I Hate Being Aired Quotes

His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It’s more intimate than the way he’s touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate. Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate. Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face. Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced. Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air. Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares. Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops, knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped. But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new, build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth. Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride. I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.

Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle. But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!. Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.

I hate being a fool. I hate the idea of my emotions getting the better of me, making me weak. But my fear of being a fool turned me into one.

Shahrzad, I've failed you several times. But there was one moment I failed you beyond measure. It was the day we met. The moment I took your hand and you looked at me, with the glory of hate in your eyes. I should have sent you home to your family. But I didn't. There was honesty in your hatred. Fearlessness in your pain. In your honesty, I saw a reflection of myself. Or rather, of the man I longed to be. So I failed you. I didn't stay away. Then later, I thought if I had answers, it would be enough. I would no longer care. You would not matter. So I continued failing you. Continued wanting more. And now I can't find the words to say what must be said. To convey to you the least of what I owe. When I think of you, I can't find the air to breathe. And now, though you are gone, there is no pain or fear. All I am left with is gratitude. When I was a boy, my mother would tell me that one of the best things in life is the knowledge that your story isn't over yet. Our story may have come to a close, but your story is still yet to be told. Make it a story worthy of you. I failed you in one last thing. Here is my chance to rectify it. It was never because I didn't feel it. It was because I swore I would never say it, and a man is nothing if he can't keep his promises. So I write it in the sky- I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it. Khalid

There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind. If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged." "I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks. There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other. But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world? The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is unmothered.

The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.

I think of Madoc, dozing away upstairs, all his dreams of murder. I think of Oriana and Oak being forced apart for years. I think of Cardan and how he will hate me. I think of what it means to make myself the villain of the piece. "For the next full minute, I command you not to move," I whisper back.

For us, eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love. We love only the person we can eat. The person we hate we ‘can’t swallow.’ That one makes us vomit. Even our friends are inedible. If we were asked to dig into our friend’s flesh we would be disgusted. The person we love we dream only of eating. That is, we slide down that razor’s edge of ambivalence. The story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. Because loving is wanting and being able to eat up and yet to stop at the boundary. And there, at the tiniest beat between springing and stopping, in rushes fear. The spring is already in mid-air. The heart stops. The heart takes off again. Everything in love is oriented towards this absorption. At the same time real love is a don’t-touch, yet still an almost-touching. Tact itself: a phantom touching. Eat me up, my love, or else I’m going to eat you up. Fear of eating, fear of the edible, fear on the part of the one of them who feels loved, desired, who wants to be loved, desired, who desires to be desired, who knows there is no greater proof of love than the other’s appetite, who is dying to be eaten up, who says or doesn’t say, but who signifies: I beg you, eat me up. Want me down to the marrow. And yet manage it so as to keep me alive. But I often turn about or compromise, because I know that you won’t eat me up, in the end, and I urge you: bite me. Sign my death with your teeth

I am a book. Sheaves pressed from the pulp of oaks and pines a natural sawdust made dingy from purses, dusty from shelves. Steamy and anxious, abused and misused, kissed and cried over, smeared, yellowed, and torn, loved, hated, scorned. I am a book. I am a book that remembers, days when I stood proud in good company When the children came, I leapt into their arms, when the women came, they cradled me against their soft breasts, when the men came, they held me like a lover, and I smelled the sweet smell of cigars and brandy as we sat together in leather chairs, next to pool tables, on porch swings, in rocking chairs, my words hanging in the air like bright gems, dangling, then forgotten, I crumbled, dust to dust. I am a tale of woe and secrets, a book brand-new, sprung from the loins of ancient fathers clothed in tweed, born of mothers in lands of heather and coal soot. A family too close to see the blood on its hands, too dear to suffering, to poison, to cold steel and revenge, deaf to the screams of mortal wounding, amused at decay and torment, a family bred in the dankest swamp of human desires. I am a tale of woe and secrets, I am a mystery. I am intrigue, anxiety, fear, I tangle in the night with madmen, spend my days cloaked in black, hiding from myself, from dark angels, from the evil that lurks within and the evil we cannot lurk without. I am words of adventure, of faraway places where no one knows my tongue, of curious cultures in small, back alleys, mean streets, the crumbling house in each of us. I am primordial fear, the great unknown, I am life everlasting. I touch you and you shiver, I blow in your ear and you follow me, down foggy lanes, into places you've never seen, to see things no one should see, to be someone you could only hope to be. I ride the winds of imagination on a black-and-white horse, to find the truth inside of me, to cure the ills inside of you, to take one passenger at a time over that tall mountain, across that lonely plain to a place you've never been where the world stops for just one minute and everything is right. I am a mystery. -Rides a Black and White Horse

They say that people who live next to waterfalls don't hear the water. It was terrible at first. We couldn't stand to be in the house for more than a few hours at a time. The first two weeks were filled with nights of intermittent sleep and quarreling for the sake of being heard over the water. We fought so much just to remind ourselves that we were in love, and not in hate. But the next weeks were a little better. It was possible to sleep a few good hours each night and eat in only mild discomfort. [We] still cursed the water, but less frequently, and with less fury. Her attacks on me also quieted. It's your fault, she would say. You wanted to live here. Life continued, as life continues, and time passed, as time passes, and after a little more than two months: Do you hear that? I asked her one of the rare mornings we sat at the table together. Hear it? I put down my coffee and rose from my chair. You hear that thing? What thing? she asked. Exactly! I said, running outside to pump my fist at the waterfall. Exactly! We danced, throwing handfuls of water in the air, hearing nothing at all. We alternated hugs of forgiveness and shouts of human triumph at the water. Who wins the day? Who wins the day, waterfall? We do! We do! And this is what living next to a waterfall is like. Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love.

I first started liking you when we went to talk to the rulers of the low Courts,” I say. “You were funny, which was weird. And when we went to Hollow Hall, you were clever. I kept remembering how you’d been the one to get us out of the brugh after Dain’s coronation, right before I put that knife to your throat.” He doesn’t try to interrupt, so I have no choice but to barrel on. “After I tricked you into being the High King,” I say. “I thought once you hated me, I could go back to hating you. But I didn’t. And I felt so stupid. I thought I would get my heart broken. I thought it was a weakness that you would use against me. But then you saved me from the Undersea when it would have been much more convenient to just leave me to rot. After that, I started to hope my feelings were returned. But then there was the exile—” I take a ragged breath. “I hid a lot, I guess. I thought if I didn’t, if I let myself love you, I would burn up like a match. Like the whole matchbook.” “But now you’ve explained it,” he says. “And you do love me.” “I love you,” I confirm. “Because I am clever and funny,” he says, smiling. “You didn’t mention my handsomeness.” “Or your deliciousness,” I say. “Although those are both good qualities.

I hate that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.

I have been Madoc’s protégé and Dain’s creature. I don’t know how to win any other way but theirs. It is no recipe for being a hero, but it is a recipe for success. I know how to drive a knife through my own hand. I know how to hate and be hated. And I know how to win the day, provided I am willing to sacrifice everything good in me for it. I said that if I couldn’t be better than my enemies, then I would become worse. Much, much worse.

I want you with me in any way you can be. You were there with me before I was born, Livvy. Without you, I just—there’s nothing if you aren’t there.” There’s nothing if you aren’t there. Pity and despair ripped through Kit. He couldn’t hate Ty for this. But he would never mean anything to Ty and never had: That much was clear.

As he soars, he thinks, suddenly, of Dr. Kashen. Or not of Dr. Kashen, necessarily, but the question he had asked him when he was applying to be his advisee: What's your favorite axiom? (The nerd pickup line, CM had once called it.) "The axiom of equality," he'd said, and Kashen had nodded, approvingly. "That's a good one," he'd said. The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. I was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life. But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated. And in that microsecond that he finds himself suspended in the air, between ecstasy of being aloft and the anticipation of his landing, which he knows will be terrible, he knows that x will always equal x, no matter what he does, or how many years he moves away from the monastery, from Brother Luke, no matter how much he earns or how hard he tries to forget. It is the last thing he thinks as his shoulder cracks down upon the concrete, and the world, for an instant, jerks blessedly away from beneath him: x = x, he thinks. x = x, x = x.

Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.

F*ck, Cassie. What do you want to hear? How much I hate myself for getting drunk that night and losing the only girl in my life I've ever trusted and truly loved? How I called Dean fifty times a day for weeks begging him to tell me how I could get you back? Do you want to hear how fucking weak and pathetic I think I am for not being able to tell her no that night, when I knew what was at stake? His eyebrows pinched together and his jaw tensed as his emotions spilled out into the night air. "Do you want to hear how I tried to talk her out of keeping this baby so that it wouldn't fuck everything up? How I begged her not to keep it, told her I'd pay for everything, I'd drive her there and give her money after it was all over, just to please not to this to me. And then how much of an asshole I felt after that too? Who tells someone that?

Kate knocked on his door and sucked in some air when he opened the door fresh from a shower. His hair was wet and he had a towel wrapped low on his hips. "Jeez," Kate said, staring at the towel, her mind running amuck over what the towel was hiding, unable to drag her eyes to Nick's face. "Is that a good jeez or a bad jeez?" "It's just jeez. Don't you have a robe?" "The room didn't come with a robe." "Okay, so that's why you're wearing the towel. I can see that. Makes perfect sense." A smile twitched at the corners of Nick's mouth. "Is there something I can do for you?" "No! Gosh. Absolutely not." Kate stared at the towel. She was pretty sure she saw it move. Nick tightened his grip on the towel. "Kate?" "Yep?" "You're staring." "I know. I can't help myself." "Cute," Nick said. Kate squinched her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose. "Ugh! I hate being cute." "Cute is good." "It's not. I'm an FBI agent. There's no cute in the FBI. Cute is goofy." "I'd grab you and kiss you, but I'd lose my towel, and I'm afraid you'd faint at the sight of me naked." "I think I could handle it." Nick dropped his towel

God speed fair Helena! whither away? HELENA Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching: O, were favour so, Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'd give to be to you translated. O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart. HERMIA I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. HELENA O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! HERMIA I give him curses, yet he gives me love. HELENA O that my prayers could such affection move! HERMIA The more I hate, the more he follows me. HELENA The more I love, the more he hateth me. HERMIA His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. HELENA None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little, The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation-- Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?

as a person who felt with suicidal thoughts i thought i should post a short quote from older letters of mine that i’ve never used. “to my dearest friends and family. i know you’ll miss me, but don’t. i am the lowest being that there’ll ever be; you should live your life without me. i promise you’ll be able to move on. i’ll be in your heart always. no matter what. to my love; my one and only; thank you. we’ve been through hard times and i don’t want you to hate me for what has already been done. you are my sunshine the love to my heart, and air in my lungs, and the one person who ever listened. don’t cry at my funeral; laugh instead. i’ll remember you no matter where i go after death. love AS

Stop. You can’t love me because you’re lonely, or because I am the only one who doesn’t piss you off. I want to piss you off, I want to get on your fucking nerves. I don’t want the responsibility of always being your rock. I will try, but I’m a mess, too. I lie, I sleep too much and I don’t like children under the age of 6, really. I don’t even know if I want kids because I’m selfish, and mothers can’t be selfish once they decide to carry another life. I’m always looking for the rain to come so I trip over my own feet. I know exactly what the air smells like before a storm. Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that I cry a lot because it feels good, and I masturbate at least 4 times a week, and you might fall out of love with me before either of us are ready for it. I have no experience with this. I’m trying to be brave and smart but its almost impossible to be both at the same time. You can’t love me like a fire escape. Sometimes I will be the match, or the smoke under the door. I don’t know what I’m doing, all I know is that we all catch fire sometimes, before we even get warm. Before you fall in love with me, I want you to know that there’s a 50% chance that this won’t work, that one of us will wind up hating the other. I will try to keep your head above water, but sometimes I’ll need help, too. I can’t be your savior, and I don’t expect you to be mine. Just watch me unfold and I’ll watch you unfold, too. We’ll get drunk and tell each other everything. I know that’s cheating but maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe we won’t wake up embarrassed. I am going to fall in love with you, too, feet first. Maybe we’ll slow dance off a building together, maybe we’ll have forgotten each other’s names by this time next year. I don’t care, the sky is gray with or without you, so I’m not going to look up anymore, I’m going to look ahead .

I put both of my hands on the desk. 'Just tell me why you hate me. Once and for all.' His long fingers smooth over the wood of Dain's desk. 'You really want honesty?' 'I am the one with the crossbow, not shooting you because you promised me answers. What do you think?' 'Very well.' He fixes me with a spiteful look. 'I hate you because your father loves you even though you're a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because you don't have a brother who beats you. And I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.' ... 'Is that all?' I demand. 'Because it's ridiculous. You can't be jealous of me. You don't have to live at the sufferance of the same person who murdered your parents. You don't have to stay angry because if you don't, there's a bottomless well of fear ready to open up under you.' I stop speaking abruptly, surprised at myself. I said I wasn't going to be charmed, but I let him trick me in to opening up to him. As I think that, Cardan's smile turns in to a more familiar sneer. 'Oh, really? I don't know about being angry? I don't know about being afraid? You're not the one bargaining for your life.' 'That's really why you hate me?' I demand. 'Only that? There's no better reason?' For a moment, I think he's ignoring me, but then I realise he's not answering me because he can't lie and he doesn't want to tell the truth. 'Well?' I say, lifting the crossbow again, glad to have a reason to reassert my position as the person in charge. 'Tell me!' He leans in and closes his eyes. 'Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.' I am shocked in to silence. 'Maybe you should shoot me after all,' he says, covering his face with one long-fingered hand.

