Sending Someone Off Quotes

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all? Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing to compare it to. It's like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who's lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

Somewhere someone thinks they love someone else exactly like I love you. Somewhere someone shakes from the ripple of a thousand butterflies inside a single stomach. Somewhere someone is packing their bags to see the world with someone else. Somewhere someone is reaching through the most terrifying few feet of space to hold the hand of someone else. Somewhere someone is watching someone else’s chest rise and fall with the breath of slumber. Somewhere someone is pouring ink like blood onto pages fighting to say the truth that has no words. Somewhere someone is waiting patient but exhausted to just be with someone else. Somewhere someone is opening their eyes to a sunrise in someplace they have never seen. Somewhere someone is pulling out the petals twisting the apple stem picking up the heads up penny rubbing the rabbits foot knocking on wood throwing coins into fountains hunting for the only clover with only 4 leaves skipping over the cracks snapping the wishbone crossing their fingers blowing out the candles sending dandelion seeds into the air ushering eyelashes off their thumbs finding the first star and waiting for 11:11 on their clock to spend their wishes on someone else. Somewhere someone is saying goodbye but somewhere someone else is saying hello. Somewhere someone is sharing their first or their last kiss with their or no longer their someone else. Somewhere someone is wondering if how they feel is how the other they feels about them and if both theys could ever become a they together. Somewhere someone is the decoder ring to all of the great mysteries of life for someone else. Somewhere someone is the treasure map. Somewhere someone thinks they love someone else exactly like I love you. Somewhere someone is wrong.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break for darling, the times are quite glorious. I left him by the water’s edge, still waving long after the ship was gone and if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well. There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew. I used to go there to say goodbye. I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them, one way or the other, leaving sin on my body scrubbing tears off with salt and I built my rituals in farewells. Endings I still cling to. So I go to the ocean to say goodbye. He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head and though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one for I have used them myself and there is no coming back. Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay. I turned away from the ocean as not to fall for its plea for it used to seduce and consume me and there was this one night a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells and just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone. But I was younger then and easily fooled and the ocean was deep and dark and blue and I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones. I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival. Then days passed by and I spent them with my work and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send. But there is this one day every year or so when the burden gets too heavy and I collect my belongings I no longer need and make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anew and it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written words and I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone. Nothing left to hold me back. You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains wrapped around my veins, and if you see a fire from the shore tonight it’s my chains going up in flames. The time of moon i quite glorious. We could have been so glorious.

All the men send you orchids because they're expensive and they know that you know they are. But I always kind of think they're cheap, don't you, just because they're expensive. Like telling someone how much you paid for something to show off.

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

I’m an executioner, Leta, hence my Demon nickname. They send me in to take the heads off people and gods who’ve stepped over the line, usually only because someone has PMS. You want justice, Themis’s office is down the hall on the left. You want death and dismemberment, I’m your man…or rather god. (Deimos)

Wulfe leaned in. "Where did you send Ms. Benoit?" "Disneyland." "Who knows my connection to the Zetas?" "The US Marshall Service, SWAT, my dentist, Oprah---" "How did you know we were coming? Clearly, someone tipped you off." "That guy." Zach points with a jerk of his head toward of of Wulfe's minions. The man looked uncertainly at Wulfe, taking a step backward. "He text me just before you stepped in the elevator.

Your ability to shoulder everything, to give 200% of yourself all the time, to be perfect at everything you attempt…these are not the attributes that make you a valuable human being.” I pause. “And they are not why I fell in love with you.” His black eyes shoot up to me. I smile. The weight of these heavy secrets falls off of me, and I feel relieved to continue. “I fell in love with you because you’re goofy. You’re fun. Your heart is so big I don’t know how it fits in here,” I say, pressing my hand to his chest. “You’re a terrible singer. You make me soup when I’m sick. You bought me tampons that time I was laid out on the couch with cramps and couldn’t move. You didn’t even send someone else for them. You went yourself!

Flo especially took me in hand. When I felt I had to prove the existence of discrimination with statistics, for instance, she pulled me aside. 'If you're lying in the ditch with a truck on your ankle,' she said patiently, 'you don't send someone to the library to find out how much the truck weighs. You get it off!

At a dinner party in north London, I listened to friends bragging about buying Porsches with their bonuses and sending out from their offices for pizzas and clean shirts because they were clinching a deal and could not leave their desks. I wanted to tell them of a place where every family had lost a son or a husband or had a leg blown off, almost every child seen someone die in a rocket attack and where a small boy had told me his dream was to have a brightly coloured ball. But, when I began to talk about Afghanistan, I watched eyes glaze and felt as if I was trying to have a conversation about a movie no one else had seen.

There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse. Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded. The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger. Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead. Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it. Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day. Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left. Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac. None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good-

Being a mother is not a job. Stop throwing things at me. I'm sorry but it is not. I find it offensive to motherhood to call being a mother a job. Being a mother isn't a job. It's who someone is. It's who I am. You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.

If you’re determined to commit suicide, you’ll blow your brains out or you’ll jump off a tall building. You’ll do something that you can’t take back, in other words. When you ‘try to kill yourself’ by taking too many pills – like I did – you know you’re probably gonna get found by someone. So all you’re doing is sending a message.

Its hurtful and wonderful how our jokes survive us. Since I left home on this journey, I've thought a lot about this-how a big part of any life is about the hows and whys of setting up machinery. it's building systems, devices, motors. Winding up the clockwork of direct debits, configuring newspaper deliveries and anniversaries and photographs and credit card repayments and anecdotes. Starting their engines, setting them in motion and sending them chugging off into the future to do their thing at a regular or irregular intervals. When a person leaves or dies or ends, they leave an afterimage; their outline in the devices they've set up around them. The image fades to the winding down of springs, the slow running out of fuel as the machines of a life lived in certain ways in certain places and from certain angles are shut down or seize up or blink off one by one. It takes time. Sometimes, you come across the dusty lights or electrical hum of someone else's machine, maybe a long time after you ever expected to, still running, lonely in the dark. Still doing its thing for the person who started it up long, long after they've gone. A man lives so many different lengths of time.

I don’t like games, Georgiana.” “Which is why you need to play them, Andy.” He blinks. “It’s Andrew.” “Hmm. How about Drew?” “No.” The word is a growl. “Georgiana.” “Yes, Andy?” He exhales. “I’m going to kill you.” I can’t help the laugh. “See, I don’t think so.” “Don’t you?” “Nope,” I say, sucking sugar off my thumb. “You don’t send flowers to someone you’re going to kill.

It seems like our town has closed down these days leading up to the funeral. Old people still sit on their porches and talk, but their conversations aren't sprinkled with laughter anymore. Since the new, little kids haven't played outside, as if their moms are afraid someone might snatch them out of their yards and send them off to war.

Dont come for me!.... I didn't send for you!

Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.

You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?" We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem." I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come." If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up." It is amazing -- the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me." Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I know he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read." It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something illegal or morally reprehensible, because he honestly believes he'll be better off. The police will dismiss Wilton Reynolds as a drug dealer and celebrate one more criminal permanently removed from society. A middle-class father who meets Concise on the street, with his tough talk and his shaved head, will steer clear of him, never guessing that he, to, has a little boy waiting for him at home. The people who read about me in the paper, stealing my daughter during a custody visit, will assume I am the worst sort of nightmare.

For the Deist ... prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to ... all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn't Christian prayer.

But you sent off that Flounder fellow," Loki said, and I rolled my eyes. "His name is Finn, and I know you know that," I said as I left the room. Loki grabbed the vacuum and followed me. "You called him by his name this morning." "Fine, I know his name," Loki admitted. We went into the next room, and he set down the vacuum as I started peeling the dusty blankets off the bed. "But you were okay with Finn going off to Oslinna, but not Duncan?" "Finn can handle himself," I said tersely. The bedding got stuck on a corner, and Loki came over to help me free it. Once he had, I smiled thinly at him. "Thank you." "But I know you had a soft spot for Finn," Loki continued. "My feelings for him have no bearing on his ability to do his job." I tossed the dirty blankets at Loki. He caught them easily before setting them down by the door, presumably for Duncan to take to the laundry chute again. "I've never understood exactly what your relationship with him was, anyway," Loki said. I'd started putting new sheets on the bed, and he went around to the other side to help me. "Were you two dating?" "No." I shook my head. "We never dated. We were never anything." I continued to pull on the sheets, but Loki stopped, watching me. "I don't know if that's a lie or not, but I do know that he was never good enough for you." "But I suppose you think you are?" I asked with a sarcastic laugh. "No, of course I'm not good enough for you," Loki said, and I lifted my head to look up at him, surprised by his response. "But I at least try to be good enough." "You think Finn doesn't?" I asked, standing up straight. "Every time I've seen him around you, he's telling you what to do, pushing you around." He shook his head and went back to making the bed. "He wants to love you, I think, but he can't. He won't let himself, or he's incapable. And he never will." The truth of his words stung harder than I'd thought they would, and I swallowed hard. "And obviously, you need someone that loves you," Loki continued. "You love fiercely, with all your being. And you need someone that loves you the same. More than duty or the monarchy or the kingdom. More than himself even." He looked up at me then, his eyes meeting mine, darkly serious. My heart pounded in my chest, the fresh heartache replaced with something new, something warmer that made it hard for me to breathe. "But you're wrong." I shook my head. "I don't deserve that much." "On the contrary, Wendy." Loki smiled honestly, and it stirred something inside me. "You deserve all the love a man has to give." I wanted to laugh or blush or look away, but I couldn't. I was frozen in a moment with Loki, finding myself feeling things for him I didn't think I could ever feel for anyone else. "I don't know how much more laundry we can fit down the chute," Duncan said as he came back in the room, interrupting the moment. I looked away from Loki quickly and grabbed the vacuum cleaner. "Just get as much down there as you can," I told Duncan. "I'll try." He scooped up another load of bedding to send downstairs. Once he'd gone, I glanced back at Loki, but, based on the grin on his face, I'd say his earlier seriousness was gone. "You know, Princess, instead of making that bed, we could close the door and have a roll around in it." Loki wagged his eyebrows. "What do you say?" Rolling my eyes, I turned on the vacuum cleaner to drown out the conversation. "I'll take that as a maybe later!" Loki shouted over it.

Me: FFS. Did u just send me a pic of your chest?! Him: Yup. Did it work? Me: In icking me out? Yes. Success!” Him: In changing your mind. I’m trying to butter u up here. Me: Ew. Go butter up someone else. PS—I’m posting that pic on my-bri.

It’s as if an impossibly heavy lid has been lifted off his emotional life and suddenly he can breathe fresh air. It is physically possible to type and send a message reading: I love you! It had never seemed possible before, not remotely, but in fact it’s easy. Of course if someone saw the messages he would be embarrassed, but he knows now that this is a normal kind of embarrassment, an almost protective impulse towards a particularly good part of life.

by the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein: whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later. When we fail to act on such urges, it’s rarely out of mean-spiritedness, or because we have second thoughts about whether the prospective recipient deserves it. More often, it’s because of some attitude stemming from our efforts to feel in control of our time. We tell ourselves we’ll turn to it when our urgent work is out of the way, or when we have enough spare time to do it really well; or that we ought first to spend a bit longer researching the best recipients for our charitable donations before making any, et cetera.

The house itself looked as if it had started out one way, and then halfway through the builders had decided to go in another direction entirely. The best way Wallace could think of to describe it was that it looked like a child stacking block after block on top of one another, making a precarious tower. The house looked as if even the smallest breeze could send it tumbling down. The chimney wasn’t crooked, per se, but more twisted, the brickwork jutting out at impossible angles. The bottom floor of the house appeared sturdy, but the second floor hung off to one side, the third floor to the opposite side, the fourth floor right in the middle, forming a turret with drapes drawn across multiple windows. Wallace thought he saw one of the drapes move as if someone were peering out, but it could have been a trick of the light.

If her mind had held even the smallest chance of a future, she would have had no reason to tell me anything at all, whether or not it could send her to prison. But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk off the edges of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do.

Shut up.” She put her finger to his lips, and his voice choked off. She said slowly, “I’ve learned I can live without you.” Kasimir’s heart cracked inside his chest. He’d lost her. She was going to send him away, back into the bleak winter. “But I’ve also learned,” Josie whispered, “that I don’t want to.” Her brown eyes were suddenly warm, like the sky after a sudden spring storm. “I tried to stop loving you. But once I love someone, I love for life.” Her lips lifted in a trembling smile. “I’m stubborn that way.

