Cemetery Boys Quotes

Queer folks are like wolves," Julian told him. "We travel in packs." (p. 125)

No, it wasn't the end. It was a better beginning.

You ready?" Julian asked, a curious look on his devastatingly handsome face. "No," Yadriel confessed, his voice tight. Julian grinned. "Do it anyways.

To Julian, he asked, "Is Yadriel your friend?" The word burned. "¡Mi querido!" he snapped viciously.

You don't need anyone's permission to be you, Yads.

It's astrology, and it totally makes sense!" Maritza continued. "His big, obnoxious Scorpio energy is invading your cozy Cancer safe space!

Why do you have to prove anything to anyone?" "It{s just how it is, how it's always been. In order for them to let me be a brujo—" "You don't need anyone's permission to be you, Yads

Go ahead," Apollo said to Luke. "Tell them what it is, since it's obviously hugging material." Crimson stained Luke's cheeks. "Legend goes that one of the gates to hell is in Stull Cemetery in Kansas." "Oh, gods," I muttered, remembering where I'd heard this before. "Wasn't that a season finale on Supernatural?" When the boys nodded, my eyes rolled. "Seriously? Are Sam and Dean going to be there?

If you ever scare me like that again," he said breathlessly, "I'll kill you myself, Julian Diaz.

We talked it over and came to a compromise," Maritza said. "She threatened to put a curse on me," Julian supplied.

FINALLY!" Julian burst out, annoyed but smiling as he leaped to his feet. "I've been--dude, stop screaming--I've been waiting for FOREVER!

My singing voice is too sexy," Julian said with a solemn shake of his head. "You'd fall in love with me, like, immediately.

There's no way y'all have been around for thousands of years without there being one person not fitting into the 'men are this, women are that' bullshit." Julian sounded so convinced, so sure. His obsidian eyes locked onto Yadriel's. "Maybe they hid it, or ran away, or I dunno, something else, but there's no way you're the first, Yads.

It's a doggy-dog world out there," Julian sighed. The corner of Yadriel's mouth twitched. "Dog-eat-dog." "Whatever.

But belonging meant denying who he was. Living as something he wasn't had nearly torn him part from the inside out. But he also loved his family, and his community. It was bad enough being an outsider; what would happen if they just couldn't--or wouldn't--accept him for who he was?

Did Julian just have zero impulse control? It was almost endearing. But only almost.

Growth isn’t a deviation from what we’ve done before, but a natural progression to honor all those who make this community strong.

This was a bad idea. Too much, too close, but when Julian leaned forward Yadriel didn't want to pull away.

You know who you are, I know who you are, and our Lady does, too." She said with fierce conviction. "So screw the rest of them!" Maritza grinned at him. "Remember why we're doing this.

It is not your fault," she said gently. "Greed and hurt drive people to do horrible things.

My son. A brujo. How long had he been waiting to hear those words? Having them said aloud, to a room full of brujx, made Yadriel's legs feel weak. It was like a dream, but so much better.

They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.

Queer folks are like wolves,” Julian told him. “We travel in packs.

Julian was achingly beautiful, but in the way a thunderstorm was beautiful—wild, rough, electric. And bound to leave devastation in his wake.

I implore you to be more open minded, hermano. If we close ourselves off to the possibilities that lie outside of what tradition has dictated, we are destined for extinction.

Yadriel's soul ached. He leaned closer, his hands reaching out, fingers wanting to knot into Julian's jacket and pull him closer. But they grasped at air. There was nothing to hold on to.

He was kind of an asshole. Julian was abrasive, sometimes rude, and didn't seem to have much tact. But, for some reason, Yadriel's heart still fluttered in his chest.

He was a boy made of fire who'd been turned to frost. He was meant to burn.

Yadriel'd once asked his mom why they didn't just take all of someone's pain when they were sad. She had explained it was important to let people feel grief and mourn the loss of a loved one.

Julian's chuckle was wet. "Valió ... la pena.