I let go of him and remain standing. I promised myself I would do this, if I ever had the chance again.. I promised I would do this the first moment I could. 'I love you,' I say, the words coming out in an unintelligible rush. Cardan looks taken aback. Or possibly I spoke so fast he's not even sure what I said. 'You need not say it out of pity,' he says finally, with great deliberateness. 'Or because I was under a curse. I have asked you to lie to me in the past, in this very room, but I would beg you not to lie now.' My cheeks heat at the memory of those lies. 'I have not made myself easy to love,' he says, and I hear the echo of his mother's words in his. When I imagined telling him, I thought I would say the words, and it would be like pulling off a bandage- painful and swift. But I didn't think he would doubt me. 'I first started liking you when we went to talk to the rulers of the low Courts,' I say. 'You were funny, which was weird. And when we went to Hollow Hall, you were clever. I kept remembering how you'd been the one to get us out of the brugh after Dain's coronation, right before I put the knife to your throat.' He doesn't try to interrupt, so I have to choice but to barrel on. 'After I tricked you into being High King,' I say. 'I thought once you hated me, I could go back to hating you. But I didn't. And I felt so stupid. I thought I would get my heart broken. I thought it was a weakness that you would use against me. But then you saved me from the Undersea when it would have been much more convenient to just leave me to rot. After that, I started to hope my feelings were returned. But then there was the exile-' I take a ragged breath. 'I hid a lot, I guess. I thought if I didn't, if I let myself love you, I would burn up like a match. Like the whole matchbook.' 'But now you've explained it,' he says. 'And you do love me.' 'I love you,' I confirm. 'Because I am clever and funny,' he says, smiling. 'You didn't mention my handsomeness.' 'Or your deliciousness,' I say. 'Although those are both good qualities.' He pulls me to him, so that we're both lying on the couch. I look down at the blackness of his eyes and the softness of his mouth. I wipe a fleck of dried blood from the top of one pointed ear. 'What was it like?' I ask. 'Being a serpent.' He hesitates. 'It was like being trapped in the dark,' he says. 'I was alone, and my instinct was to lash out. I was perhaps not entirely an animal, but neither was I myself. I could not reason. There was only feelings- hatred and terror and the desire to destroy.' I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. 'And you.' He looks at me, his lips curving in something that's not quite a smile; it's more and less than that. 'I knew little else, but I always knew you.' And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.

I have been Madoc’s protégé and Dain’s creature. I don’t know how to win any other way but theirs. It is no recipe for being a hero, but it is a recipe for success. I know how to drive a knife through my own hand. I know how to hate and be hated. And I know how to win the day, provided I am willing to sacrifice everything good in me for it.

It’s cold in this bar despite being warm outside. I hate air-conditioning. I moved here to be warm.

She threw her hands in the air. “You know, I actually felt guilty. Just a little guilty. And now I remember why I shouldn’t have. I hate sitting around, locked in my room, bored out of my senses. I hate all these guards and nonsense; I hate you telling me to hold back when Brullo sings Cain’s praises and I’m just there, boring and unnoticed in the middle. I hate being told what I can’t do. And I hate you most of all!” He tapped his foot on the ground. “Are you finished?” There was no kindness in Chaol’s face, and she clicked her tongue as she left, her fists aching to bash his teeth down his throat.

There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my mouldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

Through constant self-sacrifice I had thoroughly ruined life in Desselbrunn for myself, one day it suddenly became unbearable, I thought. The beginning of this self-sacrifice had been the rejection of my Steinway, the triggering moment so to speak for my subsequent inability to tolerate life in Deselbrunn. All at once I could no longer breathe the Desselbrunn air and the walls in Desselbrunn made me sick and the rooms threatened to choke me, one has to remember how cavernous the rooms are there, nine-by-six meter or eight-by-eight meter rooms, I thought. I hated those rooms and I hated what was in those rooms and when I left my house I hated the people outside my house, all at once I was being unjust to all those people, who only wanted the best for me, but precisely that drove me crazy after a while, their constant willingness to be helpful, which I suddenly found profoundly revolting. I barricaded myself and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness. I ran outdoors and cursed at everybody. I ran into the woods and huddled beneath a tree, exhausted.

We’re fortunate in being Americans. At least we don’t step on the underdog. I wonder if that’s because there are no “Americans” – only a stew of immigrants – or if it’s because the earth from which we exist has been so kind to us and our forefathers; or if it’s because the “American” is the offspring of the logical European who hated oppression and loved freedom beyond life? Those great mountains and the tall timber; the cool deep lakes and broad rivers; the green valleys and white farmhouses; the air, the sea and wind; the plains and great cities; the smell of living – all must be the cause of it. And yet, with treasure in his hand there’s another million crying for that victory of life. And for each of us who wants to live in happiness and give happiness, there’s another different sort of person wanting to take it away… Those people always manage to have their say, and Mars is always close at hand. We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace… If I ever have a son, I don’t want him to go through this again, but I want him powerful enough that no one will be fool enough to touch him. He and America should be strong as hell and kind as Christ.

We live not for ourselves… it’s what my father always said to justify the sacrifices he had to make, like not spending enough time with me and Mom… or not marrying the woman he loved. But I never knew they had a child together.” [...] The dark outlines of the trees, the patches of star-filled sky, Clarke’s stunned expression, the nervous face of the kid Bellamy had once thought he hated, but now seemed to be… something else entirely. “So that makes you…” “Your half brother.” Wells let the final word hang in the air, as if giving both of them time to examine the shape of it before they claimed it for their own. “I guess you and Octavia aren’t the only siblings in the Colony anymore.” A laugh escaped from Bellamy’s lips before he had time to stop it. “Half brothers,” he repeated. “This is insane.” He shook his head, and with a grin, extended his arm and reached for Wells’s hand. “Brothers.

Rhyia leaned over and pushed a fallen strand of his hair back over one of his ears. 'Take it.' 'You want me to have it?' he asked, just to be sure. He wondered what he'd done that was worthy of being commemorated with a present. 'I thought you could use a little nonsense,' she told him, which worried him a little.

My hands are shaking. he captures them and kisses my knuckles with a kind of reverence. ¨I want to tell you so many lies,¨ he says. I shudder, and my heart hammers as his hands skim over my skin,one sliding between my thighs. I mirror him, fumbling with the buttons of his breeches. He helps me push them down, his tail curling against his leg then twisting to coil against mine, soft as a whisper. I reach over to slide my hand over the flat plane of his stomach. I dont let myself hesitate, but my inexperince is obvious. His skin is hot under my palm, against my calluses. His fingers are too clever by half. I feel as though i am drowning in sensation. His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarassing noises. Its more intimate than the way hes touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what hes doing and i dont. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, barring my throat. I hate the way i cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that i like him better than ive ever liked anyone and that of all the things hes ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst. pages 145-146

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.

From my youth upwards My Spirit walked not with the souls of men, Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joy was in the wilderness—to breathe the difficult air of the iced mountain's top, Where the birds dare not build—nor insect's wing. These were my pastimes, and to be alone; For if the beings, of whom I was one—Hating to be so—crossed me in my path, I felt myself degraded back to them, And was all clay again. And then I dived, In my lone wanderings, to the caves of Death, Searching its cause in its effect; and drew from withered bones, and skulls, and heaped up dust conclusions most forbidden.

Smiling, Simon stared into the depths of his brandy. “What a difficult evening you’ve had,” he heard Westcliff remark sardonically. “First you were compelled to carry Miss Peyton’s nubile young body all the way to her bedroom …then you had to examine her injured leg. How terribly inconvenient for you.” Simon’s smile faded. “I didn’t say that I had examined her leg.” The earl regarded him shrewdly. “You didn’t have to. I know you too well to presume that you would overlook such an opportunity.” “I’ll admit that I looked at her ankle. And I also cut her corset strings when it became apparent that she couldn’t breathe.” Simon’s gaze dared the earl to object. “Helpful lad,” Westcliff murmured. Simon scowled. “Difficult as it may be for you to believe, I receive no lascivious pleasure from the sight of a woman in pain.” Leaning back in his chair, Westcliff regarded him with a cool speculation that raised Simon’s hackles. “I hope you’re not fool enough to fall in love with such a creature. You know my opinion of Miss Peyton—” “Yes, you’ve aired it repeatedly.” “And furthermore,” the earl continued, “I would hate to see one of the few men of good sense I know to turn into one of those prattling fools who run about pollenating the atmosphere with maudlin sentiment—” “I’m not in love.” “You’re in something,” Westcliff insisted. “In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you look so mawkish as you did outside her bedroom door.” “I was displaying simple compassion for a fellow human being.” The earl snorted. “Whose drawers you’re itching to get into.” The blunt accuracy of the observation caused Simon to smile reluctantly. “It was an itch two years ago,” he admitted. “Now it’s a full-scale pandemic.

Oh, don’t look so put out, Captain,” she said, turning away from Rowan and sliding into a seat across from Rolfe. “You hate me, I hate you, we both hate being told what to do by busybody, overlording empires—it’s a perfect pairing.” Rolfe spat, “You nearly wrecked everything I’ve worked for. Your silver tongue and arrogance won’t get you through this.” Just for the hell of it, she smiled and stuck out her tongue. Not the real thing—but a forked tongue of silver fire that wriggled like a snake’s in the air. Fenrys choked on a dark laugh. She ignored him. She’d deal with their presence later. She just prayed she’d be able to warn Aedion before he ran into his father—who was now sitting two seats down from her, gawking at her as if she had ten heads.

She could smell the wrongness in the air and it made her wolf nervous. It felt like something was watching them, as if the wrongness had an intelligence— and it didn't help to remember that at least one of the people they were hunting could hide from their senses. Anna fought the urge to turn around, to take Charles's hand or slide under his arm and let his presence drive away the wrongness. Once, she would have, but now she had the uneasy feeling that he might back away as he almost had when she sat on his lap in the boat, before Brother Wolf had taken over. Maybe he was just tired of her. She had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with him...but Bran knew his son and thought the problem was her. Bran was smart and perceptive; she ought to have considered that he was right. Charles was old. He'd seen and experienced so much—next to him she was just a child. His wolf had chosen her without consulting Charles at all. Maybe he'd have preferred someone who knew more. Someone beautiful and clever who... "Anna?" said Charles. "What's wrong? Are you crying?" He moved in front of her and stopped, forcing her to stop walking, too. She opened her mouth and his fingers touched her wet cheeks. "Anna," he said, his body going still. "Call on your wolf." "You should have someone stronger," she told him miserably. "Someone who could help you when you need it, instead of getting sent home because I can't endure what you have to do. If I weren't Omega, if I were dominant like Sage, I could have helped you." "There is no one stronger," Charles told her. "It's the taint from the black magic. Call your wolf." "You don't want me anymore," she whispered. And once the words were out she knew they were true. He would say the things that he thought she wanted to hear because he was a kind man. But they would be lies. The truth was in the way he closed down the bond between them so she wouldn't hear things that would hurt her. Charles was a dominant wolf and dominant wolves were driven to protect those weaker than themselves. And he saw her as so much weaker. "I love you," he told her. "Now, call your wolf." She ignored his order—he knew better than to give her orders. He said he loved her; it sounded like the truth. But he was old and clever and Anna knew that, when push came to shove, he could lie and make anyone believe it. Knew it because he lied to her now—and it sounded like the truth. "I'm sorry," she told him. "I'll go away—" And suddenly her back was against a tree and his face was a hairsbreadth from hers. His long hot body was pressed against her from her knees to her chest—he'd have to bend to do that. He was a lot taller than her, though she wasn't short. Anna shuddered as the warmth of his body started to penetrate the cold that had swallowed hers. Charles waited like a hunter, waited for her to wiggle and see that she was truly trapped. Waited while she caught her breathe. Waited until she looked into his eyes. Then he snarled at her. "You are not leaving me." It was an order, and she didn't have to follow anyone's orders. That was part of being Omega instead of a regular werewolf—who might have had a snowball's chance in hell of being a proper mate. "You need someone stronger," Anna told him again. "So you wouldn't have to hide when you're hurt. So you could trust your mate to take care of herself and help, damn it, instead of having to protect me from whatever you are hiding." She hated crying. Tears were weaknesses that could be exploited and they never solves a damn thing. Sobs gathered in her chest like a rushing tide and she needed to get away from him before she broke. Instead of fighting his grip, she tried to slide out of it. "I need to go," she said to his chest. "I need—" His mouth closed over hers, hot and hungry, warming her mouth as his body warmed her body. "Me," Charles said, his voice dark and gravelly as if it had traveled up from the bottom of the earth,...

