks, I can't bring it near my mouth. A promise is a promise, dream or no dream. Even if real fish didn't save me in Granny's pond, the fake ones my imagination conjured up sure comforted me until help arrived. And now I'm expected to eat their cousins? No can do. I set the fork down and sip some water. I sense Galen is watching. Out of my peripheral, I see the others shoveling the chum into their faces. But not Galen. He sits still, head tilted, waiting for me to take a bite first. Of all the times to be a gentleman! What happened to the guy who sprawled me over his lap like a three-year-old just a few minutes ago? Still, I can't do it. And they don't even have a dog for me to feed under the table, which used to be my go-to plan at Chloe's grandmother's house. One time Chloe even started a food fight to get me out of it. I glance around the table, but Rayna's the only person I'd aim this slop at. Plus, I'd risk getting the stuff on me, which is almost as bad as in me. Galen nudges me with his elbow. "Aren't you hungry? You're not feeling bad again, are you?" This gets the others' attention. The commotion of eating stops. Everyone stares. Rayna, irritated that her gluttony has been interrupted. Toraf smirking like I've done something funny. Galen's mom wearing the same concerned look he is. Can I lie? Should I lie? What if I'm invited over again, and they fix seafood because I lied about it just this once? Telling Galen my head hurts doesn't get me out of future seafood buffets. And telling him I'm not hungry would be pointless since my stomach keeps gurgling like an emptying drain. No, I can't lie. Not if I ever want to come back here. Which I do. I sigh and set the fork down. "I hate seafood," I tell him. Toraf's sudden cough startles me. The sound of him choking reminds me of a cat struggling with a hair ball. I train my eyes on Galen, who has stiffened to a near statue. Jeez, is this all his mom knows how to make? Or have I just shunned the Forza family's prize-winning recipe for grouper? "You...you mean you don't like this kind of fish, Emma?" Galen says diplomatically. I desperately want to nod, to say, "Yes, that's it, not this kind of fish"-but that doesn't get me out of eating the crabmeat-and-scallop mountain on my plate. I shake my head. "No. Not just this kind of fish. I hate it all. I can't eat any of it. Can hardly stand to smell it." Way to go for the jugular there, stupid! Couldn't I just say I don't care for it? Did I have to say I hate it? Hate even the smell of it? And why am I blushing? It's not a crime to gag on seafood. And for God's sakes, I won't eat anything that still has its eyeballs.

"You’re the first girl I’ve met around here who’s real, and who cares about things and likes to do things. But half the time, you decide the conversation’s over in mid-sentence and take off. Or you ignore me when we’re at school and other people are around, and you tell your cousin that there’s nothing going on between us and that you’re not interested me at all." "Me? What about you?" "What about me?" "You’re the master of saying one word and disappearing. And you have all these things that you care about, like Bea and Oliver and surfing and acting, but most people would never know that. Your father thinks you can’t wait to be a banker and all your friends think you don’t care about anything. And meanwhile you’ve gone from a person who acted like he cared about me to a professional bodyguard doing a favor for my aunt. I mean, what is the whole Secret Service act about?” His jaw was clenched. “I don’t want anything to you.” “Nothing’s happened to me.” “Oh, like when you got hit by a car?” “It didn’t hit me.” “But I should have been there. I got caught up, talking to Mr. Dudley, and I was late, and I let you stand out there all alone.” “Quinn, that makes no sense.” “I just don’t want it to happen again.” “What don’t you want to happen?” “I don’t want anyone I care about to get hurt on my watch.” That shut us both up. We were silent for a while, each looking out our respective windows as we sped along the highway. And then I figured it out. “This is about your mom, isn’t it?” He just sort of shrugged. And then he said, “Probably.” I moved closer and leaned into him. After a moment he put his arm around my shoulder. And we just stayed like that, not talking, the rest of the way to the airport.

My mother never seemed to listen to much music, but she loved Barbara Streisand, counting The Way We Were and Yentl as two of her favorite films. I remembered how we used to sing the song "Tell Him" together, and skipped through the album until I found it on track four. "Remember this?" I laughed, turning up the volume. It's a duet between Babe and Celine Dion, two powerhouse divas joining together for one epic track. Celine plays the role of a young woman afraid to confess her feelings to the man she loves, and Barbara is her confidant, encouraging her to take the plunge. "I'm scared, so afraid to show I care... Will he think me weak, if I tremble when I speak?" Celine begins. When I was a kid my mother used to quiver her lower lip for dramatic effect when she sang the word "tremble." We would trade verses in the living room. I was Barbara and she was Celine, the two of us adding interpretive dance and yearning facial expressions to really sell it. "I've been there, with my heart out in my hand..." I'd join in, a trail of chimes punctuating my entrance. "But what you must understand, you can't let the chance to love him pass you by!" I'd exclaim, prancing from side to side, raising my hand to urge my voice upward, showcasing my exaggerated vocal range. Then, together, we'd join in triumphantly. "Tell him! Tell him that the sun and moon rise in his eyes! Reach out to him!" And we'd ballroom dance in a circle along the carpet, staring into each other's eyes as we crooned along to the chorus. My mom let out a soft giggle from the passenger seat and we sang quietly the rest of the way home. Driving out past the clearing just as the sun went down, the scalloped clouds flushed with a deep orange that made it look like magma.