A fun thing to do to let off steam after layoffs began was to go into someone's office and send an email from their computer addressed to the entire agency. It might say something simple like "My name is Shaw-NEE! You are captured, Ha! I poopie I poopie I poopie." People came in in the morning and their reaction was so varied. Jim Jackers read it and immediately sent out an email that we read, "Obviously someone come into my office last night and compossed an email in my name and sent it out to everyone. I apologise for any inconvenience or offence, although it wasn't my fault, and I would appreciate from whoever did this a public apology. I have read that email five times now and I still don't understand it.

Lady Sarah gazes at Henry’s shiny shoes, her face heartbroken. “Do you ever think . . . that perhaps you should be with—” “Do not even think of finishing that fucking sentence,” Henry warns. “Why not?” She lifts her chin. “It’s the truth.” “The truth?” Henry mocks. “The truth is I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. I don’t know where I’d be or what I’d be doing, but I know it wouldn’t be pretty." “He’s right, you know, Sarah.” Prince Nicholas steps over to them. “Before you, Henry was an unmitigated disaster. Reckless, spoiled, self-destructive—” “Thank you, Nicholas,” Henry says. “I think she gets the picture.” Nicholas smacks his brother on the back and grins cheekily. “Happy to help.” Henry slips his hands into his pockets, rocking on his heels, telling Sarah, “I could say the same thing, you know. You don’t think I know you’d be better off with someone whose everyday life doesn’t send you reeling into a panic attack?” Sarah shakes her head. “No, that’s not true. I could never be better off with anyone else. I would never want to be. You’re mine, Henry, and I’m keeping you.

Phil talked openly about his current life, but he closed up when I asked him about his early years. With some gentle probing, he told me that what he remembered most vividly about his childhood was his father’s constant teasing. The jokes were always at Phil’s expense and he often felt humiliated. When the rest of the family laughed, he felt all the more isolated. It was bad enough being teased, but sometimes he really scared me when he’d say things like: “This boy can’t be a son of ours, look at that face. I’ll bet they switched babies on us in the hospital. Why don’t we take him back and swap him for the right one.” I was only six, and I really thought I was going to get dropped off at the hospital. One day, I finally said to him, “Dad, why are you always picking on me?” He said, “I’m not picking on you. I’m just joking around. Can’t you see that?” Phil, like any young child, couldn’t distinguish the truth from a joke, a threat from a tease. Positive humor is one of our most valuable tools for strengthening family bonds. But humor that belittles can be extremely damaging within the family. Children take sarcasm and humorous exaggeration at face value. They are not worldly enough to understand that a parent is joking when he says something like, “We’re going to have to send you to preschool in China.” Instead, the child may have nightmares about being abandoned in some frightening, distant land. We have all been guilty of making jokes at someone else’s expense. Most of the time, such jokes can be relatively harmless. But, as in other forms of toxic parenting, it is the frequency, the cruelty, and the source of these jokes that make them abusive. Children believe and internalize what their parents say about them. It is sadistic and destructive for a parent to make repetitive jokes at the expense of a vulnerable child. Phil was constantly being humiliated and picked on. When he made an attempt to confront his father’s behavior, he was accused of being inadequate because he “couldn’t take a joke.” Phil had nowhere to go with all these feelings. As Phil described his feelings, I could see that he was still embarrassed—as if he believed that his complaints were silly.

it the myth-pool; sometimes the word-pool. He says that every time you call someone a good egg or a bad apple you’re drinking from the pool or catching tadpoles at its edge; that every time you send a child off to war and danger of death because you love the flag and have taught the child to love it, too, you are swimming in that pool . . . out deep, where the big ones with the hungry teeth also swim.

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry— Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there’s a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods’ excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someone’s road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you’re lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall. First there’s the children’s house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny’s A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t. (I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

It's like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all's well. You get off it and the next thing you know you're lost if you're not lucky. And then someone has to send out a searchin party.

It’s like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all’s well. You get off it and the next thing you know you’re lost if you’re not lucky. And then someone has to send out a searching party.

It's just drinks,” Heather said, lifting the second cocktail up and smiling at the men, too. “It doesn't mean anything else.” I nodded, but I didn't know how to tell her how wrong she was. That it's possible for a man to interpret a woman's initial permission as license to steamroll over any boundary she might set after that. That once a woman says yes, it's possible a man might not give a shit when she changes her mind. He might tear off her clothes; he might bruise her body and send splinters of blistering fear into her soul. He might do this even if he's someone she knows, someone she loves and trusts. And then she might end up in a bar with a fake smile plastered on her face, trying to act like none of it mattered, trying to believe, despite the agony deep down inside her bones, that she's over what he did, desperate to pretend she's safe.

It's her! Selene! Your Majesty!" Cinder took a step back and felt her serenity slough away, leaving behind the same tension she'd lived with for two long years. That feeling of being in the spotlight, of having responsibilities, of needing to meet expectations... "Why did you abdicate the throne?" someone yelled. And another: "How does it feel to be back on Earth?" And "Will you attend the Commonwealth ball again this year?" And "Is the upcoming Lunar-Earthen wedding a political statement? Do you want to say anything about the union? A loud gunshot blared across the gravel driveway. The journalists screamed and dispersed, some cowering behind the Rampion's landing gear, others rushing back to the safety of their own hovers. "I'll give you a statement," said Scarlet, reloading the shotgun in her arms as she marched toward them. She sent a piercing glare at the journalists who dared to peek out at her. "And the statement is, Leave my guests alone, you pitiful, news-starved vultures." With a frustrated huff, she looked up at Cinder, who had been joined by the others at the top of the ramp. Scarlet looked much the same as Cinder remembered her, only more frenzied. Her eyes had an annoyed, bewildered look to them as she gestured haplessly at the farmland behind her. "Welcome to France. Let's get you inside before they send out the android journalists -they're not as easy to scare off.

If it was an emergency, you would have hung up and called back. Over and over again. Leaving progressively more and more threatening messages about what you were going to do to me when you did finally get a hold of me,” he told her, signing off on the bottom of the letter he’d just finished and moving it to the side. “I would never do that,” she said. “No?” When she did finally send him reports it was always in folders that were named things like I’m Not Your Fucking Secretary and If You Ask Me to Get You Coffee It Will Definitely Have Turtle Shit In It. “If I really needed your attention, I’d start texting. Photos. Naked photos.” His entire body reacted to that. He cleared his throat. “I would definitely—.” “Of my grandfather.” Bennett paused. Then groaned. He knew her grandfather. Leo Landry was a great guy. Funny, down-to-earth, honest, loyal. And someone that Bennett absolutely did not ever want to see naked. Ever. “You’re an evil woman.” “Remember that.

What’s so funny?” “You freak out when I disappear and reappear, but you expect me to stop time.” She laughed, too. “But why can’t you? You’re a god.” “Like I said, we have more responsibilities than freedoms. I doubt even Zeus could pull that one off.” From high above, a streak of light flew from the sky and struck a boulder not twenty feet from where they lay, sending sparks and smoke and a loud crack in all directions in the echoing valley. The boulder was split in half and was as black as coal. “Holy crap!” Therese cried, falling against Than. “What was that?” “Oops. My apologies,” he muttered, but it didn’t sound like he was talking to her. “I made someone angry.” “That scared me to death. Does that happen often?” “No. Never to me. But this is an exceptional time in my life.

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out." You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft. I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it." That so?" Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact." They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me." Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke. I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened. Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times. And Gerry's hand exploded. And so did mine. The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair. Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed in ecstasy. I grabbed the razor, could barely feel it because the nerves in my hand seemed to have stopped working. I slashed into the electric tape at the end of the shotgun barrel, and Danielle dropped away toward the ice and rolled her head into the frozen sand. My broken finger came back out of the shotgun and Gerry swung the barrels toward my head. The twin shotgun bores arced through the darkness like eyes without mercy or soul, and I raised my head to meet them, and Gerry's wail filled my ears as the fire licked at his neck. Good-bye, I thought. Everyone. It's been nice. Oscar's first two shots entered the back of Gerry's head and exited through the center of his forehead and a third punched into his back. The shotgun jerked upward in Gerry's flaming arm and then the shots came from the front, several at once, and Gerry spun like a marionette and pitched toward the ground. The shotgun boomed twice and punched holes through the ice in front of him as he fell. He landed on his knees and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was dead or not. His rusty hair was afire and his head lolled to the left as one eye disappeared in flames but the other shimmered at me through waves of heat, and an amused derision shone in the pupil. Patrick, the eye said through the gathering smoke, you still know nothing. Oscar rose up on the other side of Gerry's corpse, Campbell Rawson clutched tight to his massive chest as it rose and fell with great heaving breaths. The sight of it-something so soft and gentle in the arms of something so thick and mountaineous-made me laugh. Oscar came out of the darkness toward me, stepped around Gerry's burning body, and I felt the waves of heat rise toward me as the circle of gasoline around Gerry caught fire. Burn, I thought. Burn. God help me, but burn. Just after Oscar stepped over the outer edge of the circle, it erupted in yellow flame, and I found myself laughing harder as he looked at it, not remotely impressed. I felt cool lips smack against my ear, and by the time I looked her way, Danielle was already past me, rushing to take her child from Oscar. His huge shadow loomed over me as he approached, and I looked up at him and he held the look for a long moment. How you doing, Patrick?" he said and smiled broadly. And, behind him, Gerry burned on the ice. And everything was so goddamned funny for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. I did. But I was still laughing when they put me in the ambulance.

Oh my God,” Jenna murmured, just as I said, “Holy hell weasel,” under my breath. I won’t repeat what Archer said. Someone in the crowd-I think it was Taylor-shouted, “But the school is closed. Everyone was saying…” Her voice trailed off, and one of the faeries piped up, her voice higher and clear. “You have no right to bring us here. The Fae are no longer in alliance with the rest of Prodigium. On behalf of the Seelie court, I demand you send us home.” Ah. That was Nausicaa. She was the only one of the faeries that talked like she was rehearsing a play. Next to me, Jenna leaned in closer and said, “The Fae broke their alliance? Did you know that?” I shook my head just as Mrs. Casnoff pinned Nausicaa with a glare. No matter how feeble she seemed, she could still throw one heck of a dirty look. “Alliances and treaties have no meaning here at Hecate Hall. Once you’ve been a student here, your allegiance is to the school. Always.” She gave a smile that was more like a grimace. “It was in the code of conduct you signed when you were sentenced here.” I remembered that, a thick pamphlet I’d barely read before scrawling my name on the dotted line. I suddenly wished I had of power of time travel so that I could go smack Sophie From A Year Ago around, and tell her to read things first.

I find it offensive to motherhood to call being a mother a job. Being a mother isn’t a job. It’s who someone is. It’s who I am. You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages. If

I was sorting stamps in the slotted drawer at the post office when Garnelle Fielding came in to send a little package to Wilbur. She said she’d gone and signed up for the WAFS, and her mother and daddy drove her down to Sweetwater to take a test at Avenger Field, where the government was training hundreds and hundreds of women to be pilots. Trouble was, she didn’t pass her physical because they said she was too short and too thin for the service. Her mother rushed her to a doctor in Toullange the next day and tried to get him to write her a letter so she could join the navy instead, but he wouldn’t do it. He told her the service was no place for a girl, and she’d be better off to wait home for someone brave to come marry her. Garnelle hung around until four o’clock when my hours were up, then walked with me to my house. “You should have seen my mother,” she said. “Better yet, you should have heard her. She fussed and fumed the whole way home about how women in her family had fought in every war this country has ever had, right up from loading muskets in the Revolution to she herself driving a staff car in North Carolina during the Great War. I tell you, she would have made a better recruiter than any of those movie star speeches I’ve ever heard. My mother doesn’t sell kisses in a low-cut basque. She preaches pure patriotism like an evangelist in a tent revival. If she’d had a tambourine, we could have stopped the car and held a meeting.” We laughed. “I’m still mad, though,” she said.

I’d seen what evil could do. Evil never gave itself for anyone. It takes what it doesn’t own. Holds your head under the water. Rips your head off your neck and dangles it from the city wall. Evil dominates. Controls. Eradicates. Evil is a sniveling punk, and if you let it inside you then you spew hatred, which is just another name for the poison we drink hoping it’ll hurt someone else.” I glanced around the courtroom at Allie, Catalina, Gabby, Suzy, and finally at the cameras. “But not love. Love rushes in where others won’t. Where the bullets are flying. It stands between. Pours out. Empties itself. It scours the wasteland, returns the pieces that were lost, and it never counts the cost.” Despite a packed house, the room was silent. After a minute, I continued, “Love walks into hell, where I sit in chains, where the verdict is guilty, grabs you by the heart, and says to the warden, ‘Me for him.’” I turned and glanced at my brother. “Sir, we live in an angry, evil world. Where stuff doesn’t always make sense. Where hope seems like something we did when we were kids and the love we cling to slips through our fingers like cold water, but”—I tapped my chest—“nothing that happens here today changes the fact that love heals the shattered places.” I shook my head once. “It’s the only thing that can—” The faces in the courtroom held steady on mine. “It’s the only thing worth fighting for,” I finished, then turned to Bobby. I’d like to think my eyes smiled. “So, no, sir, I don’t hate my brother.