More often, people were irritated with freedom. “I buy three newspapers and each one of them has its own version of the truth. Where’s the real truth? You used to be able to get up in the morning, read Pravda, and know all you needed to know, understand everything you needed to understand.” People were slow to come out from under the narcosis of old ideas. If I brought up repentance, the response would be, “What do I have to repent for?” Everyone thought of themselves as a victim, never a willing accomplice. One person would say, “I did time, too”; another, “I fought in the war”; a third, “I built my city up from the ruins, hauling bricks day and night.” Freedom had materialized out of thin air: Everyone was intoxicated by it, but no one had really been prepared. Where was this freedom? Only around kitchen tables, where out of habit people continued to badmouth the government. They reviled Yeltsin and Gorbachev: Yeltsin for changing Russia, and Gorbachev for changing everything. The entire twentieth century. Now we would live no worse than anyone else. We’d be just like everyone else. We thought that this time, we’d finally get it right. Russia was changing and hating itself for changing. “The immobile Mongol,” Marx wrote of Russia.

I jumped up, my hands in the air. “Yes!” Lend laughed. “Okay, looks like I need to make a run to the grocery store. Do faeries hate wheat or white bread more, you think?” “Get bread with raisins,” I said. “Everyone hates raisins.” Jack was bouncing, obviously excited. “That’s all we need, right?” “We need Reth.” “No,” Lend and Jack whined in unison. “Come on, you two. Reth knows the Faerie Realms better than you do. Jack, you didn’t see where the people were; it might take you a while to find them, and that’s time we can’t afford to lose. And Reth’s getting worse; being there might give him more time.” Lend scowled, grabbing the car keys off the counter. “Fine. But I’m really getting tired of his stupid smirk and prissy clothes.” Jack nodded. “And his voice that sounds like it’d even taste good. Really, it’s overkill. Best to have only a few absolutely perfect traits—for example, my hair and eyes and sparkling personality—so you don’t overwhelm them.” “Aww, are you guys jealous of how pretty Reth is? That’s kind of adorable.” “You know I could look exactly like him,” Lend said, frowning darkly. “Please for the love of all that is good and holy, never, ever wear Reth. That’s the stuff of nightmares.” That brightened his face a bit and he left me with a lingering kiss and a promise to be back with every loaf of bread we could carry. “Well, go find your stupid faerie boyfriend,” Jack said, lying down on top of the counter and drumming his fingers on his stomach. “I haven’t filled my quota for pissing off the Dark Court yet this week.” “We are going to blow your quote sky high.” He held up a hand and I high-fived him as I walked past and out of the house toward the trail. Yet again. I should have invested in a dirt bike or something given the amount of mileage I was getting out of the path between the house and the pond.

For us, eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love. We love only the person we can eat. The person we hate we ‘can’t swallow.’ That one makes us vomit. Even our friends are inedible. If we were asked to dig into our friend’s flesh we would be disgusted. The person we love we dream only of eating. That is, we slide down that razor’s edge of ambivalence. The story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. Because loving is wanting and being able to eat up and yet to stop at the boundary. And there, at the tiniest beat between springing and stopping, in rushes fear. The spring is already in mid-air. The heart stops. The heart takes off again. Everything in love is oriented towards this absorption. At the same time real love is a don’t-touch, yet still an almost-touching. Tact itself: a phantom touching. Eat me up, my love, or else I’m going to eat you up. Fear of eating, fear of the edible, fear on the part of the one of them who feels loved, desired, who wants to be loved, desired, who desires to be desired, who knows there is no greater proof of love than the other’s appetite, who is dying to be eaten up, who says or doesn’t say, but who signifies: I beg you, eat me up. Want me down to the marrow. And yet manage it so as to keep me alive. But I often turn about or compromise, because I know that you won’t eat me up, in the end, and I urge you: bite me. Sign my death with your teeth.

I hate now for men to dote in this way, the ones who don't know me. Their praise lands uncertainly in the air somewhere between the two of us, because it doesn't belong to me. I hate to hear them tell me what I am, even or especially when what they think I am is kind or brilliant or beautiful. I hate when they insist that I have no faults, that my laziness or violence or cruelty simply don't exist... I am being made to wear whatever particular fantasy they wish to project

I could not stop thinking of my sister’s face, that blank shock when I told her I would never be like her. What had she hoped for? That we would send messages back and forth in seabirds’ mouths? That we would share spells, fight the gods? That we might be, in our way, sisters at last? I tried to imagine it: our heads bent together over herbs, her laugh as she devised some cleverness. I wished then—oh, a dozen impossible things. That I had known sooner what she was. That we had grown up somewhere other than those glittering halls. I could have blunted her poisons, drawn her from her abuses, taught her how to gather the best herbs. Hah! she said. I will take no lessons from fools like you. You are weak and blind, and it is worse because you choose it. You will be sorry in the end. It was always easier when she was hateful. “I am not weak. And I will never be sorry not to be like you. Do you hear?” There was no answer, of course. Only the air, eating my words.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

Better you experience the humiliation of being beaten by a creature who ought to be your inferior. And every time you think of how disgusting mortals are- with their pocked skin and their decaying teeth and their fragile, little minds- I want you to think of this moment, when you were lower than ever that. And I want you to remember how you willingly submitted, because if you don't, you will have to leave Hollow Hall and my mercy. 'Now, little brother, you must choose a future.' It turned out that Cardan didn't have a heart of stone after all. As he removed his shirt and sank to his knees, as he fisted his hands and tried not to cry out when the strap fell, he burned with hatred. Hatred for Dain; for his father; for all the siblings who didn't take him in and the one who did; for his mother, who spat at his feet as she was led away; for stupid, disgusting mortals; for all of Elfhame and everyone in it. Hate that was so bright and hot that it was the first thing that truly warmed him. Hate that felt so good that he welcomed being consumed by it. Not a heart of stone, but a heart of fire.

I spend the next few days watching Maï die. I can't stand that voice, that protest. Katzenelenbogen shows up and explains in that rational, no-nonsense, doctoral tone that no one has the right to make such a fuss over a cat, while the whole world. . . . . I kick them out, both him and the world. Maï is no longer a cat. She is a human being in agony. Every living thing that suffers is a human being. She is cuddled in my arms, a small ball of lackluster fur, which gives her a horrible stuffed air already smacking of taxidermists. Every now and then she raises her head, looks at me inquiringly and miaows a question I understand, but am unable to answer. Our vocal cords are totally inadequate there. What goings-on about a mere cat, huh? I hate your guts, you antisentimental, antiemotional, hardheaded rationalists. You are the ones who have raised the going rate of sensitivity. You have put all your emphasis on ideas, and ideas without "emotions" and without "sentimentalism," that's the world you have built, your work. All the pseudo-people who have the Nazi arrogance to be reading this book make my hands ache for a grenade.

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.

If you must fight this thing, there's no reason to go alone. You could take a battalion of knights or, failing that, me.' 'You think you're the equal of a battalion of knights?' she asks with a smile. He might be, he supposes, although there's no telling how the mortal world will affect his magic. He did once raise an isle from the bottom of the sea. He wonders if he ought to remind her of that, wonders if she had been impressed. 'I believe that I could easily best all of them combined, in a suitable contest. Perhaps one involving drink.' She kicks her ragwort steed forward with a laugh.

Those who, from the start, are the unfortunate, the downtrodden, the broken – these are the ones, the weakest, who most undermine life amongst men, who introduce the deadliest poison and scepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. Where can we escape the surreptitious glance imparting a deep sadness, the backward glance of the born misfit revealing how such a man communes with himself, – that glance which is a sigh. ‘If only I were some other person!’ is what this glance sighs: ‘but there’s no hope of that. I am who I am: how could I get away from myself ? And oh – I’m fed up with myself!’ . . . In such a soil of self-contempt, such a veritable swamp, every kind of weed and poisonous plant grows, all of them so small, hidden, dissembling and sugary. Here, the worms of revenge and rancour teem all round; here, the air stinks of things unrevealed and unconfessed; here, the web of the most wicked conspiracy is continually being spun, – the conspiracy of those who suffer against those who are successful and victorious, here, the sight of the victorious man is hated. And what mendacity to avoid admitting this hatred as hatred! What expenditure of big words and gestures, what an art of ‘righteous’ slander! These failures: what noble eloquence flows from their lips! How much sugared, slimy, humble humility swims in their eyes! What do they really want? At any rate, to represent justice, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the ambition of these who are ‘the lowest’, these sick people! And how skilful such an ambition makes them! In particular, we have to admire the counterfeiter’s skill with which the stamp of virtue, the ding-a-ling golden ring of virtue is now imitated. They have taken out a lease on virtue to keep it just for themselves, these weak and incurably sick people, there is no doubt about it: ‘Only we are good and just’ is what they say, ‘only we are the homines bonæ voluntatis’. They promenade in our midst like living reproaches, like warnings to us, – as though health, success, strength, pride and the feeling of power were in themselves depravities for which penance, bitter penance will one day be exacted: oh, how ready they themselves are, in the last resort, to make others penitent, how they thirst to be hangmen! Amongst them we find plenty of vengeance-seekers disguised as judges, with the word justice continually in their mouth like poisonous spittle, pursing their lips and always at the ready to spit at anybody who does not look discontented and who cheerfully goes his own way. Among their number there is no lack of that most disgusting type of dandy, the lying freaks who want to impersonate ‘beautiful souls’ and put their wrecked sensuality on the market, swaddled in verses and other nappies, as ‘purity of the heart’: the type of moral onanists and ‘self-gratifiers.’ The will of the sick to appear superior in any way, their instinct for secret paths, which lead to tyranny over the healthy, – where can it not be found, this will to power of precisely the weakest!

In this world,” I give him a delicate look, “with BJ?” I shake my head. “I’m sorry.” “That’s—” He trails, letting out this hollow laugh that I kind of hate. It doesn’t suit him. His regular laugh is so wonderful. “—fine.” He nods. “That’s good to know, actually—” “I’m sorry,” I tell him. He shakes his head again. “No, don’t be.” But you see, the thing about stars is that in another galaxy, that star is also a sun. “If it wasn’t him, it would be you,” I tell him, for better and for worse. He blows some more air out of his mouth and catches my eye. “In another life, yeah?” I nod and offer him a weak smile. “I’ll meet you there.

But I am a paladin,” Cordelia cried. “It’s awful, I loathe it— don’t imagine that I feel anything other than hated for this thing that binds me to Lilith. But they fear me because of it. They dare not touch me—” “Oh?” snarled James. “They dare not touch you? That’s not what it bloody looked like.” “The demon at Chiswick House—it was about to tell me something about Belial, before you shot it.” “Listen to yourself, Cordelia!” James shouted. “You are without Cortana! You cannot even lift a weapon! Do you know what it means to me, that you cannot protect yourself? Do you understand that I am terrified, every moment of every day and night, for your safety?” Cordelia stood speechless. She had no idea what to say. She blinked, and felt something hot against her cheek. She put her hand up quickly—surely she was not crying?— and it came away scarlet. “You’re bleeding,” James said. He closed the distance between them in two strides. He caught her chin and lifted it, his thumb stroking across her cheekbone. “Just a scratch,” he breathed. “Are you hurt anywhere else? Daisy, tell me—” “No. I’m fine. I promise you,” she said, her voice wavering as his intent golden eyes spilled over her, searching for signs of injury. “It’s nothing.” “It’s the furthest thing from nothing,” James rasped. “By the Angel, when I realized you’d gone out, at night, weaponless—” “What were you even doing at the house? I thought you were staying at the Institute.” “I came to get something for Jesse,” James said. “I took him shopping, with Anna—he needed clothes, but we forgot cuff links—” “He did need clothes,” Cordelia agreed. “Nothing he had fit.” “Oh, no,” said James. “We are not chatting. When I came in, I saw your dress in the hall, and Effie told me she’d caught a glimpse of you leaving. Not getting in a carriage, just wandering off toward Shepherd Market—” “So you Tracked me?” “I had no choice. And then I saw you—you had gone to where your father died,” he said after a moment. “I thought—I was afraid—” “That I wanted to die too?” Cordelia whispered. It had not occurred to her that he might think that. “James. I may be foolish, but I am not self-destructive.” “And I thought, had I made you as miserable as that? I have made so many mistakes, but none were calculated to hurt you. And then I saw what you were doing, and I thought, yes, she does want to die. She wants to die and this is how she’s chosen to do it.” He was breathing hard, almost gasping, and she realized how much of his fury was despair. “James,” she said. “It was a foolish thing to do, but at no moment did I want to die—” He caught at her shoulders. “You cannot hurt yourself, Daisy. You must not. Hate me, hit me, do anything you want to me. Cut up my suits and set fire to my books. Tear my heart into pieces, scatter them across England. But do not harm yourself—” He pulled her toward him, suddenly, pressing his lips to her hair, her cheek. She caught him by the arms, her fingers digging into his sleeves, holding him to her. “I swear to the Angel,” he said, in a muffled voice, “if you die, I will die, and I will haunt you. I will give you no peace—” He kissed her mouth. Perhaps it had been meant to be a quick kiss, but she could not help herself: she kissed back. And it was like breathing air after being trapped underground for weeks, like coming into sunlight after darkness.

Having written some pages in favor of Jesus, I receive a solemn communication crediting me with the possession of a “theology” by which I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly enough the weights of sins? Have I found too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or the other way around? Have I found too much pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive any smidgen of such distinctions I may have still in my mind. I meant to leave them all behind a long time ago. If I’m a theologian I am one to the extent I have learned to duck when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead, dropping their loads of whitewash at random on the faces of those who look toward Heaven. Look down, look down, and save your soul by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas night and Easter morning are this soil’s only laws. The depth and volume of the waters of baptism, the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks of those most surely saved, God’s own only interpretation of the Scripture: these would be causes of eternal amusement, could we forget how we have hated one another, how vilified and hurt and killed one another, bloodying the world, by means of such questions, wrongly asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day, year after year—such is my belief—in Hell.