Why do you have to prove anything to anyone?" "It's just how it is, how it's always been. In order for them to let me be a brujo—" "You don't need anyone's permission to be you, Yads

A stormy boy who seemed most comfortable in chaos.

Yadriel snorted. "You're really taking this 'ghost' stuff literally." Julian tilted his chin and grinned in a way he could only describe as preening. "I'm very committed to my new lifestyle.

Julian's hand fell to his lap. He looked out over the water again. The wind tugged at his jacket. He closed his eyes and grinned. Below, the waves crashed. The moonlight painted him in shades of blue. His edges blurred like watercolors spilling outside of their lines.

Yadriel groaned and dragged a hand over his face. On the bright side, he had actually summoned a real-life spirit. On the not-so-bright side, he had summoned the wrong one.

As he drifted off to sleep, he breathed in the smell of Julian, but it was already starting to fade.

A sun crammed into the body of a boy, Yadriel didn't want to see him without his light.

Hay niñas con pene, niños con vulva y transfóbicos sin dientes.

If we get mugged or kidnapped, I'm gonna be pissed," Maritza told Yadriel.

Remember why we're doing this." Yadriel steeled himself and spoke with as much courage as he could muster. "So they'll see that I'm a brujo." "Well, yeah, but other than that." "Spite?" Yadriel guessed. "Spite!" Maritza agreed enthusiastically.

Just because we follow the ancient ways does not mean we can't also grow.

Navigating pronouns was a minefield when language was based on gender.

He was a bit of an ass. Head strong, impulsive and definitely obnoxious. But Yadriel could see how ferociously he cared about the people who were important to him. He believed Julian would die for his friends. He probably had.

Maritza smiled. "Let's do this, brujo.

Beneath his photo his deadname had been scribbled out with black marker. Under, written in lopsided letters it read Yadriel

But now your mess is my mess, too.” He tilted his head toward Yadriel and spoke softly. “It’s bound to be easier if we’re both cleaning it up, right?

Julian was the most alive person he’d ever met. Even as a spirit, he was bright and full of constantly moving energy. A sun crammed into the body of a boy. Y Adri al didn’t want to see him without his light

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

Wylan cleared his throat. “The chemistry is complicated. I was hoping Kuwei would help.” Nina said something to Kuwei in Shu. He shrugged and looked away, lip jutting out slightly. Whether it was the recent death of his father or the fact that he’d found himself stuck in a cemetery with a band of thieves, the boy had become increasingly sullen. “Well?” Jesper prodded. “I have other interests,” Kuwei replied. Kaz’s black gaze pinned Kuwei like the tip of a dagger. “I suggest rethinking your priorities.” Jesper gave Kuwei another nudge. “That’s Kaz’s way of saying, ‘Help Wylan or I’ll seal you up in one of these tombs and see how that suits your interests.’ ” Matthias was no longer sure what the Shu boy understood or didn’t, but apparently he’d received the message. Kuwei swallowed and nodded grudgingly. “The power of negotiation,” Jesper said, and shoved a cracker in his mouth.

Yadriel bit back his knee-jerk reaction to say, “It’s okay.” Because it wasn’t. It didn’t change what his dad had said. If it had been a mistake, his slip of the tongue was more telling than his apologies. Why did Yadriel always have to absolve people of their guilt? He didn’t want to be understanding. He didn’t have it in him to be forgiving this time.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to be you, Yads,

Yadriel wanted to chase down the sunset. To not let it rise. How long after he was gone would Yadriel be dreaming about Julian and this drive? Yadriel thought it would be worth the sleepless nights ahead.

I swallowed hard. It was my life. And it was my choice how I decided to live it.

FINALLY!” Julian burst out, annoyed but smiling as he leaped to his feet. “I’ve been—dude, stop screaming—I’ve been waiting for FOREVER!

No. I’m not supporting the mass appropriation of calaveras in Western culture—

Cats are like little spirit guardians,” he said with a shrug.

But still, not everyone was as reckless as Julian Diaz. Not even his friends.