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages. It's like, don't touch my shit. It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-pff-a-hickory-switch mode.

the only thing you'll remember your dad saying about religion at all is that it's more important to walk the walk he'll be tying up his farm boots he will send you off to church on your own he will say I'm not going to go sit beside someone who gets all dressed up on Sunday and sits in church asking for forgiveness and then walks out that door and spends the rest of the week screwing people over.

EVERYTHING SMELLED LIKE POISON. Two days after leaving Venice, Hazel still couldn’t get the noxious scent of eau de cow monster out of her nose. The seasickness didn’t help. The Argo II sailed down the Adriatic, a beautiful glittering expanse of blue; but Hazel couldn’t appreciate it, thanks to the constant rolling of the ship. Above deck, she tried to keep her eyes fixed on the horizon—the white cliffs that always seemed just a mile or so to the east. What country was that, Croatia? She wasn’t sure. She just wished she were on solid ground again. The thing that nauseated her most was the weasel. Last night, Hecate’s pet Gale had appeared in her cabin. Hazel woke from a nightmare, thinking, What is that smell? She found a furry rodent propped on her chest, staring at her with its beady black eyes. Nothing like waking up screaming, kicking off your covers, and dancing around your cabin while a weasel scampers between your feet, screeching and farting. Her friends rushed to her room to see if she was okay. The weasel was difficult to explain. Hazel could tell that Leo was trying hard not to make a joke. In the morning, once the excitement died down, Hazel decided to visit Coach Hedge, since he could talk to animals. She’d found his cabin door ajar and heard the coach inside, talking as if he were on the phone with someone—except they had no phones on board. Maybe he was sending a magical Iris-message? Hazel had heard that the Greeks used those a lot. “Sure, hon,” Hedge was saying. “Yeah, I know, baby. No, it’s great news, but—” His voice broke with emotion. Hazel suddenly felt horrible for eavesdropping. She would’ve backed away, but Gale squeaked at her heels. Hazel knocked on the coach’s door. Hedge poked his head out, scowling as usual, but his eyes were red. “What?” he growled. “Um…sorry,” Hazel said. “Are you okay?” The coach snorted and opened his door wide. “Kinda question is that?” There was no one else in the room. “I—” Hazel tried to remember why she was there. “I wondered if you could talk to my weasel.” The coach’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his voice. “Are we speaking in code? Is there an intruder aboard?” “Well, sort of.” Gale peeked out from behind Hazel’s feet and started chattering. The coach looked offended. He chattered back at the weasel. They had what sounded like a very intense argument. “What did she say?” Hazel asked. “A lot of rude things,” grumbled the satyr. “The gist of it: she’s here to see how it goes.” “How what goes?” Coach Hedge stomped his hoof. “How am I supposed to know? She’s a polecat! They never give a straight answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got, uh, stuff…” He closed the door in her face. After breakfast, Hazel stood at the port rail, trying to settle her stomach. Next to her, Gale ran up and down the railing, passing gas; but the strong wind off the Adriatic helped whisk it away. Hazel

If ever again we happened to lose our balance, just when sleepwalking through the same dream on the brink of hell’s valley, if ever the magical mare (whom I ride through the night air hollowed out into caverns and caves where wild animals live) in a crazy fit of anger over some word I might have said without the perfect sweetness that works on her like a charm, if ever the magic Mare looks over her shoulder and whinnies: “So! You don’t love me!” and bucks me off, sends me flying to the hyenas, if ever the paper ladder that I climb so easily to go pick stars for Promethea—at the very instant that I reach out my hand and it smells like fresh new moon, so good, it makes you believe in god’s genius—if ever at that very instant my ladder catches fire—because it is so fragile, all it would take is someone’s brushing against it tactlessly and all that would be left is ashes—if ever I had the dreadful luck again to find myself falling screaming down into the cruel guts of separation, and emptying all my being of hope, down to the last milligram of hope, until I am able to melt into the pure blackness of the abyss and be no more than night and a death rattle, I would really rather not be tumbling around without my pencil and paper.

Someone has been trying to send me a message for weeks—my car keys missing, pyramids of coins stacked neatly in corners, lamps turned on I know I’ve shut off, toast crumbs on the counter make the profile of a face. The scuttling in the attic does not sound animal—when I climb up there’s old insulation, inches of dust and this heaviness I can’t shake. If I could mail one letter to the dead, it would be a chain letter—Send this to the ten people you loved the most— to see if it returned to me.

The enemy of my soul didn't want me painting that day. To create meant that I would look a little bit like my Creator. To overcome the terrifying angst of the blank canvas meant I would forever have more compassion for other artists. You better believe as I placed the first blue and gray strokes onto the white emptiness before me, the "not good enough" statement was pulsing through my head in almost deafening tones... This parlaying lie is one of his favorite tactics to keep you disillusioned by disappointments. Walls go up, emotions run high, we get guarded, defensive, demotivated, and paralyzed by the endless ways we feel doomed to fail. This is when we quit. This is when we settle for the ease of facebook.... This is when we get a job to simply make money instead of pursuing our calling to make a difference. This is when we put the paintbrush down and don't even try. So there I was. Standing before my painted blue boat, making a choice of which voice to listen to. I'm convinced God was smiling. Pleased. Asking me to find delight in what is right. Wanting me to have compassion for myself by focusing on that part of my painting that expressed something beautiful. To just be eager to give that beauty to whoever dared to look at my boat. To create to love others. Not to beg them for validation. But the enemy was perverting all that. Perfection mocked my boat. The bow was too high, the details too elementary, the reflection on the water too abrupt, and the back of the boat too off-center. Disappointment demanded I hyper-focused on what didn't look quite right. It was my choice which narrative to hold on to: "Not good enough" or "Find delight in what is right." Each perspective swirled, begging me to declare it as truth. I was struggling to make peace with my painting creation, because I was struggling to make make peace with myself as God's creation. Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress. We are imperfect because we are unfinished. So, as unfinished creations, of course everything we attempt will have imperfections. Everything we accomplish will have imperfections. And that's when it hit me: I expect a perfection in me and in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can't I be? How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others? I force myself to send a picture of my boat to at least 20 friends. I was determined to not not be held back by the enemy's accusations that my artwork wasn't good enough to be considered "real art". This wasn't for validation but rather confirmation that I could see the imperfections in my painting but not deem it worthless. I could see the imperfections in me and not deem myself worthless. It was an act of self-compassion. I now knew to stand before each painting with nothing but love, amazement, and delight. I refused to demand anything more from the artist. I just wanted to show up for every single piece she was so brave to put on display.. Might I just be courageous enough to stand before her work and require myself to find everything about it I love? Release my clenched fist and pouty disappointments, and trade my "live up" mentality for a "show up" one? It is so much more freeing to simply show up and be a finder of the good. Break from the secret disappointments. Let my brain venture down the tiny little opening of love.. And I realized what makes paintings so delightful. It's there imperfections. That's what makes it art. It's been touched by a human. It's been created by someone whose hands sweat and who can't possibly transfer divine perfection from what her eyes see to what her fingertips can create. It will be flawed.

I glance around the set—everyone is buzzing like worker bees getting ready for the shot. Cordelia’s getting primped and powdered by a makeup girl, Vanessa is speaking with a few of the cameramen, and the convertible I’m supposed to drive is just sitting there . . . all by its lonesome. And look at that—someone left the keys in the ignition. Stealthily, I sidle up to Sarah. “Have you ever driven in a convertible?” She looks up sharply, like she didn’t see me approach. “Of course I have.” My hands slide into my pockets and I lean back on my heels. “Have you ever been in a convertible driven by a prince?” Her eyes are lighter in the sun, with a hint of gold. They crinkle as she smiles. “No.” I nod. “Perfect. We do this in three.” Now she looks nervous. “Do what?” I spot James across the way, eyes scanning the crowd—far enough away that he’ll never get over here in time. “Three . . .” “I don’t know what you mean.” “Two . . .” “Henry . . .” “One.” “I . . .” “Go, go, go!” “Go where?” she asks, loud enough to draw attention. So I wrap my arm around her waist, lift her off her feet, carry her to the car, and swing her up and into the passenger seat. Then, I jump into the driver’s side. “Shit!” James curses. But then the engine is roaring to life. I back out, knocking over a food service table, and the tires screech as I turn around and drive across the grounds . . . toward the woods. “The road is that way!” Sarah yells, the wind making her long, dark hair dance and swirl. “I know a shortcut. Buckle up.” We fly into the woods, sending a flurry of leaves in our wake. The car bounces and jostles, and I feel Sarah’s hand wrapped around my arm—holding on. It feels good. “Duck.” “What?” I push her head down and crouch at the same time, to avoid getting whipped in the face by the low-branch of a pine tree. After we’re past it, Sarah sits up, owl-eyed, and looks back at the branch and then at me. I smirk. “If you wanted me to push your head down, love, you could’ve just said so.” “You’re insane!” I hit the gas hard, swerving around a stump. “What? You’re the only one who gets to make dirty jokes?” We have a sharp turn coming up ahead. I lay my arm across Sarah’s middle. “Hold on.

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing to compare it to. It's like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who's lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well-prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washes through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.

A wave of grief surged up at the terrible news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone fussed around shouting that they must all immediately, here and now, without delay compose a collective telegram and send it off. But what telegram, you may ask? And why send it? Send it where? And what use is a telegram to the man whose battered skull is being mauled by the rubber hands of a dissector, whose neck is being pierced by the professor's crooked needles? He's dead, he doesn't want a telegram. It's all over, let's not overload the post office. Yes, he's dead ... but we are still alive! The wave of grief rose, lasted for a while and then began to recede.

Stupid Screenwriter Tricks - However clever we think we are, sometimes we go too far in our enthusiasm. We are creative people and think everyone will get it - well, they don't. Stunts don't work. Lame attempts to get attention don't work. Here are some other don'ts: Don't package yourself in a big crate and mail yourself to William Morris. Don't take out a full-page advertisement in Variety with your picture and phone number with the slogan: Will Write for Food. Don't have your picture taken with a cut-out photo of your favorite movie star and send to him autographed with the phrase: We should be in business together! And whatever you do, don't threaten to leap off the Hollywood sign as leverage to get someone to read your screenplay. It's been done, babe, it's been done.

traveled in those days with a cheap tape recorder. (I had written to my alma mater, Columbia University, which had an oral history project, suggesting that they take time off from interviewing ex–generals and ex–secretaries of state and send someone south to record the history being made every day by obscure people. One of the nation’s richest universities wrote back saying something like, “An excellent idea. We don’t really have the resources.”) I recorded Gregory’s performance with my little machine. He spoke for two hours, lashing out at white Southern society with passion and with his extraordinary wit. Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. The crowd loved it and applauded

This is on us. This is society. This is what America has come to. My generation just decided that we all wanted McMansions, so we maxed out our credit cards and doubled down on the rat race, thinking we could have it all. But someone always pays. And it’s the kids who are paying because we’re not paying any attention to them. Not really. We send them off to day care, to summer camp. We buy a house near the picture-perfect school: the best school in Florida! Then we congratulate ourselves on being great parents. But do we ever actually go to the school? Do we take any interest in what happens there? No! We let activists and bureaucrats force policies down teachers’ throats to make the school look better on paper. Then, if we even notice, we applaud ourselves for sending our kid to the safest school in Florida!