There was great indignation at home when she told her story that evening. Her mother said it was a shame, but told her she had done right. Beth declared she wouldn't go to the fair at all, and Jo demanded why she didn't take all her pretty things and leave those mean people to get on without her. "Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it. they will feel that more than angry speeches and huffy actions, won't they, Marmee?" "That's the right spirit, my dear. A kiss for a blow is always best, though it's not very easy to give it sometimes," said her mother, with the air of one who had learned the difference between preaching and practicing.

You remember the Latin?" "Of course. Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit." I couldn't see his face. Cease of the hood, but it could tell by the tone of his voice that he was completely serious. Or at least trying to be. I wrinkled my forehead as I attempted to translate. "Wait a second," Seth said, pulling back his hood to demonstrate his utter confusion. "I thought their greeting was Non ducor, duco. 'I am not led, I lead.'" Liam's shoulders began shaking just as I finished my rough translation. "A wise man does not urinate against the wind?" I pulled down my hood and looked at Liam. He winked at me, and it was pretty much the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. Normally, I'm very anti-wink when it comes to guys, but in this case it was a wink of absolution. It was a wink that meant Liam and I were actually going to be okay. "You've been planning that all night, haven't you?" I reached over and squeezed his arm. It was the first time I had touched him in at least twenty-four hours, and his strong forearm felt so good beneath my fingertips. When he grabbed my hand and quickly brought my palm to his lips, I felt all the air leave my body. As much as I hated to admit it, for fear of sounding like a ridiculous, boy-crazed damsel in distress, it felt good to have my boyfriend back. Taylor whipped back her hood, her blue eyes icy. "I'm so glad this is such a joke to you," she spat, clearly not in the mood for games. Liam dropped my hand and sat up a little straiter. "Sorry T., I've got it non ducor, duco. Don't worry.

Why are you wailing away? What is the matter with you?” “I was playing and—“ and her lip quivered as she spoke, “—and it was cloudy, and then—“ a sniff, “—and then, as I was playing, the sun came out.” I gave her a flat look. “You’re crying because the sun came out?” “Yes,” she moped, wiping the tears from her eyes, “the sun came out, and now—“ she heaved, “—and now, it’s hot! I don’t like it when it’s hot. Being hot is dumb!” I immediately absolved her of all previous sins. I slumped over the sill and gave her as much sympathy as my now warm face allowed. “Yes, child, being hot is very dumb indeed. Very well, you have a reason for crying. But then why are you outside?” “Because it was too hot inside and mommy won’t let me have ice cream.” “Well, there is your problem. You must get an air conditioner and a new mother.

That night, I hated father. He smelt of cabbage. There was cigarette ash all over his trousers. His untidy moustache was yellower and viler than ever with nicotine, and he took no notice of me. He simply sat there in his ugly arm-chair, his eyes half closed, brooding on the Lord knows what. I hated him. I hated his moustache. I even hated the smoke that drifted from his mouth and hung in the stale air above his head. And when my mother came through the door and asked me whether I had seen her spectacles, I hated her too. I hated the clothes she wore; tasteless and fussy. I hated them deeply. I hated something I had never noticed before; it was the way the heels of her shoes were worn away on their outside edges - not badly, but appreciably. It looked mean to me, slatternly, and horribly human. I hated her for being human - like father. She began to nag me about her glasses and the thread-bare condition of the elbows of my jacket, and suddenly I threw my book down. The room was unbearable. I felt suffocated. I suddenly realised that I must get away. I had lived with these two people for nearly twenty-three years. I had been born in the room immediately overhead. Was this the life for a young man? To spend his evenings watching the smoke drift out of his father's mouth and stain that decrepit old moustache, year after year - to watch the worn-away edges of my mother's heels - the dark-brown furniture and the familiar stains on the chocolate-coloured carpet? I would go away; I would shake off the dark, smug mortality of the place. I would forgo my birthright. What of my father's business into which I would step at his death? What of it? To hell with it. ("Same Time, Same Place")

I have thought and thought since you were gone, and there is something I wish to say.' Cardan's face is serious, almost grave, in a way that he seldom allows himself to be. 'When my father sent me away, at first I tried to prove that I was nothing like he thought me. But when that didn't work, I tried to be exactly what he believed I was instead. If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying. I would live down to his every expectation. If I couldn't have his favour, then I would have his wrath. 'Balekin did not know what to do with me. He made me attend his debauches, made me serve wine and food to show off his tame little prince. When I grew older and more ill-tempered, he grew to like having someone to discipline. His disappointments were my lashing, his insecurities my flaws. And yet, he was the first person who saw something in me he liked- himself. He encouraged all my cruelty, inflamed all my rage. And I got worse. 'I wasn't kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn't sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone- truly gone beneath the waves- I hated myself as I never have before.' I am so surprised by his words that I keep trying to find the tick in them. He can't truly mean what he's saying. 'Perhaps I am foolish, but I am not a fool. You like something about me,' he says, mischief lighting his face, making its planes more familiar. 'The challenge? My pretty eyes? No matter, because there is more you do not like and I know it. I can't trust you. Still, when you were gone I had to make a great many decisions, and so much of what I did right was imagining you beside me, Jude, giving me a bunch of ridiculous orders I nonetheless obeyed.' I am robbed of speech. He laughs, his warm hand going to my shoulder. 'Either I've surprised you or you are as ill as Madoc claimed.

Silence, silence. Then he switched his stool, turned his back to me as much as possible and continued working. I got up and walked to the men’s crapper and stuck my head out the window for fresh air. The guy was my father all over again: RESPONSIBILITY, SOCIETY, COUNTRY, DUTY, MATURITY, all the dull-sounding hard words. But why were they in such agony? Why did they hate so much? It seemed simply that they were very much afraid that somebody else was having a damn good time or was not unhappy most of the time. It seemed that they wanted everybody to carry the same damn heavy rock they were carrying. It wasn’t ENOUGH that I was working beside him like an idiot; it wasn’t enough for him that I was wasting the few good hours left in my life—no, he also wanted me to share his own mind-soul, to sniff his dirty stockings, to chew on his angers and hates with him. I was not PAID for that, the fucker. And that’s what killed you on the job—not the actual physical work but being closed in with the dead.

Yes.” I sniff. I love him like you might love a star. “Yes, you did?” He stares over at me. I nod. “Yes.” His eyes go funny, sort of blurry—he blinks twice and then he yells “Fuck!” way too loudly to be anything close to discreet. My head pulls back and I tense up. “Shit.” He breathes out, shaking his head. “Fuck—” I watch on in mild horror. “Are you ok—” “Say it.” “What?” I stare over at him. “Can you, please? Say it?” he asks. “Now. Out loud—” He shakes his head at himself. “Just so I’ve heard you say it one time.” I open my mouth to protest for a reason I don’t know why and then I stop myself, swallow and look him in the eye. “I loved you.” He nods a couple of times then closes his eyes for a few seconds, blows some air out of his mouth. “I have to ask—” He looks back over at me, eyes all heavy now. “Was I ever in with a shot?” He is a star. Not the shooting kind. Not some flash-in-the-pan meteorite that burns up on entry into the atmosphere. And stars, they’re undeniably beautiful, kind of magical. Only come out at the nighttime. Easy enough to ignore. In a sky full of them, a single star can be difficult to tell apart from the others. They don’t affect our day-to-day lives, really. You might see it one night and not the next, and it bears no real consequence other than perhaps the sky is a little less wonderful on that particular evening. A star is a star. “In this world,” I give him a delicate look, “with BJ?” I shake my head. “I’m sorry.” “That’s—” He trails, letting out this hollow laugh that I kind of hate. It doesn’t suit him. His regular laugh is so wonderful. “—fine.” He nods. “That’s good to know, actually—” “I’m sorry,” I tell him. He shakes his head again. “No, don’t be.” But you see, the thing about stars is that in another galaxy, that star is also a sun. “If it wasn’t him, it would be you,” I tell him, for better and for worse. He blows some more air out of his mouth and catches my eye. “In another life, yeah?” I nod and offer him a weak smile. “I’ll meet you there.

There is some quite trivial, distant noise; a sound, moreover, which has nothin to do with me, to which there is not the slightest need for me to pay any attention; yet it suffices to wake me, and in no gentle way, either, but savagely, violently, shockingly, like an air raid alarm. The wheels, my masters, are already vibrating with incipient motion; the whole mechanism is preparing to begin the monotonous, hateful functioning of which I am the dispirited slave. I began to feel that if I did not succeed in breaking out of the loathsome circle I should suddenly become mad, scream, perpetrate some shocking act of violence in the open street. But worst of all was the knowledge that the laws of my temperament would forbid me even a relief of this kind. I was inexorably imprisoned behind my own determination to display no emotion whatever. Now I saw that I was in a street which I did not know very well. Night had fallen, the lights glowed mistily through a thin haze. It was as though, in some mysterious way, I had become the central point around which the night scene revolved. People walking on the pavement looked at me as they passed. Some with pity, some with detached interest, some with more morbid curiosity. Some appeared to make small, concealed sights, but whether these were intended for warning or encouragement I could not be sure. The windows lighted or unlighted, were like eyes more or less piercing, but all focused upon me. The houses, the traffic, everything in sight, seemed to be watching to see what I would do. To wait — with no living soul in whom to confide one's doubt, one's fears, one's relentless hope. Some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence. Coiling itself round me it knows I cannot escape. Imprisoned in its very fabric, I am like a small worm, a parasite, which the host harbors not altogether unwillingly. A human being can only endure depression up to a certain point. When this point of saturation is reached it becomes necessary for him to discover some element of pleasure. No matter how humble or on how low a level, in his environment if he is to go on living at all.

Healing Ourselves In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible. —BUDDHA One of the most difficult things about healing from being hurt by others is how to put wounds to rest when those who have hurt us will not give air to the wound, will not admit to their part in causing the pain. I have struggled with this deeply. Time and again, I find myself confusing the want for justice with the need for a witness of the wound. Physical wounds are hard to miss, but emotional wounds are seldom visible. This is why they must be looked at and acknowledged if we are ever to heal. Yet so often, our pain is compounded by the very human fact that we may never agree on the nature of what happened. If we do, we may never admit it to each other. Or the amends we feel we so deserve may go with the hurtful one to the grave. As with so many other crucial negotiations of life, what's required is to honor what lives within us. We must bear witness to ourselves, for there is no power as embracing or forgiving as the authority of that portion of God that lives in each of us.

I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?” Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker. Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city. A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him. And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him. I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else….

We walk around inside that house like everything is okay, but it’s not, Quinn. We’ve been broken for years and I have no idea how to fix us. I find solutions. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. But I have no idea how to solve me and you. Every day I come home, hoping things will be better. But you can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. You hate it when I touch you. You hate it when I talk to you. I pretend not to notice the things you don’t want me to notice because I don’t want you to hurt more than you already do.” He releases a rush of air. “I am not blaming you for what I did. It’s my fault. I did that. I fucked up. But I didn’t fuck up because I was attracted to her. I fucked up because I miss you. Every day, I miss you. When I’m at work, I miss you. When I’m home, I miss you. When you’re next to me in bed, I miss you. When I’m inside you, I miss you.” Graham presses his mouth to mine. I can taste his tears. Or maybe they’re my tears. He pulls back and presses his forehead to mine. “I miss you, Quinn. So much. You’re right here, but you aren’t. I don’t know where you went or when you left, but I have no idea how to bring you back. I am so alone. We live together. We eat together. We sleep together. But I have never felt more alone in my entire life.” Graham releases me and falls back against his seat. He rests his elbow against the window, covering his face as he tries to compose himself. He’s more broken than I’ve ever seen him in all the years I’ve known him. And I’m the one slowly tearing him down. I’m making him unrecognizable. I’ve strung him along by allowing him to believe there’s hope that I’ll eventually change. That I’ll miraculously turn back into the woman he fell in love with. But I can’t change. We are who our circumstances turn us into. “Graham.” I wipe at my face with my shirt. He’s quiet, but he eventually looks at me with his sad, heartbroken eyes. “I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been here this whole time. But you can’t see me because you’re still searching for someone I used to be. I’m sorry I’m no longer who I was back then. Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe I won’t. But a good husband loves his wife through the good and the bad times. A good husband stands at his wife’s side through sickness and health, Graham. A good husband- a husband who truly loves his wife - wouldn’t cheat on her and then blame his infidelity on the fact that he’s lonely.” Graham’s expression doesn’t change. He’s as still as a statue. The only thing that moves is his jaw as he works it back and forth. And then his eyes narrow and he tilts his head. “You don’t think I love you, Quinn?” “I know you used to. But I don’t think you love the person I’ve become.” Graham sits up straight. He leans forward, looking me hard in the eye. His words are clipped as he speaks. “I have loved you every single second of every day since the moment I laid eyes on you. I love you more now than I did the day I married you. I love you, Quinn. I fucking love you!” He opens his car door, gets out and then slams it shut with all his strength. The whole car shakes. He walks toward the house, but before he makes it to the front door, he spins around and points at me angrily. “I love you, Quinn!” He’s shouting the words. He’s angry. So angry. He walks toward his car and kicks at the front bumper with his bare foot. He kicks and he kicks and he kicks and then pauses to scream it at me again. “I love you!” He slams his fist against the top of his car, over and over, until he finally collapses against the hood, his head buried in his arms. He remains in this position for an entire minute, the only thing moving is the subtle shaking of his shoulders. I don’t move. I don’t even think I breathe. Graham finally pushes off the hood and uses his shirt to wipe at his eyes. He looks at me, completely defeated. “I love you,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I always have. No matter how much you wish I didn’t.