THE OBEDIENCE GAME DUGGAR KIDS GROW UP playing the Obedience Game. It’s sort of like Mother May I? except it has a few extra twists—and there’s no need to double-check with “Mother” because she (or Dad) is the one giving the orders. It’s one way Mom and Dad help the little kids in the family burn off extra energy some nights before we all put on our pajamas and gather for Bible time (more about that in chapter 8). To play the Obedience Game, the little kids all gather in the living room. After listening carefully to Mom’s or Dad’s instructions, they respond with “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to!” then run and quickly accomplish the tasks. For example, Mom might say, “Jennifer, go upstairs to the girls’ room, touch the foot of your bed, then come back downstairs and give Mom a high-five.” Jennifer answers with an energetic “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to!” and off she goes. Dad might say, “Johannah, run around the kitchen table three times, then touch the front doorknob and come back.” As Johannah stands up she says, “Yes, sir, I’d be happy to!” “Jackson, go touch the front door, then touch the back door, then touch the side door, and then come back.” Jackson, who loves to play army, stands at attention, then salutes and replies, “Yes, sir, I’d be happy to!” as he goes to complete his assignment at lightning speed. Sometimes spotters are sent along with the game player to make sure the directions are followed exactly. And of course, the faster the orders can be followed, the more applause the contestant gets when he or she slides back into the living room, out of breath and pleased with himself or herself for having complied flawlessly. All the younger Duggar kids love to play this game; it’s a way to make practicing obedience fun! THE FOUR POINTS OF OBEDIENCE THE GAME’S RULES (MADE up by our family) stem from our study of the four points of obedience, which Mom taught us when we were young. As a matter of fact, as we are writing this book she is currently teaching these points to our youngest siblings. Obedience must be: 1. Instant. We answer with an immediate, prompt “Yes ma’am!” or “Yes sir!” as we set out to obey. (This response is important to let the authority know you heard what he or she asked you to do and that you are going to get it done as soon as possible.) Delayed obedience is really disobedience. 2. Cheerful. No grumbling or complaining. Instead, we respond with a cheerful “I’d be happy to!” 3. Thorough. We do our best, complete the task as explained, and leave nothing out. No lazy shortcuts! 4. Unconditional. No excuses. No, “That’s not my job!” or “Can’t someone else do it? or “But . . .” THE HIDDEN GOAL WITH this fun, fast-paced game is that kids won’t need to be told more than once to do something. Mom would explain the deeper reason behind why she and Daddy desired for us to learn obedience. “Mom and Daddy won’t always be with you, but God will,” she says. “As we teach you to hear and obey our voice now, our prayer is that ultimately you will learn to hear and obey what God’s tells you to do through His Word.” In many families it seems that many of the goals of child training have been lost. Parents often expect their children to know what they should say and do, and then they’re shocked and react harshly when their sweet little two-year-old throws a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store. This parental attitude probably stems from the belief that we are all born basically good deep down inside, but the truth is, we are all born with a sin nature. Think about it: You don’t have to teach a child to hit, scream, whine, disobey, or be selfish. It comes naturally. The Bible says that parents are to “train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

In February, after not getting to see the boys for weeks and weeks, completely beside myself with grief, I went to plead to see them. Kevin wouldn't let me in. I begged him. Jayden James was five months old and Sean Preston was seventeen months old. I imagined their not knowing where their mother was, wondering why she didn't want to be with them. I wanted to get a battering ram to get to them. I didn't know what to do. The paparazzi watched it all happen. I can't describe the humiliation I felt. I was concerned. I was out being chased, like always, by these men waiting for me to do something they could photograph. And so that night I gave them some material. I went into a hair salon, and I took the clippers, and I shaved off all my hair. Everyone thought it was hilarious. Look how crazy she is! Even my parents acted embarrassed by me. But nobody seemed to understand that I was simply out of my mind with grief. My children had been taken away from me. With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom. No one would talk to me anymore because I was too ugly. My long hair was a big part of what people liked-I knew that. I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot. Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: Fuck you. You want me to be pretty for you? Fuck you. You want me to be good for you? Fuck you. You want me to be your dream girl? Fuck you. I'd been the good girl for years. I'd smiled politely while TV show hosts leered at my breasts, while American parents said I was destroying their children by wearing a crop top, while executives patted my hand condescendingly and second-guessed my career choices even though I'd sold millions of records, while my family acted like I was evil. And I was tired of it. At the end of the day, I didn't care. All I wanted to do was see my boys. It made me sick thinking about the hours, the days, the weeks I missed with them. My most special moments in life were taking naps with my children, That's the closest I've ever felt to God-taking naps with me precious babies, smelling their hair, holding their tiny hands.