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go-into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 2 I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down, I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die. Little Maud, I would blow the flame out of your silver cup, I would suck the rot from your fingernail, I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light, I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones, I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body, I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood, I would let nothing of you go, ever, until washerwomen feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands, and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades, and rats walk away from the culture of the plague, and iron twists weapons toward truth north, and grease refuse to slide in the machinery of progress, and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men, and the widow still whispers to the presence no longer beside her in the dark. And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 3 In a restaurant once, everyone quietly eating, you clambered up on my lap: to all the mouthfuls rising toward all the mouths, at the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca! caca! caca! and each spoonful stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering steam. Yes, you cling because I, like you, only sooner than you, will go down the path of vanished alphabets, the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness, your arms like the shoes left behind, like the adjectives in the halting speech of old folk, which once could call up the lost nouns. 4 And you yourself, some impossible Tuesday in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out among the black stones of the field, in the rain, and the stones saying over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you on the fontanel over and over, and you standing there unable to let them in. 5 If one day it happens you find yourself with someone you love in a café at one end of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses, and if you commit then, as we did, the error of thinking, one day all this will only be memory, learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come—to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss the mouth that tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones. The still undanced cadence of vanishing. 6 In the light the moon sends back, I can see in your eyes the hand that waved once in my father's eyes, a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look: and the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 7 Back you go, into your crib. The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell. Your eyes close inside your head, in sleep. Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing. Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among the ten thousand things, each scratched in time with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

Adira squirmed in Leah’s arms, wanting down. Leah lowered her until her little sneaker-clad feet touched the floor. Adira toddled away, patting the garments that brushed her head and shoulders. Straightening, Leah watched her for a moment, then turned back to Seth. “I guess I’ll get back to work.” Was that disappointment he felt upon hearing her words? He really was enjoying her company. Adira turned around and toddled back. Grasping Leah’s fingers, she reached out, took Seth’s hand, and placed Leah’s in it. Seth instinctively curled his fingers around Leah’s. Satisfied, Adira turned and toddled off once more. “Oh,” Leah said with a surprised chuckle. “Well. Maybe not.” Seth was surprised, too. What was Adira thinking? He glanced at Leah. Should he apologize? “Sorry about that.” “No worries,” she said with another charming smile. Raising their clasped hands, she turned them so his was on top and slid her free hand over it. “Oooh. Look how big your hand is.” How many times had he heard Tracy or one of the other mortal women he frequently encountered think Oooh. Look how big his hands are. You know what they say: big hands, big feet, big package in much the same tone as Leah’s. Seth couldn’t help it. He barked out a laugh. Leah’s eyes widened. “Wait. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” “It sounded as if you like that my hands are so big.” She flushed. “I do, but I didn’t mean it like you think.” “How do I think you meant it?” he asked with exaggerated innocence. Face red, she laughed. “Stop making me blush. I just meant I like that you’re so big. Not just your hands. But all over.” Again her eyes widened. “I mean, not all over, but—” Laughing, he took pity on her. “It’s all right. I understood what you meant the first time.” Smiling, she squinted up at him. “You like to tease, don’t you?” “Guilty as charged.” Many immortals did. It helped lighten what could otherwise be a dark existence. She caressed his hand again, sending little tingles through it. “My hand actually looks small in yours. That’s so cool.” It did. And the sensations her soft touch inspired unnerved him a bit. His pulse even picked up. Seth eyed her curiously. “You really dislike your size so much?” He thought it a shame. She was a beautiful woman. Shrugging, she released his hand and let hers fall to her sides. “When someone gives you a complex in high school, it tends to stick with you.” Adira reappeared as if by magic. Taking Leah’s hand, she again placed it in Seth’s, then moved away. The two looked at each other and smiled. Leah nodded after Adira. “Maybe she’s hoping I’ll distract you so she can take her time looking over the toys she plans to coax you into buying before you leave.” Seth winked. “Or maybe she just heard you say you like my big hands.

You were just trying to figure out if I'm one of you?" Of course, stupid. When has anyone like Galen ever paid you any attention? When has there ever been anyone like Galen? Still, I'm surprised how much it hurts when he nods. I'm his little science project. All the time I thought he was flirting with me, he was really just trying to lure me out here to test his theory. If stupid were a disease, I'd have died from it by now. But at least I know where he really stands-about his feelings for me anyway. But what his intentions for me in general are, I have no idea. What happens if I can turn into a fish? Does he think I'll just kiss my mom good-bye, flush all my good grades-all those scholarships-down the toilet so I can go swim with the dolphins? he called himself a Royal. Of course, I don't know exactly what that means, but I can sure guess-that I'm another subject to him, someone to order around. He did say I had to obey him, after all. But if he's a Royal, why come out here himself? Why not send someone less important? I'm betting the U.S. President doesn't personally go to foreign countries looking for missing Americans who might not even be American. But can I trust him enough to answer my questions? He already deceived me once, faking interest in me to get me out here. He lied to my face about having a mother. He even lied to my mom. What else would he lie about to get what he wants? No, I can't trust him. Still, I want to know the truth, if only for myself. I'm not moving into some big seashell off the Jersey seashore or anything-but I can't deny that I'm different. What could it hurt to spend a little more time with Galen so he can help me figure this out? So what if he thinks I'm some sort of pheasant fish who has to obey him? Why shouldn't I use him the way he used me-to get what I want? It's just that what I want is holding me in his arms, acting like he's concerned that I'm not talking anymore.

Something In The Night" Well I'm riding down Kingsley Figuring I'll get a drink Well I turn the radio up loud So I don't have to think And I take her to the floor Looking for a moment When the world seems right And I tear into the guts Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm Of something in the night Well you're born with nothing And better off that way Soon as you've got something they send Someone to try and take it away Well you can ride this road till dawn Without another human being in sight Yeah just kids wasted on Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm Something in the night Well nothing is forgotten or forgiven When it's your last time around And I got stuff running 'round my head That I just can't live down Well we found the things we loved They were crushed and dying in the dirt We tried to pick up the pieces And get away without getting hurt But they caught us at the state line Burned our cars in one last fight And left us running burned and blind Mmm mmm mmm mmm Chasing something in the night Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

just for today, i’ll focus on the people i’m with. . . .        In this day and age, it’s astonishing to see how many people feel that it’s not rude to ignore the people they’re with while they talk on their phones to other people who aren’t even there.  When we start focusing on someone who isn’t with us, we send a message to the people who are with us that they aren’t as important as those other people, and that what I have to talk about with this person on the phone is much more important than what I have to talk over with you.      Most of us can’t remember what it’s like to give our undivided attention to someone else—or to have someone else give his or her undivided attention to us.  Some of us never have experienced this at all, and that’s quite a shame, for it’s one of the most important ways to develop relationships that we have.  Just for today, let’s turn off the cell phone when we’re with friends, and live in the moment with the people who are with us.  We can catch up with the others later (as we used to do with no problems).

Being a mother is NOT a job. Stop throwing things at me. I'm sorry but it is not. I find it offensive to motherhood to call being a mother a job. Being a mother isn't a job. It's who someone is. It's who I am. You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends tem out into the world, forever hostages. If all of that happened at work, I'd have quit fifty times already. Because there isn't enough money in the world. And my job does not pay me in the smell of baby head and the soft weight of snuggly sleepy toddler on my shoulder. Being a mother is incredibly important. To the naysayers, I growl, do not diminish it by calling it a job.

1. True trolls are internet users who set out to ruin someone else’s day. Everyone else is merely someone who disagrees with you, which is allowed. It is hard to differentiate between someone who is ‘generally disagreeable to the entire world’ and ‘currently disagreeing with me’. So we move to… 2. They can’t speak proper, innit. Their punctuation, spelling or grammar is so far round the spout it’s actually random. Of course, this could also indicate someone with a learning difficulty, so to be kind we need to check off some more identifying factors such as… 3. They say extremely unreasonable things. Not just ‘Yeah well, so what, copper?’ but posting on the Facebook memorial pages of murdered children that they deserved it, searching out women to call them whores, or sending rape and death threats. This isn’t normal debate. 4. They are not friends with logic. If you question them, ask them why or suggest substantiating this or that, they will scream, kick a table or call you a Nazi. 5. The sheer volume of their posts –either in word count or frequency –indicates a serious personality disorder. 6. If you saw them on the bus, you would sit elsewhere.

I don't mean to smear our people, but honestly, sometimes I thought the Jews were the worst. Not all, but you know the ones I'm talking about - they weren't like the kids in Oxford Circle, that’s for sure. You sent me off totally fucking unprepared, brother. Not a word of warning. Their doctor and dentist parents worked their way through school, but now they want their babies to go in style. They send them stereos and cars and blank checks. And those were the hippies! Running around in their flowing clothes, their noses surgically tilted in the air! Talking about oppression and the common man, and running off to volunteer at some job, calling it righteous because they don’t have to earn money. Or my favorite, going to summer camp until they’re like forty-five. You’re not a socialist because you sleep in a log cabin and dance in a circle! And who are they angry at, really angry at? Not the Man – they wouldn’t know the Man if he froze their Bloomingdale’s charge cards. No, they’re angry at their parents! The people who fund all this in the first place. If they don’t want their parents, send them my way. I’ve been looking all my life for someone to wipe my ass and pay my bills.

I wanted to go home, to Velaris, but I had to stay, to make sure things were set in motion, that you were all right. So I waited as long as I could, then I sent a tug through the bond. Then you came to find me. 'I almost told you then, but... You were so sad. And tired. And for once, you looked at me like... like I was worth something. So I promised myself that the next time I saw you, I'd free you of the bargain. Because I was selfish, and knew that if I let go right then, he'd lock you up and I'd never get to see you again. When I went to leave you... I think transforming you into Fae made the bond lock into place permanently. I'd known it existed, but it hit me then- hit me so strong that I panicked. I knew if I stayed a second longer, I'd damn the consequences and take you with me. And you'd hate me forever. 'I landed at the Night Court, right as Mor was waiting for me, and I was so frantic, so... unhinged, that I told her everything. I hadn't seen her in fifty years, and my first words to her were, "She's my mate." And for three months... for three months I tried to convince myself that you were better off without me. I tried to convince myself that everything I'd done had made you hate me. But I felt you through the bond, through your open mental shields. I felt your pain, and sadness, and loneliness. I felt you struggling to escape the darkness of Amarantha the same way I was. I heard you were going to marry him, and I told myself you were happy. I should you let you be happy, even if it killed me. Even if you were my mate, you'd earned that happiness. 'The day of your wedding, I'd planned to get rip-roaring drunk with Cassian, who had no idea why, but... But then I felt you again, I felt your panic, and despair, and heard you beg someone- anyone- to save you. I lost it. I winnowed to the wedding, and barely remembered who I was supposed to be, the part I was supposed to play. All I could see was you, in your stupid wedding dress- so thin. So, so thin, and pale. And I wanted to kill him for it, but I had to get you out. Had to call in that bargain, just once, to get you away, to see if you were all right.' Rhys looked at me, eyes desolate. 'It killed me, Feyre, to send you back. To see you waste away, month by month. It killed me to know he was sharing your bed. Not just because you were my mate, but because I...' He glanced down, then up at me again. 'I knew... I knew I was in love with you that moment I picked up the knife to kill Amarantha.' 'When you finally came here... I decided I wouldn't tell you. Any of it. I wouldn't let you out of the bargain, because your hatred was better than facing the two alternatives: that you felt nothing for me, or that you... you might feel something similar, and if I let myself love you, you would be taken from me. The way my family was- the way my friends were. So I didn't tell you. I watched as you faded away. Until that day... that day he locked you up. 'I would have killed him if he'd been there. But I broke some very, very fundamental rules in taking you away. Amren said if I got you to admit that we were mates, it would keep any trouble from our door, but... I couldn't force the bond on you. I couldn't try to seduce you into accepting the bond, either. Even if it gave Tamlin license to wage war on me. You had been through so much already. I didn't want you to think that everything I did was to win you, just to keep my lands safe. But I couldn't... I couldn't stop being around you, and loving you, and wanting you. I still can't stay away.' He leaned back, loosing a long breath.

Well, I don’t know about you girls,” Patti called out, “but I’m starving. You wanna help me throw everything together before I go check on the chicken?” The twins shared uncertain expressions. “Sure, we’ll help,” I answered for them. “What do you need us to do?” “All right, how about you and Marna make the salad, and Ginger can help me bake this cake.” Their eyes filled with horror. “You mean like chopping things?” Marna whispered. “Yeah. It’s not hard. We’ll do it together.” At my prompting they stood but made no move toward the kitchen with me. “I’m not sure you ought to trust me with a knife,” Marna said. “Or me with baked goods,” Ginger added. I’d never seen her so unsure of herself. If it were just me making the request, she’d tell me to go screw myself, but neither girl seemed to know how to act around Patti. They fidgeted and glanced at the kitchen. Patti came over and took Ginger by the arm. “You’ll both be fine,” Patti insisted. “It’ll be fun!” The seriousness of the twins in the kitchen was comical. They took each step of their jobs with slow, attentive detail, checking and double-checking the measurements while Patti ran out to flip the chicken. Somewhere halfway through, the girls loosened up and we started chatting. Patti put Ginger at ease in a way I’d never seen her. At one point we were all laughing and I realized I’d never seen Ginger laugh in a carefree way, only the mean kind of amusement brought on at someone else’s expense. Usually mine. Ginger caught me looking and straightened, smile disappearing. Patti watched with her keen, wise eyes. She wasn’t missing the significance of any gesture here. When she returned from getting the chicken off the grill, Ginger said, “Oh, that smells divine, Miss Patti.” Who was this complimenting girl? Patti smiled and thanked her. Ginger was so proud of the cake when it was finished that she took several pictures of it with her phone. She even wanted a picture of her and Patti holding the cake together, which nearly made Patti burst with motherly affection. I couldn’t even manage to feel jealous as Patti heaped nurture on Ginger. It was so sweet it made my eyes sting. Marna kept sending fond glances at her sister. “I did that part right there all by myself,” Ginger said to Marna, pointing to the frosting trim. “Brilliant, isn’t it?” “Bang-up job, Gin.” Marna squeezed her sister around the shoulder.