I don't respond. Instead, I chuck my shoes over the fence and start to climb. When I was twelve, I could climb fences pretty quick. Especially growing up in Tampa where we would hop fences to get to each other's yards. But I'm not even halfway up and i'm winded, my foot has slipped more than once, and I can only imagine what I look like from below. "Shit!" I yell as my toe misses the next opening. Nicole's laughter fills the air. "Stop laughing and start climbing!" "This is priceless," she laughs harder. "Wait. Let me get my camera!" "Nicole! We need to get out of here in case he comes looking for me." "Fine. Fine. Chicken shit." Her shoes fly over my head, and the entire fence shakes. "You owe me." "Stop moving!" I try not to laugh, but it's futile. This is hysterical. "I'm going to pee," tears fall from my eyes as I hold on. "I need a Go-Pro for the next time we go out." "I hate you," I say between giggles. She purposely rocks back, causing me to almost fall. "You only wish you did." "If I fall..." I warn as I sway and try to climb higher. "It'll be what you deserve for making me climb a freaking fence at one in the morning!" The amount of ways that I'm going to pay for this is unimaginable. My co-workers saw me being sung to on stage, I'm sure one of the guys from my squad caught me going backstage, I'm going to have scrapes from climbing a fence, and Nicole will never let me live this down. I reach the top, one leg swung over on one side and one still in Eli-land. And that's when I hear him. "You're just going to run out?" Eli's voice is filled with disbelief. "Just like that?

He looks around in amazement, taking in the mess. 'Where- Do you really sleep here? Perhaps you ought to set fire to your rooms as well.' 'Maybe,' I say, guiding him to my bed. It is strange to put my hand on his back. I can feel the warmth of his skin through the thin linen of his shirt, can feel the flex of his muscles. It feels wrong to touch him as though he were a regular person, as though he weren't both the High King and also my enemy. He needs no encouragement to sprawl on my mattress, head on the pillow, black hair spilling like crow feathers. He looks up at me with his night-coloured eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. 'For a moment,' he says, 'I wondered if it wasn't you shooting bolts at me.' I make a face at him. 'And what made you decide it wasn't?' He grins up at me. 'They missed.' I have said that he has the power to deliver a compliment and make it hurt. So, too, can he say something that ought to be insulting and deliver it in such a way that it feels like being truly seen. Our eyes meet, and something dangerous sparks. He hates you, I remind myself. 'Kiss me again,' he says, drunk and foolish. 'Kiss me until I am sick of it.' I feel those words, feel them like a kick in the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can't tell which of us he's laughing at. He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you. Maybe he hates you the more for it. After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he's talking to himself. 'If you're the sickness, I suppose you can't also be the cure.' He drifts off to sleep, but I am wide awake.

We were both quiet for a bit. With my last brilliant idea a failure, the reality that maybe we could never fix this hung like a chain around my neck, cutting off the air. I’d fought so hard to get—really get—Lend. From escaping the Center to stopping Vivian to overcoming my own stupid issues, I’d been fighting for this relationship since the day I first saw water eyes. I couldn’t have come this far just to lose him physically forever. It wasn’t fair. And I was sick and tired of things not being fair. “So, where’s my present?” I wiped under my eyes. “Oh, right. You have your laptop in there?” “Yeah.” Smiling, I grabbed my laptop off the coffee table and emailed him the link, then waited. “Ooh, I’ve got mail.” After a few seconds I heard the video playing, and Lend laughed. “How long did this take you?” “I had a lot of time on my hands while you were in finals.” I leaned my head against the wall as I heard the soundtrack to the clips. I’d gone through all four seasons of Easton Heights and found every single time any of the characters said “I love you,” then (with copious amounts of help from Arianna) pieced them all together back to back, with one of Lend’s favorite songs as the soundtrack. “I love you!” “I love you. “I LOVE YOU, idiot!” “You are so—I hate you! I love you!” “Shut up and tell me you love me.” “Te amo!” Ah, yes, the quest arc of the Spanish hottie. That was a good season. Given the number of relationships that show cycled through, the video lasted several minutes. When it ended, I heard Lend’s laptop closing. “Well?” I asked. “I love you,” he answered. “I love you, too.” I put my palm against the wall, fingers splayed out.

She's my mother. How do you say no to family?" Marie gets a dark look on her face. "There's a difference between relatives and family. You can be related to someone; that is an accident of genetics. Relatives are pure biology. But family is action. Family is attitude. That woman..." Marie's voice drips with venom. "Is NOT your family. WE are your family. That woman is just your relative." Hedy's mouth drops, and Caroline's eyes fly open so wide I think they might get stuck. "Don't hold back there, Marie," Hedy says, finding her voice. "I'm sorry, but..." Marie's eyes fill with tears. "Oh no!" Caroline leans over and takes Marie's hand. Marie shakes it off. "I hate her. I hate that she had the best daughter on the planet and never appreciated her and wasn't ever there for her and never once did anything for her. You guys don't know. She was the most self-absorbed narcissistic cold person..." "She gave me Joe." "But..." she says. I raise my hand. "She. Gave. Me. JOE. Whatever other bullshit happened, the most important thing in my life growing up was Joe. He made me who I am, he helped me find my calling, he was a gift, and everything else is just beyond my ability to get upset about." "You could get a little upset," Caroline says. "It takes nothing away from Joe, and how important he was to you, to acknowledge that your mother failed you in almost every way," Hedy says. "I think you should tell her to go fuck herself," Marie says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms like a petulant child. I don't know that I've ever seen her so furious. "You guys don't get it, I was THERE. I MET HER. Wanna know how she screws in a lightbulb? Holds it up in the air and lets the universe just revolve around her." This makes the three of us bust out laughing. "Oh, Marie, I love you. Thank you for being so on my side." It does mean the world to me that my oldest friend is so protective.

I’ll tell you what’s true,’ said Weston presently. ‘What?’ ‘A little child that creeps upstairs when nobody’s looking and very slowly turns the handle to take one peep into the room where its grandmother’s dead body is laid out–and then runs away and has bad dreams. An enormous grandmother, you understand.’ ‘What do you mean by saying that’s truer?’ ‘I mean that child knows something about the universe which all science and all religion is trying to hide.’ Ransom said nothing. ‘Lots of things,’ said Weston presently. ‘Children are afraid to go through a churchyard at night, and the grown-ups tell them not to be silly: but the children know better than the grown-ups. People in Central Africa doing beastly things with masks on in the middle of the night–and missionaries and civil servants say it’s all superstition. Well, the blacks know more about the universe than the white people. Dirty priests in back streets in Dublin frightening half-witted children to death with stories about it. You’d say they are unenlightened. They’re not: except that they think there is a way of escape. There isn’t. That is the real universe, always has been, always will be. That’s what it all means.’ ‘I’m not quite clear–’ began Ransom, when Weston interrupted him. ‘That’s why it’s so important to live as long as you can. All the good things are now–a thin little rind of what we call life, put on for show, and then–the real universe for ever and ever. To thicken the rind by one centimetre–to live one week, one day, one half hour longer–that’s the only thing that matters. Of course you don’t know it: but every man who is waiting to be hanged knows it. You say “What difference does a short reprieve make?” What difference!!’ ‘But nobody need go there,’ said Ransom. ‘I know that’s what you believe,’ said Weston. ‘But you’re wrong. It’s only a small parcel of civilised people who think that. Humanity as a whole knows better. It knows–Homer knew–that all the dead have sunk down into the inner darkness: under the rind. All witless, all twittering, gibbering, decaying. Bogeymen. Every savage knows that all ghosts hate the living who are still enjoying the rind: just as old women hate girls who still have their good looks. It’s quite right to be afraid of the ghosts. You’re going to be one all the same.’ ‘You don’t believe in God,’ said Ransom. ‘Well, now, that’s another point,’ said Weston. ‘I’ve been to church as well as you when I was a boy. There’s more sense in parts of the Bible than you religious people know. Doesn’t it say He’s the God of the living, not of the dead? That’s just it. Perhaps your God does exist–but it makes no difference whether He does or not. No, of course you wouldn’t see it; but one day you will. I don’t think you’ve got the idea of the rind–the thin outer skin which we call life–really clear. Picture the universe as an infinite glove with this very thin crust on the outside. But remember its thickness is a thickness of time. It’s about seventy years thick in the best places. We are born on the surface of it and all our lives we are sinking through it. When we’ve got all the way through then we are what’s called Dead: we’ve got into the dark part inside, the real globe. If your God exists, He’s not in the globe–He’s outside, like a moon. As we pass into the interior we pass out of His ken. He doesn’t follow us in. You would express it by saying He’s not in time–which you think comforting! In other words He stays put: out in the light and air, outside. But we are in time. We “move with the times”. That is, from His point of view, we move away, into what He regards as nonentity, where He never follows. That is all there is to us, all there ever was. He may be there in what you call “Life”, or He may not. What difference does it make? We’re not going to be there for long!

It’s okay if you can’t. No worries. Just an idea,” I say quickly, looking away so she won’t see how disappointed I am. “No—I mean, I want to, but—” Hana sucks in a breath. I hate this, hate how awkward we both are. “I kind of have this party”—she corrects herself quickly— “this thing I’m supposed to go to with Angelica Marston.” My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It’s amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. [...] A rush of hatred overwhelms me. Hatred for my life, for its narrowness and cramped spaces; hatred for Angelica Marston, with her secretive smile and rich parents; hatred for Hana, for being so stupid and careless and stubborn, first and foremost, and for leaving me behind before I was ready to be left; and underneath all those layers something else, too, some white-hot blade of unhappiness flashing in the very deepest part of me. I can’t name it, or even focus on it clearly, but somehow I understand that this—this other thing—makes me the angriest of all. [...] Despite everything, this gives me pause. In the days after the party at Roaring Brook Farms, snatches of music seemed to follow me everywhere: I heard it winging in and out of the wind, I heard it singing off the ocean and moaning through the walls of the house. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, my heart pounding, with the notes sounding in my ears. But every time I was awake and trying to remember the melodies consciously, hum a few notes or recall any of the chords, I couldn’t. Hana’s staring at me hopefully, waiting for my response. For a second I actually feel bad for her. I want to make her happy, like I always did, want to see her give a whoop and put her fist in the air and flash me one of her famous smiles. But then I remember she has Angelica Marston now, and something hardens in my throat, and knowing that I’m going to disappoint her gives me a kind of dull satisfaction.

I cannot stop them from fingering, stabbing, and sucking on me! My nipples are raw! They beat me up for enjoyment. Pledging with 'God' saying this has to stop. Yet it goes on every school day.' 'I must get away from them. I need to getaway! ('I just need to okay!') It is like these visions of what my life's existence about comes and goes away from me.' I see my life before I live it out in its entirety.' 'Sometimes, it's like I am black, I am not biased, bigoted, discriminatory, prejudiced, antiblack, and racialist, let's get that clear; yet this is the category, I was placed in, as a girl owned by man, that think I should never do anything more than be something like a worker in a field, as a slave to pay back my debts to be who I am to them in their hate.' 'The air that is around me now, is making my slit labia skin hurt with burn and sting. Burning hotter than a flame, before snuffed out! I know how a candle feels, struggling not to be blown out by the rushing air, or being snuffed out.' 'It's like they have a new addiction and that is the hole in my body that makes me a lady.' 'Just if you are wondering, I put my teddy in my backpack right after getting off the bus, after getting hazed by having him. after all, he is very significant to me.' 'I walk over to my bookbag, and see him down in their look at me, and find my one pink notebook. I open it to that one page I penned, the one that I have dogeared. 'There it is!' I say as I rip it out, it recollects the day.' 'The paper is jagged and wet, but I have an adieu note in my hand. I made it earlier in school, at lunch, when I was sitting alone; on this wrinkled up pink notebook paper. The black ink is running like a watercolor all over all my trembling, quivering, shivering, and childlike penmanship handwriting. All it has on it are all words that need to be said, about my existence in life, not living! Decidedly not.' 'They're all there the notes the things, places, events, and even smalls, maybe spelled incorrectly, but there regardless, all have gone in this book of life I call- Sh-h as if making the most long-spun book in the world, with all my pages, are thick; all pasted, shoved and slammed together, furthermore mismatched, yet all has been said, in my enchanting written long run-ons of memories, the way I fancy to remember.