Maddy’s going to pop soon,” Cooper said, finishing his beer and getting ready to head out. “Tucker is attached to her. It’s pretty fucking adorable. The guy about wets his pants every time she makes any noise that might be labor pain.” “You’ll be an uncle soon.” “I’m already an uncle,” Cooper mumbled, sliding on his jacket. “I just can’t hold the kid yet.” “You and Farah still planning on trying?” “No planning. We’re just trying now. She’s off the pill. Whenever it happens, it’ll be cool. Farah worries she’ll suck at being a mom. Can you believe that shit?” Cooper asked as his dark eyes warmed at the thought of his wife. “The way she takes care of Sawyer and me and everyone else and she thinks she’ll be a bad mom. These girls with their shit families get all fucked up in the head and no logic is going to fix it. They just need to face their fears and see how amazing they are when their idiot parents aren’t around to fuck things up.” “Should I fix things for Lark?” “I don’t know. If it was me, I’d go smack her stupid brother and father around. I don’t know if that’d be a good idea though. Those fucks aren’t low life drifters like Farah’s parents. That Larry asshole is a respectable member of the community. If you want to smack him around, you’ll need to do it in a more subtle way. Of course, if he ever fucks with you, we can just remind Mister Upstanding how his kind doesn’t run Ellsberg. It’s us dirty biker types who keep his house from burning down or his head from getting cracked open. If it comes down to it, I’ll help you take him down. Pop says behave. I say I’ve got my bud’s back.” Grinning, I shoved him away from me. “Crap. I’m worried you might hug me next.” “I was thinking about it,” Cooper said, smiling. “Farah’s turned me all nice and shit. I’m getting manners too. It’s disgusting.” “Horrifying,” I teased. “Thanks for the offer, but I feel like Lark needs to make a move. If she needs me to, I’ll burn down houses and crack open skulls. Right now, I feel like maybe she needs to find her way back to me. If she does, I’m keeping her and ruining anyone who tries to take her away.” “Now, there’s the punk ass jerk I became friends with.

...there’s different ways of experiencing time. And one is the kind of time that you and I know really intimately, which is tragic time. And we know what it’s like to feel that heightened present where everything really matters because you have to make choices, because everything you love is so precious. And also, we know that we can’t live there forever, because we are just not — we’re not built to live that edge, that close to the edge all the time. And then there’s — he reminded me of ordinary time, or pastoral time. Anyone who’s a farmer knows there’s sowing and reaping time. And I was always, the more I was into tragic time, the more I was a little judgmental about that. I was like: It sounds very boring; it sounds very commonplace. But that’s the — who’s picking up your mom on Tuesday? Did you send that email? Have you made that phone call? It’s all the wonderful, stupid, ordinary stuff of day-to-day life. And like, that is also necessary and good. And then there is something that we’ve all experienced together, very recently, which is apocalyptic time. It’s the feeling that there’s a heightened — that we know that the future is not guaranteed and that there is a kind of lightness and darkness and — like binaries. We’re kind of wrapped up in binaries about how we’re seeing the world. And we experience apocalypticism with our environment: like wildfires and global warming… and fear of — and we see it and we feel it. We experience the apocalyptic time when we see the scope and magnitude of racial injustice, as we understand that structures are not just broken but that they collapse in on people, and that the weak are not sheltered, and that the poor are not cared for, and that far more people are not given the luxury of invulnerability, and can’t and won’t. And in all these forms of time, we have this feeling like we’re seeing things as they really are — like that feeling when you count your kid’s eyelashes and you think, “I see the whole world in just right now.” But the truth is, all of them are true, and we toggle between them all, all the time. And so we just can’t live in any one version for too long, frankly, without not really seeing the scope of — what the wholeness of our lives require.

Mom, she was a distraction. At least that's what I thought at the time. And she could have cost me my warlocks." "Is this my son standing in front of me, telling me he placed compulsion on my sheriff, a vice-director of the ASD and his warlocks, something he promised he would never do, just to cover his ass and destroy any affection anybody might have for Breanne?" Gavril sat heavily behind his desk. He didn't understand how his mother discovered what he'd done, but she had. "Mom, I don't know how to make this right," he began. "If I remove my compulsion, they'll know I made them forget." "And you see this as a problem because?" I snapped. "For starters, I'll lose my warlocks. Yeah, I deserve that," he held up a hand to hold off my immediate response. I was about to tell him he deserved to lose his warlocks. He'd promised them long ago that he'd never place compulsion. Mind cloud or not, he'd broken that promise. "Would you like me to tell Ildevar that you fucked with a vice-director of the ASD? Breanne has saved Ildevar's life twice. What reaction do you think you'll get if he learns of this? What I don't know, because your compulsion is still in place, is how much they cared about Breanne. Which of your warlocks cared about her, by the way? Gavin was too ashamed to explain any of this to me." I was getting wound up and my voice was getting louder. I'd yelled at this son more after he became an adult than I ever had when he was young. "Stell. Stellan." "The one who's never found anybody. The one who thinks he won't find anybody," I snapped. "His brothers have a mate or mates. Stellan, thanks to you, has nothing, and not only that, you cheated my sister, too. She won't even talk to me, because of you. And your father." "What do you want me to do?" "It shouldn't matter what I want. What should matter is what's right. Do you even know what that is anymore?" "You think I cheated Stell out of a mate." "Yes, I think you cheated Stellan out of a mate. Possibly Trevor and Kooper, too." I tossed up a hand in disbelief. "Hasn't that crossed your mind even once—that you mistreated people, or does that not matter to you?" "I worry about that in him—that he seems to no longer feel," Dee walked into the room. "I thought I taught you to have sympathy for all things deserving," I sighed. "I've failed." I folded away.