You saw him. He’s like a puppy. Just wants to fit in and for people to like him. He’d do anything to feel like part of a family.

Oh man I love that stuff!" "You hopped up on energy drinks sounds like a literal nightmare.

May we never fear death but remember we live on in the love we nurture in our time on earth.

And you can apparently summon ghosts and send them to the afterlife, whatever that means.” “Yes—Well, no—” Yadriel fumbled, trying to explain himself. “I haven’t done the releasing part yet—” “Wooow,” Julian crooned, head bobbing in a nod as he looked between the two of them. “You guys are really shitty witches.

Good cause I can't sit still that long." "I'm shocked.

There were dozens of stones of all sizes in the small meadow. Tall stones, bigger than either of the boys, and small ones, just the right size for sitting on. There were some broken stones. The Runt knew what sort of place this was, but it did not scare him. It was a loved place.

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles.

Nina said something to Kuwei in Shu. He shrugged and looked away, lip jutting out slightly. Whether it was the recent death of his father or the fact that he’d found himself stuck in a cemetery with a band of thieves, the boy had become increasingly sullen.

Literature is dead, my boy' the uncle replied. 'Look at these empty rooms, and these books buried in their dust; no one reads anymore; I am the guardian of a cemetery here, and exhumation is forbidden.' . . . 'My boy, never speak of literature, never speak of art! Accept the situation as it is! You are Monsieur Boutardins ward before being your Uncle Huguenin's nephew!

Left." Julian veered right. "Your other left!" Julian turned on his heel. "Got it!

At one point, Julian crouched in front of a boy and shouted in his face as loud as he could.

Things weren't magically fixed by an empowering speech, but it opened doors and bridges. It carved out space for Yadriel to step forward and be who he was, as he was. There were still more obstacles to overcome and battles to fight, but Yadriel wouldn't feel alone in it anymore. No, it wasn't the end. It was a better beginning.

In a sea of faces, his eyes went right to Julian, and he couldn’t look away. His sharp grin. His burning gaze. It sparked a fire in Yadriel’s chest. It smoldered in his stomach. It flooded him with heat. Yadriel would happily let himself be consumed by Julian’s fire.

I kind of wish I could trade my family for yours,” Yadriel said with a weak laugh. They weren’t even blood, but in the short time he interacted with them, he could see how fiercely they cared for one another. Especially Julian. “I wouldn’t trade them for the world,” Julian said solidly. Yadriel smiled. He envied whoever Julian gave his firey devotion to. It was a warm and unyielding force to be shielded by.

He just looked like a pretty boy, tall and lanky. She thought again of the crumpled paper in her purse and of him, caged beneath a cemetery. How long had he been there? How long had he looked just as he did now? A hundred years? Two hundred? Could he even remember the press of time? Maybe having stepped outside of it would drive anybody crazy.

vivaporú

You’re insufferable,” he said, glancing around. “Yeah, but I think you’re kinda into it,” Julian replied with a casual shrug.

What are you going to do, stab me?” Julian’s laugh was sharp as he tapped a finger to his temple.

Beneath his photo, his deadname had been scribbled out with black marker. Under, written in lopsided letters, it read, YADRIEL.

He was a boy made of fire, who'd been turned to frost. he was meant to burn.

Here we are, two boys sitting in a cemetery as it begins drizzling, trading stories in my half-dug grave, as if we're not dying today.

There were many deficits in our swamp education, but Grandpa Sawtooth, to his credit, taught us the names of whole townships that had been forgotten underwater. Black pioneers, Creek Indians, moonshiners, women, 'disappeared' boy soldiers who deserted their army camps. From Grandpa we learned how to peer beneath the sea-glare of the 'official, historical' Florida records we found in books. "Prejudice," as defined by Sawtooth Bigtree, was a kind of prehistoric arithmetic--a "damn, fool math"--in which some people counted and others did not. It meant white names on white headstones in the big cemetery in Cypress Point, and black and brown bodies buried in swamp water. At ten, I couldn't articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well.