This is a perfect example of how a control drama interferes,” he said. “You were so aloof you didn’t allow an important coincidence to take place.” I must have appeared defensive. “It’s all right,” he said, “everyone plays a drama of one kind or another. At least now you understand how yours works.” “I don’t understand!” I said. “What exactly am I doing?” “Your way of controlling people and situations,” he explained, “in order to get energy coming your way, is to create this drama in your mind during which you withdraw and look mysterious and secretive. You tell yourself that you’re being cautious but what you’re really doing is hoping someone will be pulled into this drama and will try to figure out what’s going on with you. When someone does, you remain vague, forcing them to struggle and dig and try to discern your true feelings. “As they do so, they give you their full attention and that sends their energy to you. The longer you can keep them interested and mystified, the more energy you receive. Unfortunately, when you play aloof, your life tends to evolve very slowly because you’re repeating this same scene over and over again. If you had opened up to Rolando, your life movie would have taken off in a new and meaningful direction.

When I’m under stress,” he emphasized, sliding the magnificent emerald onto her finger, “I buy everything in sight. It took my last ounce of control not to buy one of those in every color.” Her eyes lifted from his smiling lips, dropped to the enormous jewel on her finger, and then widened in shock. “Oh, but-“ she exclaimed, staring at it and straightening in his arms. “It’s glorious. I do mean that, but I couldn’t let you-really, I couldn’t. Ian,” she burst out anxiously, sending a tremor through him when she called him by name, “I can’t let you do this. You’ve been extravagantly generous already.” She touched the huge stone almost reverently, then gave her head a practical shake. “I don’t need jewels, really I don’t. You’re doing this because of that stupid remark I made about someone offering me jewels as large as my palm, and now you’ve bought one nearly that large!” “Not quite,” he chuckled. “Why, a stone like this would pay for irrigating Havenhurst and all the servants’ wages for years and years and years, and food to-“ She reached to slide it off her finger. “Don’t!” he warned on a choked laugh, linking his hands behind her back. “I-“ he thought madly for some way to stop her objections-“I cannot possibly return it,” he said. “It’s part of a matched set.” “You don’t mean there’s more!” “I’m afraid so, though I meant to surprise you with them tonight. There’s a necklace and bracelet and earrings.” “Oh, I see,” she said, making a visible effort not to stare at her ring. “Well, I suppose…if it was a purchase of several pieces, the ring alone probably didn’t cost as much as it would have…Do not tell me,” she said severely, when his shoulders began to shake with suppressed mirth, “you actually paid full price for all of the pieces!” Laughing, Ian put his forehead against hers, and he nodded. “It’s very fortunate,” she said, protectively putting her fingers against the magnificent ring, “that I’ve agreed to marry you.” “If you hadn’t,” he laughed, “God knows what I would have bought.” “Or how much you would have paid for it,” she chuckled, cuddling in his arms-for the first time of her own volition. “Do you really do that?” she asked a moment later. “Do what?” he gasped, tears of mirth blurring his vision. “Spend money heedlessly when you’re disturbed about something?” “Yes,” he lied in a suffocated, laughing voice. “You’ll have to stop doing it.” “I’m going to try.” “I could help you.” “Please do.” “You may place yourself entirely in my hands.” “I’m very much looking forward to that.” It was the first time Ian had ever kissed a woman while he was laughing.

He opened his eyes then, white fire flaring hotly within them. “Send me home, Legna,” he commanded her, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion. She moved her head in affirmation even as she leaned toward him to catch his mouth once more in a brief, territorial kiss, her teeth scoring his bottom lip as she broke away. It was an incidental wound, one he could heal in the blink of an eye. But he wouldn’t erase her mark on him, and they both knew it. Finally, she stepped back, closed her eyes, and concentrated on picturing his home in her thoughts. She had been in his parlor dozens of times as a guest, always accompanied by Noah. His library, his kitchen, even the grounds of the isolated estate were well known to her. She could have sent him to any of those locations. But as she began to focus, her mind’s eye was filled with the image of a dark, elegant room she had never seen before. Hand-carved ebony-paneled walls soared up into a vast ceiling, enormous windows of intricate stained glass spilled colored light over the entire room as if a multitude of rainbows had taken up residence. It all centered around an enormous bed, the coverlet’s color indistinguishable under the blanket of colorful dawn sunlight that streamed into the room. She could feel the sun’s warmth, ready and waiting to cocoon any weary occupant who thrived on sleeping in the heat of the muted daylight sun. It was a beautiful room, and she knew without a doubt that it was Gideon’s bedroom and that he had shared the image of it with her. If she sent him there, it would be the first time she had ever teleported someone to a place she had not first seen for herself. The ability to take images of places from others’ minds for teleporting purposes was an advanced Elder ability. “You can do it,” he encouraged her softly, all of his thoughts and his will completely full of his belief in that statement. Legna kept his gaze for one last long moment, and with a flick of a wrist sent him from the room with a soft pop of moving air. She exhaled in wonder, everything inside of her knowing without a doubt that he had appeared in his bedroom, safe and sound, that very next second. Legna turned to look at her own bed and wondered how she would ever be able to sleep. Nelissuna . . . go to bed. I will help you sleep. Gideon’s voice washed through her, warming her, comforting her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. This was the connection that Jacob and Isabella shared. For the rest of the time both of them lived, each would be privy to the other’s innermost thoughts. She realized that because he was the more powerful, it was quite possible he would be able to master parts of himself, probably even hide things from her awareness and keep them private—at least, until she learned how to work her new ability with better skill. After all, she was a Demon of the Mind. It was part of her innate state of being to figure the workings of their complex minds. She removed her slippers and pushed the sleeves of her dress from her shoulders so that it sheeted off her in one smooth whisper of fabric. She closed her eyes, avoiding looking in the mirror or at herself, very aware of Gideon’s eyes behind her own. His masculine laughter vibrated through her, setting her skin to tingle. So, you are both shy and bold . . . he said with amusement as she quickly slid beneath her covers. You are a source of contradictions and surprises, Legna. My world has begun anew. As if living for over a millennium is not long enough? she asked him. On the contrary. Without you, it was far, far too long. Go to sleep, Nelissuna. And a moment after she received the thought, her eyes slid closed with a weight she could not have contradicted even if she had wanted to. Her last thought, as she drifted off, was that she had to make a point of telling Isabella that she might have been wrong about what it meant to have another to share one’s mind with.

He clipped the male again, this time in the shoulder, sending Einar flying backward. He was vaguely aware of Cyn racing to Leilani. He could hear her calling out his own name, but he tuned everything out, including her. Con couldn’t go to her yet. The threat needed to be eliminated. A red haze had descended across his vision as he body-slammed Einar, who was attempting to stand. That male wasn’t walking out of here. He knew he wasn’t acting rational, that the threat could be put down easier than this, but he couldn’t stop the rage that had overtaken him. Einar pumped a fist against Con’s ribcage as they tumbled to the ground. He barely felt it as he slammed a left hook across the male’s jaw. Didn’t feel anything as he jabbed him in the gut, the ribs, the face. Over and over. He felt a bloodlust overtake him as he pounded at Einar’s face. This male had wanted to hurt Leilani, to take her from Con. Strong arms wrapped around Con, tackling him to the ground and rolling him off his target. “Con!” Cyn held him tight, his eyes wild as he kept him pinned down. “It’s done. You’re scaring her.” Those words snapped him out of the dark fog of savagery that had overtaken him. Leilani stood a few feet away, her eyes wide as she stared at him. Fuck, he had scared her. “I’m fine,” he rasped to his brother. Cyn paused before loosening his grip. When he did, Con stood, terrified he’d screwed things up for good. He didn’t glance at Einar, who he was certain was dead. He’d never lost control like that, had never even come close. It pierced him that Leilani had seen him kill someone, that he literally had blood on his hands in front of her now. “Leilani—” She jumped at him, throwing her arms around his neck on a sob. “You came for me.” Unable to do anything about the blood, he wrapped his arms around her and held tight. Of course he’d come for her. There was nowhere she could go that he wouldn’t follow. That realization slammed into him as if someone had actually struck him. They’d known each other less than two weeks but she’d changed his world without even trying. He would give up his role of leader for her. The thought should have terrified him, but it didn’t. He buried his face against her neck, inhaled her sweet, arilod scent. “I’m not letting you go after the moon cycle.” She sniffled, her fingers gripping his shoulders tight. “Good because I’m not going anywhere,” she said as she pulled back. Her eyes were bright with tears as she looked at him. “I would move to the mainland for you.” She blinked once in surprise before her lips pulled up into a smile. “No. This is your home— my home now.” No, he realized, she was his home, but he simply nodded and crushed his mouth to hers.

Everything was silent except for his heavy breathing. Steele tugged the helmet off and heard frantic voices coming closer. He hit the riser release, stripped the 1911 from his chest, and held the pistol at the ready. Outside the voices were getting closer. “He is in here!” someone yelled in Arabic. “Kill him, kill him!” The door flew open, revealing a man with an AK-47 who stood there scanning the interior. Steele waited for him to step inside, then dropped him with a shot to the skull. He scrambled to his feet. There was no time to grab his rifle from his pack—the only thing he could do was press the attack. Moving to the door, he saw three more men running toward him, their chests heaving and fingers on the triggers. The closest man saw him step out. He wasn’t expecting one man to attack and his eyes widened in surprise. “Not today, boys.” Steele fired the first round too fast and it hit his target in the hip. The round spun him like a top, but Steele frowned, knowing he had rushed the shot. He settled automatically into a shooter’s stance and reengaged the first target before shifting fire to the other two. Thwap, thwap, thwap. The suppressed 9mm bounced from chest to chest, sending a hollow point mushrooming into each. All three men were down before the first casing tumbled to the ground. Steele stepped out and finished them off with a single shot to the head.

The phone rang. By the caller ID she saw it was Hal from the Wizard temp agency. “Hey Valerie,” he said. “Oh, hey Hal. What can I do for you?” she replied. “Oh, there’s this thing. Before I tell you about it, are you free right now to go out? I know it’s short notice, but rather than explain the whole thing to you and then find out you’re busy with something else I just want to ask upfront. Because explaining it to you would be a waste of both of our time if you aren’t available.” “No, sure, yeah. No problem. I could go on something now. I’m not too busy.” “Okay, great. We got a call from the police. They’ve got some crazy thing going on downtown. Something to do with a multi-dimensional demon spirit possessing buildings and some gaping holes in reality or something like that. I don’t really have all the details because the police officer who called me was cut off mid-sentence. He seemed to come down with some kind of horrible case of screaming. Something about clawing his eyeballs out. Anyway, some other officer picked up the phone and said that their regular on-duty wizard was sick and to send someone to meet them near the downtown plaza. You can’t miss the three story tall blob-demon-thing tearing up the city streets, he said.” “Okay. Is it the usual hourly?” “Because it’s for the city rather than a private business, we give them a discounted rate. So it’s $15 an hour. You don’t have to take it.” “No, that’s okay. I need the money.

A knock at the enameled door of the carriage altered them to the presence of a porter and a platform inspector just outside. Sebastian looked up and handed the baby back to Evie. He went to speak to the men. After a minute or two, he came back from the threshold with a basket. Looking both perturbed and amused, he brought it to Phoebe. “This was delivered to the station for you.” “Just now?” Phoebe asked with a nonplussed laugh. “Why, I believe it’s Ernestine’s mending basket! Don’t say the Ravenels went to the trouble of sending someone all the way to Alton to return it?” “It’s not empty,” her father said. As he set the basket in her lap, it quivered and rustled, and a blood-curdling yowl emerged. Astonished, Phoebe fumbled with the latch on the lid and opened it. The black cat sprang out and crawled frantically up her front, clinging to her shoulder with such ferocity that nothing could have detached her claws. “Galoshes!” Justin exclaimed, hurrying over to her. “Gosh-gosh!” Stephen cried in excitement. Phoebe stroked the frantic cat and tried to calm her. “Galoshes, how . . . why are you . . . oh, this is Mr. Ravenel’s doing! I’m going to murder him. You poor little thing.” Justin came to stand beside her, running his hands over the dusty, bedraggled feline. “Are we going to keep her now, Mama?” “I don’t think we have a choice,” Phoebe said distractedly. “Ivo, will you go with Justin to the dining compartment, and fetch her some food and water?” The two boys dashed off immediately. “Why has he done this?” Phoebe fretted. “He probably couldn’t make her stay at the barn, either. But she’s not meant to be a pet. She’s sure to run off as soon as we reach home.” Resuming his seat next to Evie, Sebastian said dryly, “Redbird, I doubt that creature will stray more than an arm’s length from you.” Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West’s handwriting. Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position To Whom It May Concern, I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred. Your servant, Galoshes the Cat Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents’ questioning gazes on her. “Job application,” she explained sourly. “From the cat.” “How charming,” Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder. “‘Personal companion,’ my foot,” Phoebe muttered. “This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin.” “I wonder,” Seraphina said thoughtfully. “If she were truly feral, she wouldn’t want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated.” Phoebe rolled her eyes. “It seems we’ll find out.” The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe’s lap and curled up with a sigh.