But every once in a great while, the pull of her heritage would hit her, and Grand-mere would cook something real. I could never figure out what it was that triggered her, but I would come home from school to a glorious aroma. An Apfel-strudel, with paper-thin pastry wrapped around chunks of apples and nuts and raisins. The thick smoked pork chops called Kasseler ribs, braised in apple cider and served with caraway-laced sauerkraut. A rich baked dish with sausages, duck, and white beans. And hoppel poppel. A traditional German recipe handed down from her mother. I haven't even thought of it in years. But when my mom left, it was the only thing I could think to do for Joe, who was confused and heartbroken, and it was my best way to try to get something in him that didn't come in a cardboard container. I never got to learn at her knee the way many granddaughters learn to cook; she never shared the few recipes that were part of my ancestry. But hoppel poppel is fly by the seat of your pants, it doesn't need a recipe; it's a mess, just like me. It's just what the soul needs. I grab an onion, and chop half of it. I cut up the cold cooked potatoes into chunks. I pull one of my giant hot dogs out, and cut it into thick coins. Grand-mere used ham, but Joe loved it with hot dogs, and I do too. Plus I don't have ham. I whisk six eggs in a bowl, and put some butter on to melt. The onions and potatoes go in, and while they are cooking, I grate a pile of Swiss cheese, nicking my knuckle, but catching myself before I bleed into my breakfast. By the time I get a Band-Aid on it, the onions have begun to burn a little, but I don't care. I dump in the hot dogs and hear them sizzle, turning down the heat so that I don't continue to char the onions. When the hot dogs are spitting and getting a little browned, I add the eggs and stir up the whole mess like a scramble. When the eggs are pretty much set, I sprinkle the cheese over the top and take it off the heat, letting the cheese melt while I pop three slices of bread in the toaster. When the toast is done, I butter it, and eat the whole mess on the counter, using the crispy buttered toast to scoop chunk of egg, potato, and hot dog into my mouth, strings of cheese hanging down my chin. Even with the burnt onions, and having overcooked the eggs to rubbery bits, it is exactly what I need.

Dear Mom and Dad How are you? If you are reading this it means your back from the wonderful cruise my brothers and I sent you on for your anniversary. We’re sure you both had a wonderful time. We want you to know that, while you were away, we did almost everything you asked. All but one thing, that is. We killed the lawn. We killed it dead. You asked us not to and we killed it. We killed it with extreme prejudice and no regard for its planty life. We killed the lawn. Now we know what you’re thinking: “But sons, whom we love ever so much, how can this be so? We expressly asked you to care for the lawn? The exactly opposite of what you are now conveying to us in an open digital forum.” True enough. We cannot dispute this. However, we have killed the lawn. We have killed it good. We threw a party and it was quite a good time. We had a moon bounce and beer and games and pirate costumes, oh it was a good time. Were it anyone else’s party that probably would have been enough but, hey, you know us. So we got a foam machine. A frothy, wet, quite fun yet evidently deadly, foam machine. Now this dastardly devise didn’t kill the lawn per se. We hypothesize it was more that it made the lawn very wet and that dancing in said area for a great many hours over the course of several days did the deed. Our jubilant frolicking simply beat the poor grass into submission. We collected every beer cap, bottle, and can. There is not a single cigarette butt or cigar to be found. The house is still standing, the dog is still barking, Grandma is still grandmaing but the lawn is no longer lawning. Now we’re sure, as you return from your wonderful vacation, that you’re quite upset but lets put this in perspective. For one thing whose idea was it for you to leave us alone in the first place? Not your best parenting decision right there. We’re little better than baboons. The mere fact that we haven’t killed each other in years past is, at best, luck. Secondly, let us not forget, you raised us to be this way. Always pushing out limits, making sure we thought creatively. This is really as much your fault as it is ours, if not more so. If anything we should be very disappointed in you. Finally lets not forget your cruise was our present to you. We paid for it. If you look at how much that cost and subtract the cost of reseeding the lawn you still came out ahead so, really, what position are you in to complain? So let’s review; we love you, you enjoyed a week on a cruise because of us, the lawn is dead, and it’s partially your fault. Glad that’s all out in the open. Can you have dinner ready for us by 6 tonight? We’d like macaroni and cheese. Love always Peter, James & Carmine