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world’s greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of an address when you

Here in the forest lay sullen, soot-blackened stones that were the remains of ruined hearths; in abandoned cemeteries were dark headstones that had already half sunk into the ground. Everything inanimate—stones, iron—was being swallowed by the earth, dissolving into it with the years, while green, vegetable life, in contrast, was bursting up from the earth. The boy found the silence over the cold hearths especially painful. And when he came back home, the smell of smoke from the kitchen, the barking of dogs, and the cackling of hens somehow seemed all the sweeter.

The book thief lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was one member of a cast, for Liesel was always visited in that room. Her papa stood and called her half a woman. Max was writing The Word Shaker in the corner. Rudy was naked by the door. Occasionally her mother stood on a bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow.

We were the new people here. We weren’t part of their group. We had to prove ourselves.

If I went home, I was a loser. If I went inside, I was a criminal. So basically, I had no choice. The inside of the building smelled musty,

Mostly I am full of names Demetrius and Christopher and Daniel and John Cemeteries built around those letters I dig the dead boys up and try to dance

Sandra Cisneros,

witchy intuition

He thought of the boys and girls who looked for sweethearts at Mountain View Cemetery, and chorus girls who met their beaux behind scrim, and office romances that flourished in the buildings on Market Street, and he felt like there were little lights in alcoves here and there across the city, in cozy dens, in doorways during rainstorms, or even a chilly balcony on the Ferry building. Everywhere, little pairs of glowing lights. When you walked a city, wherever you looked, someone had probably fallen in love.

Go on from here, Ada, please. (She). Billions of boys. Take one fairly decent decade. A billion of Bills, good, gifted, tender and passionate, not only spiritually but physically well-meaning Billions, have bared the jillions of their no less tender and brilliant Jills during that decade, at stations and under conditions that have to be controlled and specified by the worker, lest the entire report be choked up by the weeds of statistics and waist-high generalizations. No point would there be, if we left out, for example, the little matter of prodigious individual awareness and young genius, which makes, in some cases, of this or that particular gasp an unprecedented and unrepeatable event in the continuum of life or at least a thematic anthemia of such events in a work of art, or a denouncer’s article. The details that shine through or shade through: the local leaf through the hyaline skin, the green sun in the brown humid eye, tout ceci, vsyo eto, in tit and toto, must be taken into account, now prepare to take over (no, Ada, go on, ya zaslushalsya: I’m all enchantment and ears), if we wish to convey the fact, the fact, the fact—that among those billions of brilliant couples in one cross section of what you will allow me to call spacetime (for the convenience of reasoning), one couple is a unique super-imperial couple, sverhimperator-skaya cheta, in consequence of which (to be inquired into, to be painted, to be denounced, to be put to music, or to the question and death, if the decade has a scorpion tail after all), the particularities of their love-making influence in a special unique way two long lives and a few readers, those pensive reeds, and their pens and mental paintbrushes. Natural history indeed! Unnatural history—because that precision of senses and sense must seem unpleasantly peculiar to peasants, and because the detail is all: The song of a Tuscan Firecrest or a Sitka Kinglet in a cemetery cypress; a minty whiff of Summer Savory or Yerba Buena on a coastal slope; the dancing flitter of a Holly Blue or an Echo Azure—combined with other birds, flowers and butterflies: that has to be heard, smelled and seen through the transparency of death and ardent beauty. And the most difficult: beauty itself as perceived through the there and then. The males of the firefly (now it’s really your turn, Van).

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…

Era molto stressante stare a vedere quali sarebbero state le reazioni: se l’avrebbero rifiutato, o se sarebbero riusciti anche solo a capire cosa significava quando un ragazzo trans dichiarava di essere gay. Ma non per Julian. Lui l’aveva detto quasi in tono di sfida. In un modo che diceva che non gli importava cosa pensassero gli altri al riguardo. Era una cosa che lo intimidiva e lo riempiva di ammirazione al tempo stesso.