Still dark. The Alpine hush is miles deep. The skylight over Holly’s bed is covered with snow, but now that the blizzard’s stopped I’m guessing the stars are out. I’d like to buy her a telescope. Could I send her one? From where? My body’s aching and floaty but my mind’s flicking through the last night and day, like a record collector flicking through a file of LPs. On the clock radio, a ghostly presenter named Antoine Tanguay is working through Nocturne Hour from three till four A.M. Like all the best DJs, Antoine Tanguay says almost nothing. I kiss Holly’s hair, but to my surprise she’s awake: “When did the wind die down?” “An hour ago. Like someone unplugged it.” “You’ve been awake a whole hour?” “My arm’s dead, but I didn’t want to disturb you.” “Idiot.” She lifts her body to tell me to slide out. I loop a long strand of her hair around my thumb and rub it on my lip. “I spoke out of turn last night. About your brother. Sorry.” “You’re forgiven.” She twangs my boxer shorts’ elastic. “Obviously. Maybe I needed to hear it.” I kiss her wound-up hair bundle, then uncoil it. “You wouldn’t have any ciggies left, perchance?” In the velvet dark, I see her smile: A blade of happiness slips between my ribs. “What?” “Use a word like ‘perchance’ in Gravesend, you’d get crucified on the Ebbsfleet roundabout for being a suspected Conservative voter. No cigarettes left, I’m ’fraid. I went out to buy some yesterday, but found a semiattractive stalker, who’d cleverly made himself homeless forty minutes before a whiteout, so I had to come back without any.” I trace her cheekbones. “Semiattractive? Cheeky moo.” She yawns an octave. “Hope we can dig a way out tomorrow.” “I hope we can’t. I like being snowed in with you.” “Yeah well, some of us have these job things. Günter’s expecting a full house. Flirty-flirty tourists want to party-party-party.” I bury my head in the crook of her bare shoulder. “No.” Her hand explores my shoulder blade. “No what?” “No, you can’t go to Le Croc tomorrow. Sorry. First, because now I’m your man, I forbid it.” Her sss-sss is a sort of laugh. “Second?” “Second, if you went, I’d have to gun down every male between twelve and ninety who dared speak to you, plus any lesbians too. That’s seventy-five percent of Le Croc’s clientele. Tomorrow’s headlines would all be BLOODBATH IN THE ALPS AND LAMB THE SLAUGHTERER, and the a vegetarian-pacifist type, I know you wouldn’t want any role in a massacre so you’d better shack up”—I kiss her nose, forehead, and temple—“with me all day.” She presses her ear to my ribs. “Have you heard your heart? It’s like Keith Moon in there. Seriously. Have I got off with a mutant?” The blanket’s slipped off her shoulder: I pull it back. We say nothing for a while. Antoine whispers in his radio studio, wherever it is, and plays John Cage’s In a Landscape. It unscrolls, meanderingly. “If time had a pause button,” I tell Holly Sykes, “I’d press it. Right”—I press a spot between her eyebrows and up a bit—“there. Now.” “But if you did that, the whole universe’d be frozen, even you, so you couldn’t press play to start time again. We’d be stuck forever.” I kiss her on the mouth and blood’s rushing everywhere. She murmurs, “You only value something if you know it’ll end.

Grabbing my hair and pulling it to the point my skull throbs, I rock back and forth while insanity threatens to destroy my mind completely. Father finally did what Lachlan started. Destroyed my spirit. The angel is gone. The monster has come and killed her. Lachlan Sipping his whiskey, Shon gazes with a bored expression at the one-way mirror as Arson lights the match, grazing the skin of his victim with it as the man convulses in fear. “Show off,” he mutters, and on instinct, I slap the back of his head. He rubs it, spilling the drink. “The fuck? We are wasting time, Lachlan. Tell him to speed up. You know if you let him, he can play for hours.” All in good time, we don’t need just a name. He is saving him for a different kind of information that we write down as Sociopath types furiously on his computer, searching for the location and everything else using FBI databases. “Bingo!” Sociopath mutters, picking up the laptop and showing the screen to me. “It’s seven hours away from New York, in a deserted location in the woods. The land belongs to some guy who is presumed dead and the man accrued the right to build shelters for abused women. They actually live there as a place of new hope or something.” Indeed, the center is advertised as such and has a bunch of stupid reviews about it. Even the approval of a social worker, but then it doesn’t surprise me. Pastor knows how to be convincing. “Kids,” I mutter, fisting my hands. “Most of them probably have kids. He continues to do his fucked-up shit.” And all these years, he has been under my radar. I throw the chair and it bounces off the wall, but no one says anything as they feel the same. “Shon, order a plane. Jaxon—” “Yeah, my brothers will be there with us. But listen, the FBI—” he starts, and I nod. He takes a beat and quickly sends a message to someone on his phone while I bark into the microphone. “Arson, enough with the bullshit. Kill him already.” He is of no use to us anyway. Arson looks at the wall and shrugs. Then pours gas on his victim and lights up the match simultaneously, stepping aside as the man screams and thrashes on the chair, and the smell of burning flesh can be sensed even here. Arson jogs to a hose, splashing water over him. The room is designed security wise for this kind of torture, since fire is one of the first things I taught. After all, I’d learned the hard way how to fight with it. “On the plane, we can adjust the plan. Let’s get moving.” They spring into action as I go to my room to get a specific folder to give to Levi before I go, when Sociopath’s hand stops me, bumping my shoulder. “Is this a suicide mission for you?” he asks, and I smile, although it lacks any humor. My friend knows everything. Instead of answering his question, I grip his shoulder tight, and confide, “Valencia is entrusted to you.” We both know that if I want to destroy Pastor, I have to die with him. This revenge has been twenty-three years in the making, and I never envisioned a different future. This path always leads to death one way or another, and the only reason I valued my life was because I had to kill him. Valencia will be forever free from the evils that destroyed her life. I’ll make sure of it. Once upon a time, there was an angel. Who made the monster’s heart bleed.

Speaking of debutantes,” Jake continued cautiously when Ian remained silent, “what about the one upstairs? Do you dislike her especially, or just on general principle?” Ian walked over to the table and poured some Scotch into a glass. He took a swallow, shrugged, and said, “Miss Cameron was more inventive than some of her vapid little friends. She accosted me in a garden at a party.” “I can see how bothersome that musta been,” Jake joked, “having someone like her, with a face that men dream about, tryin’ to seduce you, usin’ feminine wiles on you. Did they work?” Slamming the glass down on the table, Ian said curtly, “They worked.” Coldly dismissing Elizabeth from his mind, he opened the deerskin case on the table, removed some papers he needed to review, and sat down in front of the fire. Trying to suppress his avid curiosity, Jake waited a few minutes before asking, “Then what happened?” Already engrossed in reading the documents in his hand, Ian said absently and without looking up, “I asked her to marry me; she sent me a note inviting me to meet her in the greenhouse; I went there; her brother barged in on us and informed me she was a countess, and that she was already betrothed.” The topic thrust from his mind, Ian reached for the quill lying on the small table beside his chair and made a note in the margin of the contract. “And?” Jake demanded avidly. “And what?” “And then what happened-after the brother barged in?” “He took exception to my having contemplated marrying so far above myself and challenged me to a duel,” Ian replied in a preoccupied voice as he made another note on the contract. “So what’s the girl doin’ here now?” Jake asked, scratching his head in bafflement over the doings of the Quality. “Who the hell knows,” Ian murmured irritably. “Based on her behavior with me, my guess is she finally got caught in some sleezy affair or another, and her reputation’s beyond repair.” “What’s that got to do with you?” Ian expelled his breath in a long, irritated sigh and glanced at Jake with an expression that made it clear he was finished answering questions. “I assume,” he bit out, “that her family, recalling my absurd obsession with her two years ago, hoped I’d come up to scratch again and take her off their hands.” “You think it’s got somethin’ to do with the old duke talking about you bein’ his natural grandson and wantin’ to make you his heir?” He waited expectantly, hoping for more information, but Ian ignored him, reading his documents. Left with no other choice and no prospect for further confidences, Jake picked up a candle, gathered up some blankets, and started for the barn. He paused at the door, struck by a sudden thought. “She said she didn’t send you any note about meetin’ her in the greenhouse.” “She’s a liar and an excellent little actress,” Ian said icily, without taking his gaze from the papers. “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get her out of here and off my hands.” Something in Ian’s face made him ask, “Why the hurry? You afraid of fallin’ fer her wiles again?” “Hardly.” “Then you must be made of stone,” he teased. “That woman’s so beautiful she’d tempt any man who was alone with her for an hour-includin’ me, and you know I ain’t in the petticoat line at all.” “Don’t let her catch you alone,” Ian replied mildly. “I don’t think I’d mind.” Jake laughed as he left.

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair. Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed? Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with? And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read. And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period. What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then? Give them all board erasers to clean. What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey? And who the hell do you condemn, just who? Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?

He fakes a smile and then turns to unlock the door. I follow him inside; he stops me at the kitchen island. “I found it right here.” He points to the countertop. “You found what right where?” I ask, feeling my face scrunch up in bewilderment. “The crossword puzzle from today.” He pulls it out of his pocket. “I found it here when I was making breakfast this morning.” “Wait, you didn’t get it in the mail?” “I’m sorry; I thought I mentioned that.” “No,” I say, holding back from whacking him in the head. “I think I would’ve remembered if someone had broken into your apartment. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, and then lets out a stress-filled sigh. “So, someone broke in here last night while you were asleep?” “I’m not sure. I was thinking that, too, but then . . . what if I just didn’t see it last night when I got home?” “Are you sure you didn’t set your mail down here, maybe even for a second, and then leave this piece behind?” “What difference does it makes?” “It makes a huge difference.” My voice gets louder. “The difference between someone breaking in or not.” I peer around the kitchen and living room, trying to see if anything looks off. “I don’t know.” He reaches for a box of cereal. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed getting another puzzle in the mail, especially since we’ve been talking so much about this stuff.” “Who has a key to your apartment?” “No one that I know of.” “None of your friends? Did you leave a spare under the doormat, maybe?” “No, and no.” “Then what?” I ask, completely frustrated. “Look,” he says, running his fingers through his shaggy brown hair. “I don’t have all the answers. That’s why it’s a puzzle.” “This isn’t funny,” I tell him. “Someone’s sending you threatening notes, writing twisted messages on your door, and possibly breaking into your apartment. Worrying isn’t an option. It’s an order.” “So what do you order me to do?” “Call the police.” “And tell them what? That someone’s sending me crossword puzzles? That I got an angry message on my door, but I didn’t even feel the need to save it? They’ll give me a Breathalyzer test and ask me what I’ve been drinking.

2/ KICK YOUR OWN ASS, GENTLY. I’ve been trying to set a few modest goals, both daily and weekly. In the course of a day, it’s good to get some stupid things accomplished, and off your “list.” I guess because it leaves you feeling that you and the “rest of the world” still have something to do with each other! Like today, for example, I can think back on sending a fax to my brother on his birthday, leaving a phone message for Brutus at his “hotel” on his birthday, phoning my Dad on his birthday (yep, all on the same day), then driving to Morin Heights to the ATM machine, to St. Sauveur for grocery shopping, and planning all that so I’d still have enough daylight left to go snowshoeing in the woods. And then I could drink. Not a high-pressure day, and hardly earth-shaking activities, but I laid them out for myself and did them (even though tempted to “not bother” with each of them at one point or another). I gave myself a gentle kick in the ass when necessary, or cursed myself out for a lazy fool, and because of all that, I consider today a satisfactory day. Everything that needed to be done got done. And by “needs” I certainly include taking my little baby soul out for a ride. And drinking. And there are little side benefits from such activities, like when the cashier in the grocery store wished me a genuinely-pleasant “Bonjour,” and I forced myself to look at her and return the greeting. The world still seems unreal to me, but I try not to purposely avoid contact with pleasant strangers. It wouldn’t be polite! Another “little goal” for me right now is spending an hour or two at the desk every morning, writing a letter or a fax to someone like you, or Brutus, or Danny, who I want to reach out to, or conversely, to someone I’ve been out of touch with for a long while, maybe for a year-and-a-half or two years. These are friends that I’ve decided I still value, and that I want as part of my “new life,” whatever it may be. It doesn’t really matter what, but just so you can say that you changed something in the course of your day: a neglected friend is no longer neglected; an errand that ought to be dealt with has been dealt with.