How lonely am I ? I am 21 year old. I wake up get ready for college. I go to the Car stop where I have a bunch of accquaintances whom I go to college with. If I'm unfortunately late to the stop, I miss the Car . But the accquaintances rarely halt the car for me. I have to phone and ask them to halt the car. In the car I don't sit beside anyone because the people I like don't like me and vice versa. I get down at college. Attend all the boring classes. I want to skip a class and enjoy with friends but I rarely do so because I don't have friends and the ones I have don't hang out with me. I often look at people around and wonder how everyone has friends and are cared for. And also wonder why I am never cared for and why I am not a priority to anyone. I reach home and rest for few minutes before my mom knocks on my door. I expect her to ask about my day. But she never does. Sometimes I blurt it out because I want to talk to people. I have a different relationship with my dad. He thinks I don't respect him and that I am an arrogant and self centered brat. I am tired of explaining him that I'm not. I am just opinionated. I gave up. Neither my parents nor my sis or bro ask me about my life and rarely share theirs. I do have a best friend who always messages and phones when she has something to say. That would mostly be about his girlfriend . But at times even though I try not to message him of my life. I do. I message him about how lonely I am. I always wanted a guy or a girl best friend. But he or she rarely talk to me. The girl who talk are extremely repulsive or very creepy. And I have a girl who made me believe that I was special for her.She was the only person who made me feel that way. I knew and still know that she is just toying with me. Yet I hope that's not true. I want to be happy and experience things like every normal person. But it seems impossible. And I am tired of being lonely. I once messaged a popular quoran. I complimented him answers and he replied. When I asked him if I can message him and asked him to be my friend he saw the message and chose not to reply. A reply, even a rejection is better than getting ignored. A humble request to people on Quora. For those who advertise to message them regarding any issue should stop doing that if they can't even reply. And for those who follow them. Don't blindly believe people on Quora or IRL Everyone has a mask. I feel very depressed at times and I want to consult a doctor. But I am not financially independent. My family doesn't take me seriously when I tell them I want to visit a doctor. And this is my lonely life. I just wish I had some body who cared for me and to stand by me. I don't know if that is possible. I stared to hate myself. If this continues on maybe I'll be drowning in the river of self hate and depreciation. Still I have hope. Hope is the only thing I have. I want my life to change. If you read the complete answer then, THANKS for your patience. People don't have that these days.

A box sat on top of Jade’s pillows, wrapped in green paper with a white bow. He frowned slightly. Who would’ve left a gift on Jade’s bed? “You have a present.” “What?” Jade turned her head when he gestured toward the box. Confusion filled her eyes. She sat up and reached for the box. “I don’t understand.” Zach sat by her again and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Maybe there’s a card.” After searching beneath the large white bow, Jade pulled out a small envelope. Zach looked over her shoulder as she withdrew the card and read it aloud. “‘To Mom and Zach. Have fun tonight. Bre.’” Zach chuckled, both at Breanna’s card and at Jade’s blush. “Your daughter has quite a sense of humor.” “My daughter deserves to be spanked.” She lifted the box onto her lap. “I’m afraid to open it.” “Would you like me to? It’s addressed to both of us.” “I’m even more afraid for you to open it.” “Go ahead. It can’t be that bad.” “You don’t know my daughter.” Untying the bow, Jade raised the lid and pulled apart the bright green tissue paper. Several sex toys lay in the box. She gasped. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe she did this!” She started to push the tissue paper back over the contents, but Zach held her hand to stop her. “Wait. Let’s see what she bought.” “I am going to kill her, after I beat her.” Chuckling, Zach dug through the box, lifting the different items as he came to them. “Cock ring. Chocolate body paint. Stay-hard gel.” He looked into Jade’s eyes. “I don’t think I’ll need that tonight.” Her cheeks turned a deep pink. He dropped a kiss on her lips before beginning to explore again. “Anal beads. Ben-Wa balls. Fur-lined handcuffs. Nipple clamps. Lemon-flavored nipple cream.” His gaze dipped to her breasts. “Interesting.” She huffed out a breath. “Can we close the box now?” “Not yet. I like it when you blush.” Zach grinned when Jade scowled at him. “This is completely spoiling the mood.” “I won’t have any problem getting hard again.” “Zach!” Ignoring her outraged tone, he continued to sift through the items. “Lifelike dildo.” He held it up to eye level. “Close, but not quite as big as I am.” Jade covered her eyes with one hand. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered. “Butt plug. Wait, I’m wrong. It’s a vibrating butt plug. Very interesting. I hope you have batteries. Never mind. Breanna included several packages.” “Okay, that’s enough.” Jade tried to jerk the box out of his reach, but Zach held on to the side. “There’re only a couple more items. We might as well see what they are.” “I don’t care what they are.” “You might care about one of them.” Zach held up a large box of condoms. “Oh.” He turned the box in his hand. “I’m flattered, but I don’t think I’ll be able to use one hundred of these tonight.” “One hundred?” “All different types, sizes, and colors.” Jade laughed. “Oh, Bre.” She pushed her hair behind one ear. “What’s the last thing?” “Cherry-flavored lubricant. It looks like she thought of everything.” “You must think my daughter is crazy.” “I think your daughter loves you very much and wants you to be happy.” “That’s true. But we won’t use all this…stuff.” “Who says we won’t?

