“There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”
“Ages fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something — anything — to begin.”
“If it hadn't been what it was, it would've been beautiful.”
“That’s what people never understand: They see us hard little pretty things, brightly lacquered and sequin-studded, and they laugh, they mock, they arouse themselves. They miss everything. You see, these glitters and sparkle dusts and magicks? It’s war paint, it’s feather and claws, it’s blood sacrifice.”
“Love is a kind of killing, Addy," she says. "Don't you know that?”
“The more I did it―the more it owned me. It made things matter. It put a spine into my spineless life and that spine spread, into backbone, ribs, collarbone, neck held high.
It was something. Don't say it wasn't.”
“Where’d that world go, that world when you’re a kid, and now I can’t remember noticing anything, not the smell of the leaves or the sharp curl of dried maple on your ankles, walking? I live in cars now, and my own bedroom, the windows sealed shut, my mouth to my phone, hand slick around its neon jelly case, face closed to the world, heart closed to everything.”
“People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.”
“She said I'd better not make her unhappy because I oughta know that she's never unhappy alone.”
“Sometimes you stand under the hot gush for so long, looking at your body, counting every bruise. Touching every tender place. Watching the swirl at your feet, the glitter spinning. Like a mermaid shedding her scales.
You’re really just trying to get your heart to slow “down.
You think, This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it spin, flip, fly.
After, you stand in front of the steaming mirror, the fuchsia streaks gone, the lashes unsparkled. And it’s just you there, and you look like no one you’ve ever seen before. You don’t look like anybody at all.”
“No, this is throwing up like coming off the tilt-a-whirl at age seven, like discovering that dead rat under the porch, like finding out someone you loved never loved you at all.”
“I think she might cry. In her way, she is.”
“The drone in my ear, it’s like the tornado drill in elementary school, the hand-cranked siren that rang mercilessly, all of us hunched over on ourselves, facing the basement walls, heads tucked into our chests. Beth and me wedged tight, jeaned legs pressed against each other. The sounds of our own breathing. Before we all stopped believing a tornado, or anything, could touch us, ever”
“Bobby pins crunching under my feet, I walk through, surveying the damaged girlness.”
“we're all wanting things we don't understand. things we can't even name. The yearning so deep, like pinions over our hearts.”
“She was the one who showed me all the dark wonders of life, the real life, the life I’d only seen flickering from the corner of my eye. Did I ever feel anything at all until she showed me what feeling meant? Pushing at the corners of her cramped world with curled fists, she showed me what it meant to live.”
“Because they do burn leaves here, the older folks do, and I remember now that I love it and always have. The way fall feels at night because of it, because of the crackling sound and walking around the sidewalks, like when you’re a kid, and kicking those soft piles, and seeing smoke from backyards and Mr. Kilstrap standing over the metal drum with the holes in the top, the sparking embers at his feet.”
“Pretend you're me," she says. I can barely see her over the frothy mound.
And it happens just like that.
A feeling of sinking, a falling deep inside.
And I'm her.
And this is my house, and Matt French is my husband, tallying columns all day, working late into the night for me, for me.
And here I am, my tight, my perfect body, my pretty, perfect face, and nothing could ever be wrong with me, or my life, not even the sorrow that is plainly
right there in the center of it. Oh, Colette, it's right there in the center of you, and some kind of despair too. Colette--
--that silk sucking into my mouth, the weight of it now, and I can't catch my breath, my breath.”
“The New Coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else?”
“Can I trust you, Addy?” he asks. I say he can. Does anyone ever answer that question with a no?”
“This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it spin, flip, fly.”
“She looks down at me, her eyes depthful and ruinous.
"Love is a kind of killing, Addy,' she says. 'Don’t you know that?”
“Suddenly,I want to hold the whole night close to my chest and I decide it is mine alone”
“None of us really cheer for glory, prizes, tourneys. None of us, maybe, know why we do it at all, except it is like a rampart against the routine and groaning afflictions of the school day. You wear that jacket, like so much armor, game days, the flipping skirts. Who could touch you? Nobody could. My question is this: The New Coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators?”
“I know what that’s like,” he says. “The way you can be saved without ever knowing you were in trouble.”
“Walking past all the cops, all the detectives, I raise my runner’s shirt a few inches, like I’m shaking it loose form my damp skin. I let them all see my stomach, its tautness. I let everyone see I’m not afraid, and that I’m not anything but a silly cheerleader, a feather-bodied sixteen-year-old with no more sense than a marshmellow peep. I let them see I’m not anything. least of all what I am.”
“She will not sit down after, when we all collapse on the mats, our sweaty limbs crisscrossing. She will not sit down, will not let the steel slip from between her shoulders. She has so much pride that, even if I’m weary of her, of her fighting ways, her gauntlet-tossing, I can’t say there isn’t something else that beams in me. An old ember licked to fresh fire again. Beth, the old Beth, before high school, before Ben Trammel, all the boys and self-sorrow, the divorce and the adderall and the suspensions.”
“There was a wonder in it, and who needs to talk of such wonders? We nestle them away, deep in the fury at the center of us, where things can be held tightly, protected, and secretly cherished as a special notion we once held, then had to stow away.”
“We’re all the same under our skin, aren’t we? We’re all wanting things we don’t understand. Things we can’t even name. The yearning so deep, like pinions over our hearts.”
“You're going to look your girl straight in the eye and say, Baby your mom rode to the rafters. Your mom lifted three girls in her hand, grinning all the way, she says, our voices rising to a baying now, all together. Your mom build pyramids and flew high in the sky, and back in Sutton Grove, they're still talking about the wonders they saw that night, still talking about how they watched us all reach to the heavens.”
“Tamas had heard that every genius was equal parts madness. He”
“You're the only angel in my life, Laurelyn.”
“Yes, yes-you will give him the earth-because you love him. Love him too much for safety or for happiness. But you cannot give to people what they are incapable of receiving.”
“May you get exactly what you want and live long enough to regret it.”
“It's over," I say, wincing- she punches harder than she realizes. I ignore the pain and run a hand over her hair, because I'm stupid, and inappropriate, and stupid...”
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