Another woman catches sight of Fischerle's hump on the ground and runs screaming into the street: 'Murder! Murder!' She takes the hump for a corpse. Further details - she knows none. The murderer is very thin, a poor sap, how he came to do it, you shouldn't have thought it of him. Shot may be, someone suggests. Of course, everyone heard the shot. Three streets off, the shot had been heard. Not a bit of it, that was a motor tyre. No, it was a shot! The crowd won't be done out of its shot. A threatening attitude is assumed towards the doubters. Don't let him go. An accessory. Trying to confuse the trail! Out of the building comes more news. The woman's statements are revised. The thin man has been murdered. And the corpse on the floor? It's alive. It's the murderer, he had hidden himself. He was tring to creep away between the corpse's legs when he was caught. The more recent information is more detailed. The little man is a dwarf. What do you expect, a cripple! The blow was actually struck by another. A redheaded man. Ah, those redheads. The dwarf put him up to it. Lynch him! The woman gave the alarm. Cheers for the woman! She screamed and screamed. A Woman! Doesn't know what fear is. The murderer had threatened her. The redhead. It's always the Reds. He tore her collar off. No shooting. Of course not. What did he say? Someone must have invented the shot. The dwarf. Where is he? Inside. Rush the doors! No one else can get in. It's full up. What a murder! The woman had a plateful. Thrashed her every day. Half dead, she was. What did she marry a dwarf for? I wouldn't marry a dwarf. And you with a big man to yourself. All she could find. Too few men, that's what it is. The war! Young people to-day...Quite young he was too. Not eighteen. And a dwarf already. Clever! He was born that way. I know that. I've seen him. Went in there. Couldn't stand it. Too much blood. That's why he's so thin. An hour ago he was a great, fat man. Loss of blood, horrible! I tell you corpses swell. That's drowned ones. What do you know about corpses? Took all the jewellery off the corpse he did. Did it for the jewellery. Just outside the jewellery department it was. A pearl necklace. A baroness. He was her footman. No, the baron. Ten thousand pounds. Twenty thousand! A peer of the realm! Handsome too. Why did she send him? Should he have let his wife? It's for her to let him. Ah, men. She's alive though. He's the corpse. Fancy dying like that! A peer of the realm too Serve him right. The unemployed are starving. What's he want with a pearl necklace. String 'em up I say! Mean it too. The whole lot of them. And the Theresianum too. Burn it! Make a nice blaze.

That settles it,” said Mr. Trapwood. “We’re going back to the pension. We’re going to pack. We’re going to be on the Bishop first thing tomorrow. Sir Aubrey will have to send someone else out. Nothing is worth another day in this hellhole.” Mr. Low did not answer. He had caught a fever and was lying in the bottom of a large canoe owned by the Brothers of the São Gabriel Mission, who had arranged for the crows to be taken back to Manaus. His eyes were closed and he was wandering a little in his mind, mumbling about a boy with hair the color of the belly of the golden toad which squatted on the lily leaves of the Mamari River. There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent. “They’re good men, the Brothers,” a man on the docks had told them as they set off on their last search for Taverner’s son. “They take in all sorts of strays--orphans, boys with no homes. If anyone knows where Taverner’s lad might be, it’ll be them.” Then he had spat cheerfully into the river because he was a crony of the chief of police and liked the idea of Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood spending time with the Brothers, who were very holy men indeed and slept on the hard ground, and ate porridge made from manioc roots, and got up four times in the night to pray. The Brothers’ mission was on a swampy part of the river and very unhealthy, but the Brothers thought only about God and helping their fellowmen. They welcomed Mr. Trapwood and Mr. Low and said they could look over the leper colony to see if they could find anyone who might turn out to be the boy they were looking for. “They’re a jolly lot, the lepers,” said Father Liam. “People who’ve suffered don’t have time to grumble.” But the crows, turning green, thought there wouldn’t be much point. Even if there was a boy there the right age, Sir Aubrey probably wouldn’t think that a boy who was a leper could manage Westwood. Later a group of pilgrims arrived who had been walking on foot from the Andes and were on their way to a shrine on the Madeira River, and the Brothers knelt and washed their feet. “We know you’ll be proud to share the sleeping hut with our friends here,” they said to Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood, and the crows spent the night on the floor with twelve snoring, grunting men--and woke to find two large and hungry-looking vultures squatting in the doorway. By the time they returned to Manaus the crows were beaten men. They didn’t care any longer about Taverner’s son or Sir Aubrey, or even the hundred-pound bonus they had lost. All they cared about was getting onto the Bishop and steaming away as fast as it could be done.

Marcus released the countess as if he had been burned. His first reaction was a piercing relief that Lillian was still alive. However, the relief was followed immediately by the awareness that she was far from safe. In light of St. Vincent’s need of a fortune, it made perfect sense for him to abduct Lillian. Marcus turned from his mother, never wanting to look at her again, unable to bring himself to speak to her. His gaze locked with Simon Hunt’s. Predictably, Hunt was already making rapid calculations. “He’ll take her to Gretna Green, of course,” Hunt murmured, “and they’ll have to travel east to the main road in Hertfordshire. He won’t risk traveling the back ways and getting mired in mud, or having the wheels damaged from broken road. From Hertfordshire it will be approximately forty-five hours to Scotland… and at a speed of ten miles per hour, with occasional stops for fresh relay horses…” “You’ll never overtake them,” the countess cried with a cackling laugh. “I told you I would have my way, Westcliff!” “Oh, shut up, you evil hag!” cried Daisy Bowman impatiently from the doorway, her eyes huge in her pale face. “Lord Westcliff, shall I run to the stables and tell them to saddle a horse?” “Two horses,” Simon Hunt said resolutely. “I’m going with him.” “Which ones—” “Ebony and Yasmin,” Marcus replied. They were his best Arabians, bred for speed over long distance. They were not as lightning-fast as thoroughbreds, but they would endure a punishing pace for hours, traveling at least three times as fast as St. Vincent’s coach. Daisy disappeared in a flash, and Marcus turned to his sister. “See that the countess is gone by the time I return,” he said curtly. “Pack whatever she needs, and get her off the estate.” “Where do you wish me to send her?” Livia asked, pale but composed. “I don’t give a damn, so long as she knows not to return.” Realizing that she was being banished, and most likely exiled, the countess rose from her chair. “I will not be disposed of in this manner! I won’t have it, my lord!” “And tell the countess,” Marcus said to Livia, “that if the slightest harm comes to Miss Bowman, she had better pray that I never find her.” Marcus strode from the room, shoving through a small crowd that had gathered in the hallway. Simon Hunt followed, pausing only to murmur briefly to Annabelle and press a kiss to her forehead. She stared after him with an anxious frown, biting her lip to keep from calling after him. After a lengthy pause, the countess was heard to mutter, “It matters not what becomes of me. I am content in the knowledge that I have prevented him from befouling the family lineage.” Livia turned to give her mother a half-pitying, half-contemptuous glance. “Marcus never fails,” she said softly. “Most of his childhood was spent learning to overcome impossible odds. And now that Marcus has finally found someone worth fighting for… do you really think he would let anything stop him?

They're really going to mash the world up this time, the damn fools. When I read that description of the victims of Nagasaki I was sick: "And we saw what first looked like lizards crawling up the hill, croaking. It got lighter and we could see that it was humans, their skin burned off, and their bodies broken where they had been thrown against something." Sounds like something out of a horror story. God save us from doing that again. For the United States did that. Our guilt. My country. No, never again. And then one reads in the papers "Second bomb blast in Nevada bigger than the first! " What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled "enemy?" Weren't the Russians communists when they helped us slap down the Germans? And now. What could we do with the Russian nation if we bombed it to bits? How could we "rule" such a mass of foreign people - - - we, who don't even speak the Russian language? How could we control them under our "democratic" system, we, who even now are losing that precious commodity, freedom of speech? (Mr. Crockett," that dear man, was questioned by the town board. A supposedly "enlightened" community. All he is is a pacifist. That, it seems, is a crime.) Why do we send the pride of our young men overseas to be massacred for three dirty miles of nothing but earth? Korea was never divided into "North" and "South." They are one people; and our democracy is of no use to those who have not been educated to it. Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it. When I think of that little girl on the farm talking about her brother - "And he said all they can think of over there is killing those God-damn Koreans." What does she know of war? Of lizard-like humans crawling up a hillside? All she knows is movies and school room gossip. Oh, America's young, strong. So is Russia. And how they can think of atom-bombing each other, I don't know. What will be left? War will come some day now, with all the hothead leaders and articles "What If Women are Drafted?" Hell, I'd sooner be a citizen of Africa than see America mashed and bloody and making a fool of herself. This country has a lot, but we're not always right and pure. And what of the veterans of the first and second world wars? The maimed, the crippled. What good their lives? Nothing. They rot in the hospitals, and we forget them. I could love a Russian boy - and live with him. It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual - but to kill off all the ones who could forge a strong nation? How foolish! Of what good - living and freedom without home, without family, without all that makes life?

My bisnonno is such a man...Fine, you laugh again. Not so handsome,I think,but just as proud. He struts through the square with his new shoes. He buys a carriage. But he gives to the poor,too, to the Church.He is kind to his siters; he is a friend to many.He is raffinato, a gentleman. And the girl he chooses? Hmm? Hmm?" "I don't know, Nonna. Elizabeth Benedetto?" "Hah!" Nonna slapped her hand hard against her knee. It bounced soundlessly off the leopard plush. "Elisabetta. Elisabetta, daughter of a man who works on another's boat. Elisabetta who has many sisters and who is intended for the Church if she does not marry. I don't remember her family name, if I ever knew. Maybe Benedetto.Why not? It does not matter.What matters is that no one understands why Michelangelo Costa chooses this girl. No one can...oh,the word...to say a picture of: descrivere." "Describe?" "Si. Describe.No one can describe her.Small,they think. Brown, maybe. Maybe not so pretty, not so ugly. Just a girl. She sits by the seawall mending nets her family does not own. She is odd,too,her neighbors think.They think it is she who leaves little bit of shell and rock when she is done with the nets, little mosaico on the wall. So why? the piu bella girls ask, the ones with long,long necks, and long black hair, and noses that turn up at the end. Why this odd, nobody girl in her ugly dresses, with her dirty feet? "Michelangelo sends his cousins to her with gifts. A cameo, silk handkerchiefs, a fine pair of gloves. Again,the laugh.Then, you would not have laughed at a gift of gloves, piccola. Oh,you girls now. You want what? E-mails and ePods?" "That's iPods,Nonna." "Whatever. See,that word I know. Now, Elisabetta sends back the little girst. So my bisnonno sends bigger: pearls, meters of silk cloth, a horse. These,too,she will not take. And the people begin to look,and ask: Who is she, this nobody girl,to refuse him? No money,no beauty,no family name.You are a fool,they tell her. Accept. Accept! "And my proud bisnonno does not understand. He can have any girl in the town.So again,he gathers the gifts, he carries them himself, leads the horse. But Elisabetta is not to be found. She is not at her papa's house or in the square or at the seawall. Michelangelo fears she has gone to the convent. But no. As he stands at the seawall, a seabird,a gull, lands on his shoulder and says-" "Nonna-" "Shh! The girl tells him to follow the delfino....delfin? Dolphin! So he looks, and there, a dolphin with its head above the water says, 'Follow!' So he follows,the sack with gifts for Elisabetta on his back,like a peddler, the horse trailing behind.The dolphin leads him around the bay to a beach, and there is Elisabetta, old dress covered in sand,feet bare, just drawing circles in the sand. She starts to run, but Michelangelo calls to her. 'Why,' he asks her. 'Why do you hide? Why will you not take my gifts?' And she says..." I'd been fighting a losing battle with yawning for a while. I was failing fast. "I have no idea. 'I'm in love with someone else.'?