The PEOPLE, SCHOOL, EVERYONE, and EVERYTHING is so FAKE AND GAY.' 'I shrieked, at the top of my voice fingers outspread and frozen in fear, unlike ever before in my young life; being the gentle, sweet, and shy girl that I am.' 'Besides always too timid to have a voice, to stand up for me, and forced not to, by masters.' Amidst my thoughts racing ridiculously, 'I feel that it is all just another way for the 'SOCIETY' to make me feel inferior, they think, they are so 'SUPERIOR' to me, and who I am to them.' 'Nonetheless, every day of my life, I have felt like I have been drowning in a pool, with weights attached to my ankles.' 'Like, of course, there is no way for me to escape the chains that are holding me down.' 'The one and only person, that holds the key to my freedom: WILL NEVER LET ME GO! It's like there is within me, and has been deep inside me!' 'I now live in this small dull town for too damn long. It is an UNSYMPATHETIC, obscure, lonely, totally depressed, and depressing place, for any teenage girl to be, most definitely if you're a girl like me.' 'All these streets surrounding me are covered with filth, and born in the hills of middle western Pennsylvania mentalities of slow-talking and deep heritages, and beliefs, that don't operate me as a soul lost and lingering within the streets and halls.' 'My old town was ultimately left behind when the municipality neighboring made the alterations to the main roads; just to save five minutes of commuting, through this countryside village. Now my town sits on one side of that highway.' 'Just like a dead carcass to the rest of the world, which rushes by. What is sullen about this is that it is a historic town, with some immeasurable old monuments, and landmarks.' 'However, the others I see downright neglect what is here, just like me, it seems. Other than me, no one cares. Yet I care about all the little things.' 'I am so attached to all these trivial things as if they are a part of me. It disheartens me to see anything go away from me.' 'It's a community where the litter blows and bisects the road, like the tumble-wheats of the yore of times past.' 'Furthermore, if you do not look where you are going, you will fall in our trip, in one of the many potholes or heaved up bumps in the pavement, or have an evacuated structure masonry descending on your head.' 'Merely one foolproof way of simplifying the appearance of this ghost town.' 'There are still some reminders of the glory days when you glance around.' 'Like the town clock, that is evaporated black that has chipped enamel; it seems that it is always missing a few light bulbs.' 'The timepiece only has time pointing hands on the one side, and it nevermore shows the right time of day.' 'The same can be assumed for the neon signs on the mom-and-pop shops, which flicker at night as if they're in agonizing PAIN.' 'Why? To me is a question that is asked frequently.' 'It is all over negligence!' 'I get the sense and feeling most of the time, as they must prepare when looking around here at night.' 'The streetlamps do not all work, as they should. The glass in them is cracked.' 'The parking meters are always jammed, or just completely broken off their posts altogether.' 'The same can be said, for the town sign that titles this area. It is not even here anymore, as it should be now moved to the town square or shortage of a park.

Dear, What’s the Point of it All? What is the point of being nice? When you do not know what you are going to get from it? Knowing eventually sooner rather than later someone and maybe that person you are being nice to will turn their back on you. I always have to stay grounded and focused. When I am there for people, I feel like I am always punished for it. I am always treated as if I committed a crime. I was there for my mom; however, she was killing me slowly but surely. Like my mom, I noticed that when people get themselves in some shit, they get stuck in their own mess. They are confident that they do not have to deal with the consequences—because they know the ‘kind’ person will bail them out. What’s the point of being kind? Like my mom and the officer, there are so many people in the world who are judgmental and tainted because of their selfish needs. What’s the point of my life? Here I am in a library filled with many books. I can read them and go anywhere I want to in my mind, but after I close the book, I will have to snap out of my fantasy world and welcome the cruel cold world, which is reality. If I was a book, I would be better off left on the shelf. There is no excitement in my life—only struggles. What’s the point of living and loving life when the only thing I do is read between the lines and tread carefully? Come to think about it, I am a book that nobody can understand or read. They think they know what is best for me, but if they only take the time to listen, I would be so happy to tell them about me and my needs and wants. My actions scream for attention, but time after time, I am ignored. Sadly, without a care, they were quick to rip out the pages. Yet, once again, nobody noticed me. What’s the point of it all when I never had an opportunity to make a mistake? If I did one thing wrong, they would give up on me and send me to one home after another. I’ve always been fully exposed and had to walk in a line filled with sharp curves from disappointment to disappointment. Sorrow is my aura, and sadness hugs me tightly. It is hard to cry when my eyes are closed shut by the barbed wire fence of my eyelashes as they prohibit tears from falling. What’s the point of complicating my life? I am always back to where I started, and then ... I relive the same patterns, but on a more difficult journey. I believe when you put yourself in your own mess that you should clean it up and start over. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. However, when someone else puts you in their mess, you do not know how to clean up the mess they’ve made. You do not know how to start over because you do not know where to begin. I look at it this way; it is like telling a dead person he/she can start over. How so, when that person’s life no longer exists? I know my life isn’t over. However, I am lost in a maze my mom set up for herself—and she too is lost in her own maze. When a person gets lost in their own maze, they are really fucked up. However, this maze shouldn’t be left for me to figure out. Unfortunately, I am in it, and I have to find my way out one way or another. What’s the point of taking Kace from me? He was safe and in good hands. Now he is worse off with people who are abusing him. He didn’t ask for this—I didn’t either. He deserves so much better. Again, what is the point of it all? What’s the point of making me suffer? Do you get a kick out of it? What are you trying to accomplish? I am trying to understand; what is the point of it all? What is the point? I don’t know why I am here.