Pigs eat acorns, but neither consider the sun that gave them life, nor the influence of the heavens by which they were nourished, nor the very root of the tree from whence they came. Thomas Traherne Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband’s chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you. You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning. Yet further, you never enjoyed the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error. The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said, God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. Thomas Traherne

He moved his lips to my cheek, to my ear, back to my mouth. I had never been kissed like this in my life. Each time I thought I should protest because there were so many unsettled matters between us, Hunter kissed me harder, forcing those concerns out of my mind. The cold air heated up around us. He unsnapped the top of my jacket and slipped his hand inside. His warm palm cupped my breast beneath my shirt. Then he straightened, blinking at me, and pulled his hand away. “What is it?” I asked. “Okay,” he panted. “I’m going to kick myself for this in the morning, but I don’t want to do this while I’m drunk. And I don’t want to do it behind the stable. I want everything to be perfect between you and me.” He stroked my hair away from my face. “Are you mad?” “Mad?” I squeaked. “No. Horny? Yes. Frustrated?” “Yes.” He set his forehead against mine. “Yes,” I agreed. “Mad? No.” He watched me with serious eyes. His gaze fell to my chest. He fastened the snaps he’d unfastened a few moments before, then put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m just so thankful we’re finally together.” “Me, too,” I whispered. I felt uncomfortable saying this. I wished I had a cell phone so I could call Summer for verification that I was not making a terrible mistake. But she would yell at me and tell me to stop being stupid. I did not need her permission to fall in love. He kissed me on the forehead, then stood, holding out his hand to me. “I’ll walk you home.” I took his hand and swung it as we rounded the stable again, back the way we’d come. “I’ll walk you home,” I said. With his other hand he gestured toward the top of my grandmother’s mansion, just visible over the rise. “I’m not leaving you wandering around in the night with all these drunk people and, my God, Whitfield Farrell and his fucking bowl.” I giggled. It made me insanely happy that he was jealous of Whitfield Farrell. “You’re drunk, though. You might stumble into the road and get hit by a car.” “They will be sorry,” he said. “I will dent their car. I am strong like an ox.” I burst into laughter, and he laughed with me. He was so handsome in the gentle starlight, and he looked so happy. I couldn’t remember ever being this happy myself. I was still nearly broke and my grandmother hated me and I had a history paper due Monday that I hadn’t started writing, but I could handle all of this with Hunter laughing beside me. I squeezed his warm hand. “I’ll cross back through the pasture if it makes you feel better.” Dropping my hand, he draped his arm around me and pulled me close for another kiss on the forehead. He walked me all the way down to his house, backed me against the front door, and thoroughly kissed me good night.

She knew the effort it took to keep one’s exterior self together, upright, when everything inside was in pieces, broken beyond repair. One touch, one warm, compassionate hand, could shatter that hard-won perfect exterior. And then it would take years and years to restore it. This tiny, effeminate creature dressed in velvet suits, red socks, an absurdly long scarf usually wrapped around his throat, trailing after him like a coronation robe. He who pronounced, after dinner, “I’m going to go sit over here with the rest of the girls and gossip!” This pixie who might suddenly leap into the air, kicking one foot out behind him, exclaiming, “Oh, what fun, fun, fun it is to be me! I’m beside myself!” “Truman, you could charm the rattle off a snake,” Diana Vreeland pronounced. Hemingway - He was so muskily, powerfully masculine. More than any other man she’d met, and that was saying something when Clark Gable was a notch in your belt. So it was that, and his brain, his heart—poetic, sad, boyish, angry—that drew her. And he wanted her. Slim could see it in his hungry eyes, voraciously taking her in, no matter how many times a day he saw her; each time was like the first time after a wrenching separation. How to soothe and flatter and caress and purr and then ignore, just when the flattering and caressing got to be a bit too much. Modesty bores me. I hate people who act coy. Just come right out and say it, if you believe it—I’m the greatest. I’m the cat’s pajamas. I’m it! He couldn’t humiliate her vulnerability, her despair. Old habits die hard. Particularly among the wealthy. And the storytellers, gossips, and snakes. Is it truly a scandal? A divine, delicious literary scandal, just like in the good old days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald? The loss of trust, the loss of joy; the loss of herself. The loss of her true heart. An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty. In the end as in the beginning, all they had were the stories. The stories they told about one another, and the stories they told to themselves. Beauty. Beauty in all its glory, in all its iterations; the exquisite moment of perfect understanding between two lonely, damaged souls, sitting silently by a pool, or in the twilight, or lying in bed, vulnerable and naked in every way that mattered. The haunting glance of a woman who knew she was beautiful because of how she saw herself reflected in her friend’s eyes. The splendor of belonging, being included, prized, coveted. What happened to Truman Capote. What happened to his swans. What happened to elegance. What truly was the price they paid, for the lives they lived. For there is always a price. Especially in fairy tales.

This night is going well. "Hello there." I speak too soon. Dunstan enters, his two cronies behind him. Everyone standing around goes quiet. I flinch, but not for me; he's gazing at Ivy like a lion at a piece of meat. Ivy just keeps grinning. "And may I say you are the prettiest girl I've seen all night," Dunstan says, not noticing the fact Ivy's already taken. Ivy stares down at her feet, a pale blush the color of pink roses brushed across her cheeks. "You don't mean that," she whispers, not knowing she's accidentally flirting. "I really do," Dunstan continues in his oily, supposedly charming voice, and I roll my eyes. I want to pull Ivy away, but if I do, Dunstan will notice me. And without Melanie breathing down his neck, who knows what he'll try to pull? "So what's your name, beautiful?" Ivy blush deepens and i feel my nails dig into my skin. I'm the one whose supposed to tell her she's pretty, not this jerk. "My name is Ivy," Ivy replies. "Ivy. I like it. It suits you." I feel an arm on my shoulder and turning around, I see Aidan holding me back. Unconsciously, I've stepped forward, ready to challenge him. "So what is your name?" Ivy asks, still shyly peering down at her shoeless feet. Acting all surprised he got asked this, Dunstan runs a hand through his hair. "My name is Dunstan." Ivy's flush instantly vanishes, the corners of her mouth turns down, and her eyebrows knit together. "Dunstan? This is your name?" Quiet as she's being, I know there's anger there. I'd hate to be the recipient of this tone. But Dunstan the egotistical baboon butt isn't aware of the change. "Yep, that's me." "What is your last name?" I feel someone shaking. Aidan's still hanging on to me, and he's nervous, too. Dunstan still doesn't detect her malice. "Why, my last name's Lebelle. Dunstan Lebelle." He chuckles. "Perhaps you've heard of me?" "Oh yes," Ivy hisses, suddenly radiating ferocious fury. "I've heard much about the boy who nearly got Rylan Forester killed." Even with blaring music in the next room, you can hear a pin drop throughout the kitchen as everyone goes quiet, having lost all ability to talk due to flapping jaws. Someone whistles. "Excuse me?" Dunstan sounds like he can't believe what he's hearing. "You heard me." Ivy glares, knowing she has him caught. "You pushed Rylan into the swamp where the alligator attacked him. Sure, you can blame the alligator, but when you really think about, if you had not pushed him in, Rylan wouldn't have nearly died. Who, by the way," Ivy steps back, clasping my free hand in hers, "happens to be my friend and my date." Everyone bursts into titters—no one has ever spoken to Dustan Lebelle like that—as Dunstan stares at me wide-eyed, finally taking in my existence. But before he can do anything, Ivy pulls my hand. "We're leaving," she declares, giving Dunstan one last stink eye. And with her nose in the air and me following, Ivy boldly walks right out the back door.

The door was still open, so I shut it and was returning to my desk when I braked. There was a backpack resting on the other side of my desk chair. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Missy’s. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Holly’s or the cousin’s. “Shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Huh?” she barked, her head swinging around to me. A quick glance confirmed what I already knew. She was drunk. “Nothing.” She pulled out one of her shirts, but it wasn’t her normal pajama top. She was really drunk. I picked up Shay’s bag and checked the contents to make sure it was his. It was. I saw his planner with his name scrawled at the top, so I zipped that bag and put it in the back of my closet. No one needed to go through it. I didn’t think Missy would, but I just never knew. Dropping into my chair, I picked up my phone to text Shay as Missy fell to the floor. I looked up to watch. I couldn’t not see this. I was tempted to video it, but I was being nice. For once. As Missy wrestled with her jeans and lifted them over her head to throw into her closet, I texted Shay. Me: You left your bag here. Missy let out a half-gurgled moan and a cry of frustration at the same time. She didn’t stand, instead crawling to the closet. She grabbed another pair of pants. Those weren’t her pajamas, either. As she pulled them on—or tried since her feet kept eluding the pants’ hole—my phone buzzed back. Coleman: Can I pick it up in the morning? I texted back. Me: When? Missy got one leg in. Success. I wanted to thrust my fist in the air for her. My phone buzzed again. Coleman: Early. My playbook is in there. I groaned. Me: When is early? I’m in college, Coleman. Sleeping in is mandatory. Coleman: Nine too early for you? I can come back to get it now. Nine was doable. Me: Let’s do an exchange. You bring me coffee, and I’ll meet you at the parking lot curb with your bag. Coleman: Done. Decaf okay? I glared at my phone. Me: Back to hating you. Coleman: Never stop that. The world’s equilibrium will be fucked up. I have to know what’s right and wrong. Don’t screw with my moral compass, Cute Ass. Oh, no! No way. Me: Third rule of what we don’t talk about. No nicknames unless they reconfirm our mutual dislike for each other. No Cute Ass. His response was immediate. Coleman: Cunt Ass? A second squeak from me. Me: NO! I could almost hear him laughing. Coleman: Relax. I know. Clarke’s Ass. That’s how you are in my phone. The tension left my shoulders. Me: See you in the morning. 9 sharp. Coleman: Night. I put my phone down, but then it buzzed once again. Coleman: Ass. I was struggling to wipe this stupid grin off my face. All was right again. I plugged my phone in, pulled my laptop back toward me, and sent a response to Gage’s email. I’ll sit with you, but only if we’re in the opposing team’s section. He’d be pissed, but that was the only way. I turned the computer off, and by then Missy was climbing up the ladder in a bright pink silk shirt. The buttons were left buttoned, and her pajama bottoms were a pair of corduroy khakis. I was pretty sure she didn’t brush her teeth, but before my head even hit the pillow, she was snoring

I hate like hell to go, especially with things still so up in the air between us.” Liv was watching him from the bed. “Nothing’s up in the air. You’re determined to keep me and I’m determined to go.” His face darkened. “You’re not so damn determined when I have you in the bathing pool.” Liv felt a heated blush creep into her cheeks but she refused to back down. “Be that as it may, what I say or do in the, uh, in the heat of passion doesn’t change how I feel.” A look that was almost despair crossed over his chiseled features. “Damn it, Olivia, can’t you admit to yourself that you feel for me what I feel for you? Can’t you just try to imagine having a life here with me on the ship?” “I could…if I didn’t already have a life waiting for me back on Earth.” She sighed. “Look, let’s not fight about this right now. You have to go, fine. I’ll manage okay on my own here.” To be honest she was looking forward to a reprieve from the constant lust she felt while being cooped up with him in close quarters. He frowned. “I shouldn’t be leavin’ you alone during our claiming period. If I hadn’t had a direct order from my CO—” “It’s okay, really. I’ll find something to keep me occupied. I’ll try the translator and read one of your books. And I can work the wave well enough to make my own lunch without burning a finger off now.” “All right, fine.” He looked slightly mollified. “But whatever you do, stay in the suite. Don’t leave for any reason.” “Yes, sir!” She gave him a mocking salute. “To hear is to obey, oh my lord and master.” “Lilenta…” He sighed. “This is for your safety. I’m not trying to order you around for the hell of it.” “No, you just want to make my decisions for me. Stay here, don’t go there. Live the rest of your life on the ship instead of ever seeing your loved ones on Earth again. Why should this be any different?” Liv knew an edge of bitterness had crept into her voice but she couldn’t seem to help it. Baird scowled. “In time you’ll see that this is best. The only way I can protect you is to keep you close to me.” “Funny how much being protected feels like being owned.” “I thought you didn’t want to fight.” “You started it.” Liv knew it sounded childish but she didn’t care. He ran a hand through his hair. “Damn it, Olivia…” Then he shook his head, as though sensing the futility of any argument. He pointed a finger at her instead. “I’m going but I’ll be back tonight in time for the start of our tasting week.” “You…I’m surprised you want to…to do anything at all.” Liv worked hard to keep the tremble out of her voice but didn’t quite succeed. He raised an eyebrow. “You mean with you trying to pick a fight at every opportunity and generally resisting me every step of the way? I have news for you, Lilenta, none of that affects the way I feel for you—the way I need you—one bit.” He walked over to the bed where she was sitting on the edge and pulled her to her feet. “I still want you more than any other woman I’ve ever seen. Still need to be inside you, bonding you to me, making you mine,” he growled softly, pulling her close. “Baird, stop it!” She wanted to beat against his broad chest in protest but she somehow found herself melting against him instead. “Don’t you want to give me a kiss goodbye?” There was a flicker of bitter amusement in his golden eyes. “No, I guess you don’t. Too bad.” Leaning down, he took her lips in a rough yet tender kiss that took Liv’s breath away.

