You hurt her by starving yourself, you hurt her with your lies, and by fighting everybody who tries to help you. Emma can only sleep a couple of hours a night now. She's haunted by nightmares of monsters that eat our whole family. They eat us slowly, she says, so we can feel their sharp teeth.
I won't take a real nap. I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don't even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe.
I can't believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It's a shame we can't just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.
Yesterday's dirt and mistakes have moved through me. I am shiny and pink inside, clean. Empty is good. Empty is strong.
I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn't touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn't drown.
Keep home in your heart, where no one can steal it.
Like most blacks in Philadelphia, Eliza was free. She said Philadelphia was the best city for freed slaves or freeborn Africans.
It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say. Mr.
For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better. Then.
The stars folded themselves away as the sun peeked above the horizon and cracked open the sky and I kissed him and we laughed and it was good.
I HEARD BULLETS WHISTLE AND BELIEVE ME, THERE IS SOMETHING CHARMING IN THE SOUND. —LETTER FROM THE TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD GEORGE WASHINGTON DESCRIBING HIS FIRST TASTE OF BATTLE T.
It is easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.
One of the seeds has split its shell and reaches a white hand upward. An apple tree growing from an apple seed growing in an apple. I show the little plantseed to Ms. Keen. She gives me extra credit. David rolls his eyes. Biology is so cool.
Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green.
I can't do everything for you. You must walk alone to find your soul.
I don't know what I'm doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out.
It's harder to take a punch than to give one.
I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy...
If I weren't so tired, I'd shove trust and issue down the garbage disposal and let it run all day.
Didn't help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.
The rest of the class looked away. He [Jonas} was a quiet freak, not a zombie. The horde would not protect him. They'd stand by and watch the culling.
I can't face the idea of riding home on a busful of sweaty, smiling teeth sucking up my oxygen.
My timing is perfect, and I wind up in a traffic jam. The cars around me are driven by fat cows and bellowing bulls. We roll along, six mph. I can run faster than this. We brake. They chew their cud and moo into their phones until the herd shifts gears and rolls forward again.
The winds of the desert have names. They feed on the bodies of broken children and rip out the beating hearts of men.
I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.
I have survived. I am here.
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world. They tiny elf-dancer became a wooden doll whose strings were jerked by people not paying attention. I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
Welcome to the only class that will teach you to how to survive.
Precalculus was taught in dog whistle, a pitch too high to hear.
I knew how much it hurt to be the daughter of people who can't see you, not even if you are standing in front of them stomping your feet.
I think how veterans are treated in our country is an abomination. We don't have the draft any more, which is why so many soldiers come from working-class - rather than middle- or high-income families. Those wealthier families aren't affected, so they're not agitating for change.
You're not dead, but you're not alive, either. You're a wintergirl.
The only stuff I don't like are Broadway musicals. I hate them. I don't even like to talk about it. I can't bear musicals.
My first class is biology. I can't find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation.
Most life is spent doing things we don't want to do.
I've dealt with depression my entire life, on and off, which makes me the perfect author for teenage readers.
Hannah was about to burst with excitement, which would have been disgusting because she would have sprayed blood, guts and glitter in every direction.
I keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am. She nods her head slowly. „What do you think you‘d look like? Smaller, for a start.
There is nothing wrong with me. These are really sick people, sick that you can see.
They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.
If that was life, then it was twisted.
S for silent, for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.
Ninth grade is a minor inconvenience to him. A zit-cream commercial before the Feature Film of Life.
I don't reread my books after they're published, because it's agony.
I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don't even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe.
I keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am.
Life is for the living. Don't let the fear of striking out let you from keep you from playing the game.
She even tried to teach us the difference between active voice—I snarfed the Oreos—and passive voice—The Oreos got snarfed.
I used to dream about bringing a knife to therapy and slicing her into pork chop-sized pieces.