Clary held her hands up. 'I do get it. I know you don’t like me, Isabelle. Because I’m a mundane to you.' 'You think that’s why—' Isabelle broke off, her eyes bright; not just with anger, Clary saw with surprise, but with tears. “God, you don’t understand anything, do you? You’ve known Jace what, a month? I’ve known him for seven years. And all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him fall in love, never seen him even like anyone. He’d hook up with girls, sure. Girls always fell in love with him, but he never cared. I think that’s why Alec thought—” Isabelle stopped for a moment, holding herself very still. She’s trying not to cry, Clary thought in wonder—Isabelle, who seemed like she never cried. “It always worried me, and my mom, too—I mean, what kind of teenage boy never even gets a crush on anyone? It was like he was always half-awake where other people were concerned. I thought maybe what had happened with his father had done some sort of permanent damage to him, like maybe he never really could love anyone. If I’d only known what had really happened with his father—but then I probably would have thought the same thing, wouldn’t I? I mean, who wouldn’t have been damaged by that?' 'And then we met you, and it was like he woke up. You couldn’t see it, because you’d never known him any different. But I saw it. Hodge saw it. Alec saw it—why do you think he hated you so much? It was like that from the second we met you. You thought it was amazing that you could see us, and it was, but what was amazing to me was that Jace could see you, too. He kept talking about you all the way back to the Institute; he made Hodge send him out to get you; and once he brought you back, he didn’t want you to leave again. Wherever you were in the room, he watched you…. He was even jealous of Simon. I’m not sure he realized it himself, but he was. I could tell. Jealous of a mundane. And then after what happened to Simon at the party, he was willing to go with you to the Dumort, to break Clave Law, just to save a mundane he didn’t even like. He did it for you. Because if anything had happened to Simon, you would have been hurt. You were the first person outside our family whose happiness I’d ever seen him take into consideration. Because he loved you.' Clary made a noise in the back of her throat. 'But that was before—' 'Before he found out you were his sister. I know. And I don’t blame you for that. You couldn’t have known. And I guess you couldn’t have helped that you just went right on ahead and dated Simon afterward like you didn’t even care. I thought once Jace knew you were his sister, he’d give up and get over it, but he didn’t, and he couldn’t. I don’t know what Valentine did to him when he was a child. I don’t know if that’s why he is the way he is, or if it’s just the way he’s made, but he won’t get over you, Clary. He can’t. I started to hate seeing you. I hated for Jace to see you. It’s like an injury you get from demon poison—you have to leave it alone and let it heal. Every time you rip the bandages off, you just open the wound up again. Every time he sees you, it’s like tearing off the bandages.' 'I know,' Clary whispered. “How do you think it is for me?” 'I don’t know. I can’t tell what you’re feeling. You’re not my sister. I don’t hate you, Clary. I even like you. If it were possible, there isn’t anyone I’d rather Jace be with. But I hope you can understand when I say that if by some miracle we all get through this, I hope my family moves itself somewhere so far away that we never see you again.