Chapter 13 - 1 Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken. And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Olive,’ Mum said, stroking my fringe. ‘I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be brave.’ Opening my eyes again, I swallowed nervously. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Your sister didn’t arrive at work today.’ Sukie was a typist for an insurance company in Clerkenwell. She said it was the dullest job ever. ‘Isn’t today Saturday, though?’ I asked. ‘She was due in to do overtime. No one’s seen her since she was with you and Cliff last night. She’s missing.’ ‘Missing?’ I didn’t understand. Mum nodded. The nurse added rather unhelpfully: ‘We’ve had casualties from all over London. It’s been chaos. All you can do is keep hoping for the best.’ It was obvious what she meant. I glanced at Mum, who always took the opposite view in any argument. But she stayed silent. Her hands, though, were trembling. ‘Missing isn’t the same as dead,’ I pointed out. Mum grimaced. ‘That’s true, and I’ve spoken to the War Office: Sukie’s name isn’t on their list of dead or injured but-’ ‘So she’s alive, then. She must be. I saw her in the street talking to a man,’ I said. ‘When she realised I’d followed her she was really furious about it.’ Mum looked at me, at the nurse, at the bump on my head. ‘Darling, you’re concussed. Don’t get overexcited now.’ ‘But you can’t think she’s dead.’ I insisted. ‘There’s no proof, is ther?’ ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to identify someone after…’ Mum faltered. I knew what she couldn’t say: sometimes if a body got blown apart there’d be nothing left to tie a name tag to. It was why we’d never buried Dad. Perhaps if there’d been a coffin and a headstone and a vicar saying nice things, it would’ve seemed more real. This felt different, though. After a big air raid the telephones were often down, letters got delayed, roads blocked. It might be a day or two before we heard from Sukie, and worried though I was, I knew she could look after herself. I wondered if it was part of Mum being ill, this painting the world black when it was grey. My head was hurting again so I lay back against the pillows. I was fed up with this stupid, horrid war. Eighteen months ago when it started, everyone said it’d be over before Christmas, but they were wrong. It was still going on, tearing great holes in people’s lives. We’d already lost Dad, and half the time these days it felt like Mum wasn’t quite here. And now Sukie – who knew where she was? I didn’t realise I was crying again until Mum touched my cheek. ‘It’s not fair,’ I said weakly. ‘War isn’t fair, I’m afraid,’ Mum replied. ‘You only have to walk through this hospital to see we’re not the only ones suffering. Though that’s just the top of the iceberg, believe me. There’s plenty worse going on in Europe.’ I remembered Sukie mentioning this too. She’d got really upset when she told me about the awful things happening to people Hitler didn’t like. She was in the kitchen chopping onions at the time so I wasn’t aware she was crying properly. ‘What sort of awful things?’ I’d asked her. ‘Food shortages, people being driven from their homes.’ Sukie took a deep breath, as if the list was really long. ‘People being attacked for no reason or sent no one knows where – Jewish people in particular. They’re made to wear yellow stars so everyone knows they’re Jews, and then barred from shops and schools and even parts of the towns where they live. It’s heartbreaking to think we can’t do anything about it.’ People threatened by soldiers. People queuing for food with stars on their coats. It was what I’d seen on last night’s newsreel at the cinema. My murky brain could just about remember those dismal scenes, and it made me even more angry. How I hated this lousy war. I didn’t know what I could do about it, a thirteen-year-old girl with a bump on her head. Yet thinking there might be something made me feel a tiny bit better.

I hate that word—McMansion. Everyone who uses that word thinks they’re being clever and witty when they’re really being banal and unoriginal.

Have any of us ever seen one single ghost in all the times we’ve been there?” “Not all those bodies at the Falls got buried in tombs,” Roo explained. “A lot of Union soldiers were dumped in shallow graves, or mass graves--and there’s no telling how many ended up in the bayou. There were probably hundreds never even found at all. I mean, they couldn’t have picked up every body part lying around.” “So be careful, Miranda,” Parker warned. “You might hear a whole lot of little phantom feet marching around there.” “Ewww!” Ashley jerked back in alarm. “Ah, don’t worry,” Parker soothed her. “That’s why we always bring Roo along. To scare creepy things away.” Roo shot him a glance. “Then how come you’re still here?” Without warning the car swerved into the oncoming lane. As the girls screamed, Parker veered back on course and looked immensely pleased with himself. “Will you quit doing that!” Ashley was furious. “I hate when you do that! Don’t you realize how dangerous it is?” “Oh, no, Parker. Please. Do it again.” Roo stared grimly at the back of his head. “I just love the sensation of flying through the air and splattering into a tree.” Parker didn’t seem the least bit contrite. “As I was saying--” “You’ve said enough. Now quit being a jerk, and keep your eyes on the road.

I blurt out my story, how I had hired Nicola to be the maîtress d'hôtel at our restaurant, Grappa, when I was seven months pregnant. How I suspected Jake and Nicola had begun having an affair when Chloe was just hours old; and how one night, when Chloe woke up and Jake still wasn't home at two-thirty in the morning, I bundled her up and strapped her into the portable infant carrier, walked the three blocks to the restaurant, and snuck in the side door. The door was locked, but the alarm wasn't on, the first odd thing, because Jake always locks up and sets the alarm before leaving the restaurant. Chloe had fallen back to sleep in her infant seat on the way over, so I carefully nestled the carrier into one of the leather banquettes. I crept through the dining room and into the darkened kitchen, where I could see the office at the far end was aglow with candlelight. As I moved closer I could hear music. "Nessun dorma," from Turandot, Jake's favorite. How fitting. On the marble pastry station I found an open bottle of wine and two empty glasses. It was, to add insult to what was about to be serious injury, a 1999 Tenuta dell'Ornellaia Masseto Toscano- the most expensive wine in our cellar. Three hundred and eighty dollar foreplay. I picked up the bottle and followed the trail of clothes to the office. Jake's checkered chef's pants and tunic, Nicola's slinky black dress, which I hated her for being able to wear, and a Victoria's Secret lacy, black bra. They were on the leather couch, Nicola on top, her wild, black hair spilling over Jake's chest, humping away like wild dogs. Carried away by their passion, they were oblivious to my approach. I drained the last of the wine from the bottle and hurled it over their backsides where it smashed against the wall, announcing my arrival. Before Jake could completely extricate himself, I jumped on Nicola's back and grabbed hold of her hair and pulled with all the strength of my hot-blooded Mediterranean ancestors. Nicola screamed, and clawed the air, her flailing hands accidentally swiping Jake squarely on the chin. He squirmed out from under her and tried to tackle me, but I'm not a small woman. Armed with my humiliation and anger, I was a force in motion. In desperation, Jake butted his head into the middle of my back, wrapped his hands around my waist, and pulled with all his might. He succeeded, pulling so hard that Nicola's hair, which I had resolutely refused to yield, came away in great clumps in my hands. Nicola's screams turned to pathetic whimpers as she reached to cover her burning scalp. She then curled herself into a fetal position, naked and bleeding, and began to keen.

Later in the evening we went to see what there was to eat and I was awestruck. There wasn't an inch of space left on the tabletop or any of the counters; it had all been taken over by multi-colored crockery. The air smelled roasted. 'Uh... I've never seen anything like this before,' I said, grabbing at a pile of note cards before they slipped onto the floor. But when I looked at Snow, I caught her finishing a yawn. 'Me either,' she said. 'Isn't it kind of everyone?' I didn't answer her. She started reading some of the notecards with a really touched expression, but I'd caught her. She was used to being treated like this. It was nothing to her. I had a moment of hating her, or at least realizing why Mom did. Thankfully it came and went really quickly, like a dizzy spell, or a three-second blizzard. Does she know she does this to people? Dumb question. We do this to her.

The crinkly paper stuck to my legs. I picked up my leg, peeled the paper off, and set my leg back down. The tissue paper stuck to it again. I hated doctors’ offices. I hated the dignity-thieving gowns, the lack of good reading material, the stark whiteness and blindingly bright lighting. I hated waiting to get into a room, only to wait to see the doctor and then wait as he or she found excuses to leave. I hated that the air conditioning, no matter what time of year, was kept at fifty-eight degrees. I hated needing to be at a doctor’s office, which meant being trapped in a body going haywire. Most of all, I hated the tissue paper. No

He started to move on, but I held his arm tightly. "Wait, wait. I don't think I understand you. What do you mean, they eliminate species?" "They eliminate them. They will make Earth as much like the Yeerk home world as possible. They will destroy most of the plants and all of the animal species except those they eat." I let go of his arm. I rocked back and grabbed at the air for balance. I felt like I'd been hit by a far. "No," I whispered. "That can't be. You're just saying that because you don't like Yeerks." The others were staring. No one was moving. Ax looked around at us. His eyes narrowed. "Don't you know? Don't you know whom you're fighting?" "We know they take over people's minds," Rachel said weakly. "Yes. And that is one of their great crimes. But the Yeerks are more than that. Yeerks are killers of worlds. Murderers of all life. Hated and feared throughout the galaxy. They are a plague that spreads from world to world, leaving nothing but desolation and slavery and misery in their wake." -Animorphs #4, The Visitor page 64

Leaning back in his chair, Westcliff regarded him with a cool speculation that raised Simon’s hackles. “I hope you’re not fool enough to fall in love with such a creature. You know my opinion of Miss Peyton—” “Yes, you’ve aired it repeatedly.” “And furthermore,” the earl continued, “I would hate to see one of the few men of good sense I know to turn into one of those prattling fools who run about pollenating the atmosphere with maudlin sentiment—” “I’m not in love.” “You’re in something,” Westcliff insisted. “In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you look so mawkish as you did outside her bedroom door.” “I was displaying simple compassion for a fellow human being.” The earl snorted. “Whose drawers you’re itching to get into.” The blunt accuracy of the observation caused Simon to smile reluctantly. “It was an itch two years ago,” he admitted. “Now it’s a full-scale pandemic

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

My hands are wet from sweat. The air conditioner is broken again and it’s too hot to go outside. I run my sweaty palm along the leather arm of the couch, leaving a streak of sweat behind the path of my hand. I wonder where sweat comes from? I wonder where leather comes from? My mother told me it’s made from cows, but I know she’s a liar, so I don’t believe her. How could leather be made out of cows? I’ve touched a cow before and they’re sort of fuzzy. They don’t look like leather to me. Leather looks more like it’s made from dinosaurs than cows. I bet leather really is made out of dinosaurs. I don’t know why my mother always lies to me. She lies to Daddy, too. I know she lies to him, because she gets in trouble for it a lot. Daddy always tells me not to trust whores. I don’t know what a whore is, but I know it’s something my Daddy hates. Sometimes when he gets mad at my mom, he calls her a whore. Maybe a whore is another word for liar and that’s why he hates them so much. I wish my mother wasn’t a whore. I wish she would stop lying, so she wouldn’t get in trouble so much. I don’t like watching her get in trouble. Daddy says it’s good for me, though. He says if I want to grow up and be a man, I need to see what a woman looks like when she cries. Daddy says a woman’s tears make men weak, and the more I see their tears when I’m younger, the less I’ll believe their lies when I’m older. Sometimes when he punishes my mother for being a whore, he makes me watch her cry so that I’ll grow up knowing that all the whores cry and it shouldn’t bother me. “Don’t trust anyone, Asa,” he always tells me. “Especially the whores.

After I tricked you into being the High King,” I say. “I thought once you hated me, I could go back to hating you. But I didn’t. And I felt so stupid. I thought I would get my heart broken. I thought it was a weakness that you would use against me. But then you saved me from the Undersea when it would have been much more convenient to just leave me to rot. After that, I started to hope my feelings were returned. But then there was the exile—” I take a ragged breath. “I hid a lot, I guess. I thought if I didn’t, if I let myself love you, I would burn up like a match. Like the whole matchbook.

