I was suddenly aware, almost in a panic – a joyful panic – of the wealth of possibility out in the world, and also within myself. My
I was funny—ha-ha, not peculiar. It was a modest currency, like pennies: pedestrian, somewhat laborious, but a currency nonetheless.
I don't want to sleep,' my mother said. 'I want -- for God's sake, I want to wake up.
For real?' Cassie's eyes glittered, and it occurred to me that all along she'd expected me to stop us. She'd goaded and teased me, made out like I was a wimp; but she also relied on me to keep us safe...
But I did wonder what she did, on those afternoons—not just Fridays either, because on the days I had speech team, somebody else’s mother or father dropped her at her door. It seemed like a lot of tim...
Better to believe that sane people were sane and crazy people were crazy and you could put the two types of people on opposite sides of a wall and keep them separate, clean and tidy. Without that, whe...
And then, suddenly, there's something else. When you least expect it. Suddenly there's an opportunity, an opening, a person or people you couldn't have imagined, and - elation!-it feels as though you'...
Was suddenly aware, almost in a panic—a joyful panic—of the wealth of possibility out in the world, and also within myself.
He was playing on the climbing structure by himself—or by his own, as the children sometimes charmingly put it.
When you’re young – but even now – how do you understand this?’ he said when he first spoke of it, walking the night streets. ‘You can’t understand it. It makes no sense. You can allow yourself to be...
What would it be like to have been locked up in one of those cells for weeks or months or even years, only to discover that you’d never really been a lunatic at all, and could just as easily – if only...
There are social struggles, and the agonies and embarrassments of puberty...and the weight of the world that falls upon each of us in varying degrees, as we finally relinquish childhood's clouds of gl...
Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid.
So: now a new year, a new beginning. I've vowed not to complain. I'm too good at it, and need to practice other skills. I've also vowed to work very hard...
Maybe, instead, I’ll set the world on fire. I just might.
Maybe I made her feel trapped, like she'd outgrown me. But from my side, it was like I knew her too well, I saw her too clearly, when she no longer wanted to be known: she wanted to try out a new role...
It's a different story depending on where you start: who's good, who's bad, what it all means. Each of us shapes our stories so they make sense of who we think we are. I can begin when Cassie and I we...
It continued to amaze me how the touch of skin on skin had altered things: curled in the crook of his arm, my head upon his breast, I'd sensed his heart beating and for a moment hadn't been sure wheth...
I wish it hadn't happened; but what good does this do? I can wish it wouldn't happen again - but here too, if I'm wishing the impossible, it will do no good at all.
I imagined that the building carried the sadness of the women who'd been trapped there...I didn't see them--there was no visible mass of ghosts peering out of the hollowed windows--but I couldn't help...