He stared at it in utter disbelief while his secretary, Peters, who’d only been with him for a fortnight, muttered a silent prayer of gratitude for the break and continued scribbling as fast as he could, trying futilely to catch up with his employer’s dictation. “This,” said Ian curtly, “was sent to me either by mistake or as a joke. In either case, it’s in excruciatingly bad taste.” A memory of Elizabeth Cameron flickered across Ian’s mind-a mercenary, shallow litter flirt with a face and body that had drugged his mind. She’d been betrothed to a viscount when he’d met her. Obviously she hadn’t married her viscount-no doubt she’d jilted him in favor of someone with even better prospects. The English nobility, as he well knew, married only for prestige and money, then looked elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. Evidently Elizabeth Cameron’s relatives were putting her back on the marriage block. If so, they must be damned eager to unload her if they were willing to forsake a title for Ian’s money…That line of conjecture seemed so unlikely that Ian dismissed it. This note was obviously a stupid prank, perpetrated, no doubt, by someone who remembered the gossip that had exploded over that weekend house party-someone who thought he’d find the note amusing. Completely dismissing the prankster and Elizabeth Cameron from his mind, Ian glanced at his harassed secretary who was frantically scribbling away. “No reply is necessary,” he said. As he spoke he flipped the message across his desk toward his secretary, but the white parchment slid across the polished oak and floated to the floor. Peters made an awkward dive to catch it, but as he lurched sideways all the other correspondence that went with his dictation slid off his lap onto the floor. “I-I’m sorry, sir,” he stammered, leaping up and trying to collect the dozens of pieces of paper he’d scattered on the carpet. “Extremely sorry, Mr. Thornton,” he added, frantically snatching up contracts, invitations and letters and shoving them into a disorderly pile. His employer appeared not to hear him. He was already rapping out more instructions and passing the corresponding invitations and letters across the desk. “Decline the first three, accept the fourth, decline the fifth. Send my condolences on this one. On this one, explain that I’m going to be in Scotland, and send an invitation to join me there, along with directions to the cottage.” Clutching the papers to his chest, Peters poked his face up on the opposite side of the desk. “Yes, Mr. Thornton!” he said, trying to sound confident. But it was hard to be confident when one was on one’s knees. Harder still when one wasn’t entirely certain which instructions of the morning went with which invitation or piece of correspondence. Ian Thornton spent the rest of the afternoon closeted with Peters, heaping more dictation on the inundated clerk. He spent the evening with the Earl of Melbourne, his future father-in-law, discussing the earl’s daughter and himself. Peters spent part of his evening trying to learn from the butler which invitations his employer was likely to accept or reject.

Chris smiled at me, showing two ridiculously cute dimples and a few feet away a waitress dropped an empty cup she had cleared from a table. Blushing, she muttered an apology and hurried inside. I scowled at him, refusing to be swayed by his charm. “I see,” he murmured, nodding slightly as if he had just solved a puzzle. “See what?” Ignoring my question, he pulled out a cell phone, hit a number and held the phone out to me. I hesitated for a few seconds then took the phone and put it to my ear. “What’s up, Chris?” said a familiar deep voice on the other end. “Good question,” I responded tersely. “I told Chris you’d recognize him if he got too close.” Was that amusement in his tone? “Great. You won the bet. Buy him a beer or whatever.” I glanced at Chris, saw that he looked amused now, too and I grew even more agitated. “I thought we had an understanding when you left here last week.” “And what understanding would that be?” I gritted my teeth. “The one where you go your way and I go mine and we all live happily ever after.” “I don’t recall that particular arrangement,” he replied in his infuriatingly easy manner. “I believe I told you I’d be seeing you again.” I opened my mouth but words would not come out. People say ‘I’ll be seeing you’ all the time when they say good bye. It doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean they will send their friends to stalk you. “Sara?” “What do you want from me, Nikolas? I told you I just want to be left alone.” There was a brief silence then a quiet sigh on the other end. “We got word of increased activity in Portland and we have reason to believe the vampire might be searching for you.” It felt like an icy breath touched the back of my neck. Eli’s face flashed through my mind and my knees wobbled. Roland stepped close to me. “What’s wrong, Sara? What is he saying to you?” I smiled weakly at Roland and put up a hand to let him know I’d fill him in when I got off the phone. “I don’t know anyone in Portland so there is no way he can trace me here, right?” “There is more than one way to track someone.” Nikolas’s voice hardened. “Don’t worry, we will keep you safe. Chris will stay close by until we handle this situation.” Great, I was the ‘situation’ again. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not a child.” “No you’re not,” he replied gruffly and warmth unfurled in my stomach. “But you are not a warrior either. It is our duty to protect you even if you don’t want it.” I felt like stomping my feet like a two year old. Didn’t I get any choice in this? My eyes fell on Chris as I spoke. “How close is he planning to stay? He’s kind of conspicuous and I can’t have my uncle or anyone else asking questions.” Chris peered in confusion down at his form-fitting blue jeans and black sweater as Nikolas said, “Conspicuous?” I looked heavenward. “If you guys wanted to blend in you shouldn’t have sent Dimples here. The way some of the women are staring at him, I might end up having to protect him instead.” There was a cough on the other end and Nikolas sounded like he was grinning when he said, “Ah, I’m sure Chris can take care of himself. He will be in town in case we suspect any trouble is coming that way.

He sent messages to all fifteen of my former suitors, asking if they were still interested in marrying me-“ “Oh, my God,” Alex breathed. “-and, if they were, he volunteered to send me to them for a few days, properly chaperoned by Lucinda,” Elizabeth recited in that same strangled tone, “so that we could both discover if we still suit.” “Oh, my God,” Alex said again, with more force. “Twelve of them declined,” she continued, and she watched Alex wince in embarrassed sympathy. “But three of them agreed, and now I am to be sent off to visit them. Since Lucinda can’t return from Devon until I go to visit the third-suitor, who’s in Scotland,” she said, almost choking on the word as she applied it to Ian Thornton, “I shall have to pass Berta off as my aunt to the first two.” “Berta!” Bentner burst out in disgust. “Your aunt? The silly widgeon’s afraid of her shadow.” Threatened by another uncontrollable surge of mirth, Elizabeth looked at both her friends. “Berta is the least of my problems However, do continue invoking God’s name, for it’s going to take a miracle to survive this.” “Who are the suitors?” Alex asked, her alarm increased by Elizabeth’s odd smile as she replied, “I don’t recall two of them. It’s quite remarkable, isn’t it,” she continued with dazed mirth, “that two grown men could have met a young girl at her debut and hared off to her brother to ask for her hand, and she can’t remember anything about them, except one of their names.” “No,” Alex said cautiously, “it isn’t remarkable. You were, are, very beautiful, and that is the way it’s done. A young girl makes her debut at seventeen, and gentlemen look her over, often in the most cursory fashion, and decide if they want her. Then they apply for her hand. I can’t think it is reasonable or just to betroth a young girl to someone with whom she’s scarcely acquainted and then expect her to develop a lasting affection for him after she is wed, but the ton does regard it as the civilized way to manage marriages.” “It’s actually quite the opposite-it’s rather barbaric, when you reflect on it,” Elizabeth stated, willing to be diverted from her personal calamity by a discussion of almost anything else. “Elizabeth, who are the suitors? Perhaps I know of them and can help you remember.” Elizabeth sighed. “The first is Sir Francis Belhaven-“ “You’re joking!” Alex exploded, drawing an alarmed glance from Bentner. When Elizabeth merely lifted her delicate brows and waited for information, Alex continued angrily, “Why, he’s-he’s a dreadful old roué. There’s no polite way to describe him. He’s stout and balding, and his debauchery is a joke among the ton because he’s so flagrant and foolish. He’s an unparalleled pinchpenny to boot-a nipsqueeze!” “At least we have that last in common,” Elizabeth tried to tease, but her glance was on Bentner, who in his agitation was deflowering an entire healthy bush. “Benter,” she said gently, touched by how much he obviously cared for her plight, “you can tell the dead blooms from the live ones by their color.” “Who’s the second suitor?” Alex persisted in growing alarm. “Lord John Marchman.” When Alex looked blank, Elizabeth added, “The Earl of Canford.” Comprehension dawned, and Alex nodded slowly. “I’m not acquainted with him, but I have heard of him.” “Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Elizabeth said, choking back a laugh, because everything seemed more absurd, more unreal by the moment.

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

He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.

Deandre Felton was a good boy, his family and friends agree. He was also a leader. But on this night in September of 2012, Deandre and his crew were bored. The mall was closed, but he and his boys were high on drugs and still wanted to have fun. So Deandre came up with what was not a new idea, but fun nevertheless. They decided to beat someone up. They had just come from a local park where Deandre and fifteen others beat up two girls, sending one to the hospital with a broken arm. Then Deandre decided to blow off a little steam and play the Knockout Game. He knew the game was usually pretty safe—for the attacker, that is.1 In Meriden, Connecticut, victims aren’t likely to carry concealed weapons, nor do they fight back. As one player said in Philadelphia as his victim begged for mercy: “It’s not our fault you can’t fight.” Deandre and his crew found their victim a few minutes after leaving the mall. Soon Deandre and his confederate DeShawn Jones were peeling off from the group, heading for a guy walking home from work. Alone. We don’t know his name or race or anything about him other than he was The Wrong Guy. With their friends lurking less than one hundred yards away when Deandre and DeShawn attacked, the guy fought back. He pulled a knife. Soon Deandre was dead and DeShawn was on his way to the emergency room.

shelves; hundreds of narrow rows. Hermione took out a list of subjects and titles she had decided to search while Ron strode off down a row of books and started pulling them off the shelves at random. Harry wandered over to the Restricted Section. He had been wondering for a while if Flamel wasn’t somewhere in there. Unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books, and he knew he’d never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts, and only read by older students studying advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts. “What are you looking for, boy?” “Nothing,” said Harry. Madam Pince the librarian brandished a feather duster at him. “You’d better get out, then. Go on — out!” Wishing he’d been a bit quicker at thinking up some story, Harry left the library. He, Ron, and Hermione had already agreed they’d better not ask Madam Pince where they could find Flamel. They were sure she’d be able to tell them, but they couldn’t risk Snape hearing what they were up to. Harry waited outside in the corridor to see if the other two had found anything, but he wasn’t very hopeful. They had been looking for two weeks, after all, but as they only had odd moments between lessons it wasn’t surprising they’d found nothing. What they really needed was a nice long search without Madam Pince breathing down their necks. Five minutes later, Ron and Hermione joined him, shaking their heads. They went off to lunch. “You will keep looking while I’m away, won’t you?” said Hermione. “And send me an owl if you find anything.” “And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is,” said Ron. “It’d be safe to ask them.” “Very safe, as they’re both dentists,” said Hermione. Once the holidays had started, Ron and Harry were having too good a time to think much about Flamel. They had the dormitory to themselves and the common room was far emptier than usual, so they were able to get the good armchairs by the fire. They sat by the hour eating anything they could spear on a toasting fork — bread, English muffins, marshmallows — and plotting ways of getting Malfoy expelled, which were fun to talk about even if they wouldn’t work. Ron also started teaching Harry wizard chess. This was exactly like Muggle chess except that the figures were alive, which made it a lot like directing troops in battle. Ron’s set was very old and battered. Like everything else he owned, it had once belonged to someone else in his family — in this case, his grandfather. However, old chessmen weren’t a drawback at all. Ron knew them so well he never had trouble getting them to do what he wanted. Harry played with chessmen Seamus Finnigan had lent him, and they didn’t

If you're completely honest with yourself, the only reason you would insult someone or use other corrosive forms of sarcastic humor is to make yourself feel good. You take some degree of joy in making others feel poorly, partially because it makes you feel as if you’re better than they are. That's pretty sad. Oftentimes, even if you're trying to pass an insult off as a joke, you are sending a loud and clear signal to the other person that you can't be trusted and that you have a low view of them. What do you think the overall effect of this perception will have on people who would otherwise want to be your friend?

I thought of metta meditation, which cultivates compassion by imagining sending kindness to others with each exhale and receiving their suffering with each inhale. Compassion was a core Buddhist ethic that began with compassion for the self and ended with compassion for all sentient beings. I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath as I thought about those workers, and exhaled slowly. It was a strange response for me, someone who would ordinarily think about concrete ways to help or otherwise take action. There was little I really could do. Yet I recognized the benefit of cultivating compassion in my own mind in the face of their suffering and the harm to me if I were to be as indifferent as a mountain to their suffering. I also tried to instill compassion in my children, some of whose friends—and ours—seemed to take for granted their windfall into privilege. I took in another deep breath. Then another. And another.

But being a mother is also a job, Shonda.” I can hear someone reading this book saying those words right now. You know what I say to that? NO. IT IS NOT. Being a mother is not a job. Stop throwing things at me. I’m sorry but it is not. I find it offensive to motherhood to call being a mother a job. Being a mother isn’t a job. It’s who someone is. It’s who I am. You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.

Someone ought to bring a class-action lawsuit against the packaging industry for physical damage and mental distress. They have to be doing it on purpose. If they can send people to the moon, surely they ought to be able to come up with an easy twist-off lid?

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages. It's like, don't touch my shit. It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-off-a-hickory-switch mode.