Anxious to let my features show': Asian American woman shares fear of harassment - CNN - YouTube channel - Comment for this video with broader perspective, Part 2 - India was once perfect culture, our food habits were perfect, whatever we need vitamins, nutrients, carbs, fats everything we tend to obtain from plants and only plants, some yogi(No one) can even live with sun light and water or even neem air, but this 100% traditionality in India or siddha become almost obsolete because of pollution and over population and also spiritual reasons because many people are already trapped in Karmic cycle, which is why They can not even think of escaping it, if they try to escape they will die, and whomever has the solutions for this are mostly disregarded (Like , ok myself, Saddguru, Sarnam Singh, Somnath Bandyopadyay, Prabhakar Sharma, Ritika Rajput, Shalini Chouhan, they are disregarded because they are north Indians or yogis that speaks lie - this is what most people think, that is why I also being modern and eat evrything and talk everything and do everything so that you will not hate me, If I choose to be 100% traditional which I can, then whomever surrounding me will not survive, If I choose 100 % traditionality, rain will engulf the earth and sun will disappear for years, that is why I choose mixed mode of life with all ideas are considered, Try to respect traditionality at least a little, there is a Tamil proverb, மாதம் மும்மாரி பொழிந்து செழித்த பூமி, which means 3 times rain per month and natural agriculture prospered and people life prospered - This proverb is from ancient Tamil Land, As Kali or Kaali yuga started everyone chose modernity, but try to respect traditionality at least a little to protect this land, you no need to go to temple, you no need to pray god, just protect soil, agriculture and traditional science like planting trees and all, then slowly nature will dominate the earth and even in this Kali or Kaali yuga there will be prosperity for next 5000 years, Because in Kali or Kaali yuga first 10000 (Only 5000 years in Kali or Kaali yuga has passed so far) years are golden period, do not rush this golden period in to hell within 100 years.,

A girl a few feet away suddenly gasped, jumping up and down. “Ohmagod it’s Caleb Altair.” I glanced over my shoulder in the direction she was pointing, pulling away from my friends. Caleb headed a line of Juniors as he strode down the corridor like he owned every ounce of oxygen in it. His friends pointed us out and my gut tightened as his stony gaze slid over us. His fan club were eyeing him hopefully and I knew in the depths of my heart he wasn’t going to pass us by without comment. He slowed his pace, breathing in deeply. “Do you smell that guys?” He sniffed the air and my scowl grew. “Smells like a bunch of Orderless Fae pretending they deserve a place in our prestigious Academy.” “Is it raining assholes today?” Tory commented, turning away from him and for a moment it almost looked like he was going to crack a smile. “I have an Order,” Sofia muttered under her breath but Caleb’s Vampire hearing didn’t let her get away with it. “I wouldn’t go around reminding people of that, blondie. Being a Pegasus is worse than not having an Order.” His friend fist bumped him, nodding his agreement as he laughed. He was a tall guy with red hair and cold eyes. “Yeah I dunno how there are so many of them on campus,” the redhead jibed. “Only a freak would want to screw a horse.” Caleb chuckled at that, nodding firmly. “I think I’d rather give up my claim first.” His shitbag friends laughed their heads off as Caleb swept off down the hall to a stream of excited hoots. “God he’s awful,” I growled. “Ignore him Sofia.” “If I ever bump into him as a Pegasus, I’ll introduce him to my left hoof,” Sofia hissed and I raised my brows at the fire in her eyes. “I would so love to see that,” Tory laughed, then lowered her voice as she looked to me. “I wonder if we can use his Pegasus hate against him?” “Yeah, you should spread a rumour that he likes Pegasus ass,” Sofia whispered, a manic gleam in her eyes. I kinda liked this crazy side to her and couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled from my throat. Diego stared at her in shock, then nodded keenly. “That would be fantastico, Sofia. I doubt anyone would believe us freaks though.” He winked at her and she blushed at his insinuation. (Darcy)

I hate being vulnerable.

My dearest daughter, You are, to me, something so pure and clean. I recognize it, but I can’t be near it. I’m no longer your mother but a demon. The woman who bore you, devoured by a beast that rules the full vessel of what was once a caring human. Now I am neither. It’s only at the mercy of this evil being that I watch you suffer, under what looks like my own hand. I cannot be satisfied by anything other than what the demon craves, and its meals lurk in dark corners.  No tender feeling can penetrate its desire, no love can reason with it. I hardly know what love means anymore. I wish to die, so that you may be rid of me, my sweet girl. I loathe the voice that demeans you, the hand that cheats you, the life you must struggle through. But if one day you find it in your heart to no longer hate me, I will be satisfied. It’s more than I should ever ask, but in this small moment of clarity, I grasp at this hope like a last gasp for air.  And if you should ever forgive me, you would be truly angelic, my little one. — With stained hands, Your mother

Anxious to demonstrate her competence, Amelia strode to the other window and began jerking at the closed draperies. “Thank you, Mr. Rohan, but as you can see, I have the situation well in hand.” “I think I’ll stay. Having stopped you from falling through one window, I’d hate for you to go out the other.” “I won’t. I’ll be fine. I have everything under—” She tugged harder, and the rod clattered to the floor, just as the other had done. But unlike the other curtain, which had been lined with aged velvet, this one was lined with some kind of shimmering rippling fabric, some kind of— Amelia froze in horror. The underside of the curtain was covered with bees. Bees. Hundreds, no, thousands of them, their iridescent wings beating in an angry relentless hum. They lifted in a mass from the crumpled velvet, while more flew from a crevice in the wall, where an enormous hive simmered. They must have found their way into a hollow space from a decayed spot in the outer wall. The insects swarmed like tongues of flame around Amelia’s paralyzed form. She felt the blood drain from her face. “Oh, God—” “Don’t move.” Rohan’s voice was astonishingly calm. “Don’t swat at them.” She had never known such primal fear, welling up from beneath her skin, leaking through every pore. No part of her body seemed to be under her control. The air was boiling with them, bees and more bees. It was not going to be a pleasant way to die. Closing her eyes tightly, Amelia willed herself to be still, when every muscle strained and screamed for action. Insects moved in sinuous patterns around her, tiny bodies touching her sleeves, hands, shoulders. “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” she heard Rohan say. Amelia highly doubted that. “These are not f-frightened bees.” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “These are f-furious bees.” “They do seem a bit annoyed,” Rohan conceded, approaching her slowly. “It could be the dress you’re wearing—they tend not to like dark colors.” A short pause. “Or it could be the fact that you just ripped down half their hive.” “If you h-have the nerve to be amused by this—” She broke off and covered her face with her hands, trembling all over. His soothing voice undercut the buzzing around them. “Be still. Everything’s fine. I’m right here with you.” “Take me away,” she whispered desperately. Her heart was pounding too hard, making her bones shake, driving every coherent thought from her head. She felt him brush a few inquisitive insects from her hair and back. His arms went around her, his shoulder sturdy beneath her cheek. “I will, sweetheart.

Evans went off the air, he went to the location where Vice President Kincaide, the Cabinet, and the loyal staff were being sequestered. Their guards had them lined up against a wall as he walked into the room, and he smiled as he said, “I am so pleased with how all of this worked out. All of you were so gullible as to think that I was enthusiastic about Collins being President. I’ve enjoyed manipulating events and people like you. My predecessors and I have been slowly and methodically preparing for this downfall for over a century and it has finally come to fruition. “There were times, I have to admit, when I thought the American people finally came to their senses and able to see what was in front of them, but that was very short-lived. We were relentless about trashing their beliefs, called them bigots and racists, that they hated women, and wanted to control their lives. After a while, they gave up. So, we’re here today to bask in my triumph, while all of you are here to pay for your stupidity. This is truly a game changing moment. Any last thoughts?” “You won’t get away with this!” sputtered the Vice President. “Oh, but I already have. Anyone else want to sputter something useless?

Cooper,” she said, the two syllables not much more than a broken whisper. She cleared her throat. “I never said--you knew I wasn’t coming back. You knew when I started that I wasn’t staying.” “When you started, yeah,” he said, then moved another inch closer, and what little air she seemed to have pulled in deserted her just as swiftly. “But by the time you left…I thought…” She let herself sink deeper and looked into his eyes. “You thought what?” “It’s been a year,” he repeated, and for the first time, she saw something behind that bold, fierce, confident gaze of his, something she’d never seen before, though she couldn’t quite say what it was. “And I realize now that I should have asked then.” “Asked me to stay?” she said, hating the tremulous waver in her voice, hating more that she wasn’t quite sure how she’d answer him if he asked now. “You could have just called.” A titter went up in the crowd and was just as swiftly snuffed out by shushing sounds. It all barely registered wither. “No, not that. I mean, yes, I wanted you to stay. But not as a jillaroo. Or not only as one.” And then she realized what it was she saw. She would have recognized it right off if she’d let herself acknowledge that it was the same thing she’d seen in her own eyes. Fear. What could Cooper Jax possibly be afraid of? Fear of wanting what he can’t have? Of losing what he wanted most? But that couldn’t be, because that would mean-- “I wanted you to stay, Kerry. As my wife.” The crowd gasped as one, and she might have gasped with them. “I’ve come all this way, Starfish, because I need to know. If I’d asked you then, if I’d pursued it, pursued you, would you ever have considered marrying me?

I slap the paper down on his desk and hold my flat palm over it. “What the fuck is this?” He looks down at it. “That was a perfectly good invitation, until somebody fucked it up with hearts,” he growls. I look down at it. “I kind of like the hearts,” I admit. “Next time, I’ll use hearts,” he says. He smiles. “You’re looking for a roommate?” I ask. I toy with my lip piercing until his gaze lands there, and then I force myself to stop. “Since when?” “Since I found out you’re homeless,” he says. “I’m not homeless,” I protest. “Where are you living after today?” he asks. I’m not at all sure about that, but he doesn’t need to know it. “Shut up,” I say instead. He pushes the paper toward me. “I have an extra room. You need a place to stay. Let’s not make it more than it is, okay?” “That’s all you’d expect?” I ask, hating how quiet my voice suddenly gets. “You could be pregnant, Friday,” he says. “What else would I want from you?” My breath catches. He is so right. I have been looking at this like it’s all about us, but it’s not. It’s all about this baby I have to protect for nine months, a baby he’s now fully aware of, even if he’s not aware of the details. “How much?” I ask. “How much can you afford?” he asks. He knows full well how much money I make; he pays me. But he isn’t aware of the money I make doing commissioned portraits and other artwork. He waves a hand in the air. “Don’t worry about what it costs,” he says. “Pay me whatever you can. The room is just sitting there empty. And if you live with me, I won’t have to worry about you being homeless.” I snort. “Like you’d worry anyway.” His brow rises. “I worry. I worry about you all the fucking time. But if you live with me, I won’t have to. So take pity on me and just take the fucking room, dammit.” “Okay.” He looks surprised. “Okay?” “Yes.” He grins. “Okay.

It's the whistling," Laila said to Tariq, "the damn whistling, I hate more than anything" Tariq nodded knowingly. It wasn't so much the whistling itself, Laila thought later, but the seconds between the start of it and impact. The brief and interminable time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict. Often it happened at dinner, when she and Babi were at the table. When it started, their heads snapped up. They listened to the whistling, forks in mid-air, unchewed food in their mouths. Laila saw the reflection of their half-lit faces in the pitch-black window, their shadows unmoving on the wall. The whistling. Then the blast, blissfully elsewhere, followed by an expulsion of breath and the knowledge that they had been spared for now while somewhere else, amid cries and choking clouds of smoke, there was a scrambling, a barehanded frenzy of digging, of pulling from the debris, what remained of a sister, a brother, a grandchild. But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't. After every rocket blast, Laila raced to the street, stammering a prayer, certain that, this time, surely this time, it was Tariq they would find buried beneath the rubble and smoke. At night, Laila lay in bed and watched the sudden white flashes reflected in her window. She listened to the rattling of automatic gunfire and counted the rockets whining overhead as the house shook and flakes of plaster rained down on her from the ceiling. Some nights, when the light of rocket fire was so bright a person could read a book by it, sleep never came. And, if it did, Laila's dreams were suffused with fire and detached limbs and the moaning of the wounded. Morning brought no relief. The muezzin's call for namaz rang out, and the Mujahideen set down their guns, faced west, and prayed. Then the rugs were folded, the guns loaded, and the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul fired back at the mountains, as Laila and the rest of the city watched as helpless as old Santiago watching the sharks take bites out of his prize fish.

You could have just texted me when you got here. I’d have met you downstairs.” “My mother would roll over in her grave if I didn’t pick you up at your door.” It’s the truth. She would hate it. I adjust my suit coat. “She raised five gentlemen.” I lift my nose in the air, being silly. Sky looks at me. “Yes, I think she did,” she says softly.

Where were you on the night of March 7?" Typical detective stuff you hear on television all the time. It's so phony. I hate it. Most people can't remember where they were three nights ago much less on a particular date. I know I can't. The times you remember are the ones you're supposed to: Christmas Day, the Fourth of July, your birthday. As you get older and occasionally look back, even those days drift together into one small blob of memories. But you always remember the first time and the last. You remember your first day of school and the last. You remember the first time you went to the show by yourself and the last time you saw your grandfather. The first time you made love. Most of the nights of my life have passed by barely noticed, like the black squares of rosary beads slipping through the wrinkled fingers in the last pew. But later, when I've looked back, I've realized that a few ink colored seeds have taken root in my mind and have grown into oaken strength. My dreams drift back and nestle in their branches. If those nights were suddenly not to be, I, who had come to lean on them, to relish those few surviving leaves of a young autumn that has passed and will not come again, would not know where I'd been. And I'd wonder, even more so, if there was anywhere to go. Every Chicago winter delivers four gray weeks, with rare spots of sunshine that are apparently the flipside of hell. Teeth bared, the wind comes snarling off the lake with every intention of shredding the skin off your face. Numb since November, hands can no longer tell or care if they are wearing gloves. Snowmen, offsprings of childhood enthusiasm, are rarely born during these weeks. Along with the human spirit, the temperature continues to plummet. The ground is smothered by aging layers of ice and snow. Looking at a magazine ad, you see a vaguely familiar blanket of green. Squinting back through months of brown snow, salt-marked shoes, running noses, icy railings, slippery sidewalks, and smoking sewers, you try to recall the feeling of grass. February is four weeks of hanging onto the ropes, waiting to be saved from a knockout by the bell of spring. One year, I was invited to Engrim University's President's Ball, which was to be held on the first Saturday in February. I don't know why I was invited. Most of the students who received invitations were involved in a number of extracurricular activities; they participated in student government, belonged to various clubs, were presidents of fraternities or sororities, were doing extremely well academically or were, in some other way, pleasing the gods. I was never late with my tuition payments. Maybe that was it. Regardless, the President's Ball was to be held in the main ballroom of one of Chicago's swankiest hotels. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to impress Sarah with my importance. A light snowfall was dotting the night air when