Yadriel perdonava sempre le persone quando facevano uscite infelici. Quando usavano il femminile o lo chiamavano con il suo vecchio nome. Quando lo ferivano, dava sempre loro il beneficio del dubbio, oppure pensava che semplicemente non capissero o fossero troppo legate alle loro tradizioni. Be’, era stanco. Era stanco di perdonare. Era stanco di combattere solo per esistere ed essere se stesso. Era stanco di sentirsi sempre un pesce fuor d’acqua.

Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in a river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living? You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy… You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any. And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering… …Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more. So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself. And hoping.

«Cioè, Flaca non è meno donna solo perché la gente la guarda e non la considera tale» continuò Julian. «Solo perché non prende chissà che ormoni, o perché non “passa”, non significa che tocca agli altri decidere chi è. E la stessa cosa vale per te.» Le guance di Yadriel presero fuoco. «Non devi niente a nessuno, cazzo» gli disse Julian, una rabbia burrascosa che si addensava in fondo ai suoi occhi scuri. Julian era un po’ uno stronzo. Uno stronzo irritante, a volte volgare, e senza molto tatto. Eppure, chissà perché, il cuore di Yadriel gli fremette lo stesso nel petto.

Avrebbe voluto parlarle. Lo vedeva per chi era realmente? Anche se era una cosa che la sua stessa famiglia non riusciva a fare? Yadriel aveva passato molti anni della sua vita sentendosi incompreso da tutti tranne che da Maritza. Quando le aveva detto di essere trans, tre anni prima, lei non aveva battuto ciglio. «Ay, finalmente!» aveva detto, esasperata ma sorridente. «Avevo capito che c’era qualcosa sotto. Stavo aspettando che sputassi il rospo.» Durante quel periodo, Maritza aveva mantenuto religiosamente il segreto, alternando l’uso dei generi senza fare una piega, passando da quello maschile quando erano da soli, a quello femminile quando erano in compagnia, finché Yadriel non si era sentito pronto.

how to protect oneself from the creatures (hawthorn and wild rose, in addition to garlic) and how to kill them soundly with staking or decapitation or by placing bits of steel in their mouths. Or even a lemon! Their vulnerability to sunlight and the inability of a vampire to cross running water. Tillie nearly laughed at the advice on how to identify a vampire’s coffin: a virgin boy, riding a black virgin horse over a cemetery, would balk at the proper grave. She was particularly intrigued by what vampires looked like. Bloated; reddish or purplish; blood seeping from the eyes, nose, or mouth when it was resting in its coffin; some were living beings, and some were the dead come alive. Fangs, however, were not always mentioned and were scant in the earlier literature.

I was 18 wen I started driving I was 18 the first time I was pulled over. It was 2 AM on a Saturday The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror, he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon, and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house. Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man who brings a gun to a food fight. He called me son and I thought to myself, that's an interesting way of pronouncing "boy," He asks for my license and registration, wants to know what I'm doing in this nieghborhood, if the car is stolen, if I have any drugs and most days, I know how to grab my voice by the handle and swing it like a hammer. But instead, I picked it up like a shard of glass. Scared of what might happen if I didn't hold it carefully because I know that this much melanin and that uniform is a plotline to a film that can easily end with a chalk outline baptism, me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags. Once, a friend of a friend asked me why there aren't more black people in the X Games and I said, "You don't get it." Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades. Jim Crow may have left the nest, but our streets are still covered with its feathers. Being black in America is knowing there's a thin line between a traffic stop and the cemetery, it's the way my body tenses up when I hear a police siren in a song, it's the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me, it's the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn't. I don't need to go volcano surfing. Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer drives right past without pulling me over and I realize I'm going to make it home safe. This time.

The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off? Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground. "What are you doing?" Luce asked. Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned. And then- Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward. Shouts rang out around the cenote: "What is he?" "The boy is winged!" "He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!" Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until- Until she couldn't move anymore. Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun. Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening. Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed. She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin. Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out. Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke. Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame. All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce. "Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her. His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious." "Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-" "I'm still here," Luce insisted. "You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?" "I can see you." And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before. Hadn't she? As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her. "No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something.