We kissed again, and I shivered in the cold night air. Wanting to get me out of the cold, he led me to his pickup and opened the door so we could both climb in. The pickup was still warm and toasty, like a campfire was burning in the backseat. I looked at him, giggled like a schoolgirl, and asked, “What have you been doing all this time?” “Oh, I was headed home,” he said, fiddling with my fingers. “But then I just turned around; I couldn’t help it.” His hand found my upper back and pulled me closer. The windows were getting foggy. I felt like I was seventeen. “I’ve got this problem,” he continued, in between kisses. “Yeah?” I asked, playing dumb. My hand rested on his left bicep. My attraction soared to the heavens. He caressed the back of my head, messing up my hair…but I didn’t care; I had other things on my mind. “I’m crazy about you,” he said. By now I was on his lap, right in the front seat of his Diesel Ford F250, making out with him as if I’d just discovered the concept. I had no idea how I’d gotten there--the diesel pickup or his lap. But I was there. And, burying my face in his neck, I quietly repeated his sentiments. “I’m crazy about you, too.” I’d been afflicted with acute boy-craziness for over half my life. But what I was feeling for Marlboro Man was indescribably powerful. It was a primal attraction--the almost uncontrollable urge to wrap my arms and legs around him every time I looked into his eyes. The increased heart rate and respiration every time I heard his voice. The urge to have twelve thousand of his babies…and I wasn’t even sure I wanted children. “So anyway,” he continued. That’s when we heard the loud knocking on the pickup window. I jumped through the roof--it was after 2:00 A.M. Who on earth could it be? The Son of Sam--it had to be! Marlboro Man rolled down the window, and a huge cloud of passion and steam escaped. It wasn’t the Son of Sam. Worse--it was my mother. And she was wearing her heather gray cashmere robe. “Reeee?” she sang. “Is that yoooou?” She leaned closer and peered through the window. I slid off of Marlboro Man’s lap and gave her a halfhearted wave. “Uh…hi, Mom. Yeah. It’s just me.” She laughed. “Oh, okay…whew! I just didn’t know who was out here. I didn’t recognize the car!” She looked at Marlboro Man, whom she’d met only one time before, when he picked me up for a date. “Well, hello again!” she exclaimed, extending her manicured hand. He took her hand and shook it gently. “Hello, ma’am,” he replied, his voice still thick with lust and emotion. I sank in my seat. I was an adult, and had just been caught parking at 2:00 A.M. in the driveway of my parents’ house by my robe-wearing mother. She’d seen the foggy windows. She’d seen me sitting on his lap. I felt like I’d just gotten grounded. “Well, okay, then,” my mom said, turning around. “Good night, you two!” And with that, she flitted back into the house. Marlboro Man and I looked at each other. I hid my face in my hands and shook my head. He chuckled, opened the door, and said, “C’mon…I’d better get you home before curfew.” My sweaty hands still hid my face. He walked me to the door, and we stood on the top step. Wrapping his arms around my waist, he kissed me on the nose and said, “I’m glad I came back.” God, he was sweet. “I’m glad you did, too,” I replied. “But…” I paused for a moment, gathering courage. “Did you have something you wanted to say?” It was forward, yes--gutsy. But I wasn’t going to let this moment pass. I didn’t have many more moments with him, after all; soon I’d be gone to Chicago. Sitting in coffee shops at eleven at night, if I wanted. Working. Eventually going back to school. I’d be danged if I was going to miss what he’d started to say a few minutes earlier, before my mom and her cashmere robe showed up and spoiled everything.

Maybe tangled will be a spectacular rump. maybe i will adore it: it could happen. But one thing is for sure: tangled will not be rapunzel. And thats too bad , because rapunzel is an specially layered and relevant fairytale, less about the love between a man and a woman than the misguided attempts of a mother trying to protect her daughter from (what she perceives ) as the worlds evils. The tale, you may recall, begins with a mother-to-bes yearning for the taste of rapunzel, a salad green she spies growing in the garden of the sorceress who happens to live next door. The womans craving becomes so intense , she tells her husband that if he doesn't fetch her some, she and their unborn baby will die. So he steals into the baby's yard, wraps his hands around a plant, and, just as he pulls... she appears in a fury. The two eventually strike a bargain: the mans wife can have as much of the plant as she wants- if she turns over her baby to the witch upon its birth. `i will take care for it like a mother,` the sorceress croons (as if that makes it all right). Then again , who would you rather have as a mom: the woman who would do anything for you or the one who would swap you in a New York minute for a bowl of lettuce? Rapunzel grows up, her hair grows down, and when she is twelve-note that age-Old Mother Gothel , as she calls the witch. leads her into the woods, locking her in a high tower which offers no escape and no entry except by scaling the girls flowing tresses. One day, a prince passes by and , on overhearing Rapunzel singing, falls immediately in love (that makes Rapunzel the inverse of Ariel- she is loved sight unseen because of her voice) . He shinnies up her hair to say hello and , depending on the version you read, they have a chaste little chat or get busy conceiving twins. Either way, when their tryst is discovered, Old Mother Gothel cries, `you wicked child! i thought i had separated you from the world, and yet you deceived me!` There you have it : the Grimm`s warning to parents , centuries before psychologists would come along with their studies and measurements, against undue restriction . Interestingly the prince cant save Rapuzel from her foster mothers wrath. When he sees the witch at the top of the now-severed braids, he jumps back in surprise and is blinded by the bramble that breaks his fall. He wanders the countryside for an unspecified time, living on roots and berries, until he accidentally stumbles upon his love. She weeps into his sightless eyes, restoring his vision , and - voila!- they rescue each other . `Rapunzel` then, wins the prize for the most egalitarian romance, but that its not its only distinction: it is the only well-known tale in which the villain is neither maimed nor killed. No red-hot shoes are welded to the witch`s feet . Her eyes are not pecked out. Her limbs are not lashed to four horses who speed off in different directions. She is not burned at the stake. Why such leniency? perhaps because she is not, in the end, really evil- she simply loves too much. What mother has not, from time to time, felt the urge to protect her daughter by locking her in a tower? Who among us doesn't have a tiny bit of trouble letting our children go? if the hazel branch is the mother i aspire to be, then Old Mother Gothel is my cautionary tale: she reminds us that our role is not to keep the world at bay but to prepare our daughters so they can thrive within it. That involves staying close but not crowding them, standing firm in one`s values while remaining flexible. The path to womanhood is strewn with enchantment , but it also rifle with thickets and thorns and a big bad culture that threatens to consume them even as they consume it. The good news is the choices we make for our toodles can influence how they navigate it as teens. I`m not saying that we can, or will, do everything `right,` only that there is power-magic-in awareness.