“Jonah has that strange look on his face. He must have another of Maryrose’s memories. Probably that she once sang a lullaby on a windy day. OR SOMETHING ELSE TOTALLY USELESS. “Is it about canoeing?” I ask, trying to be positive. He scratches his head. “It is! Maryrose was good at canoeing!” Oh! Yay! “Did she ever stop a boat?” “Yes!” he exclaims. Great! “How?” I ask. “With paddles!” he says. Argh. “Thanks for nothing, Maryrose’s memories!” I yell. “We have to stop this canoe!”
“Do you know I ate frog legs once?” Jonah asks. Uh-oh. “You what?” screams a horrified Frederic. “It’s true!” Jonah says, clearly not catching the stop talking look I’m shooting him. “We went to a French restaurant for our dad’s birthday and he ordered an appetizer of frog legs. Remember, Abby? We tried them! Both of us did!” “It was before I knew you,” I tell Frederic apologetically. “They tasted like chicken!” Jonah exclaims. He’s right. They did taste like chicken. “I think I’m going to throw up,” Frederic moans.”
“Well, there are other versions of the story,” I say, thinking out loud. “Besides the throwing and the kissing.” “Like what?” Frederic asks. I bite my lip. This is going to be worse than the frog-legs conversation. “Well, there’s the one where the princess chops off the frog’s head, and then he turns into a prince,” I say all in a rush. Frederic’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “I do not wish to try that one.”
“We find our way to the marble kitchen, open the fancy silver fridge, and serve ourselves a heaping plate of coleslaw and chicken fingers. “Mmm,” I say. Prince makes sloppy eating sounds. “Delicious,” says Jonah. He smiles at Frederic. “Tastes just like frog legs.” I laugh so hard I snort coleslaw out of my nose.”
“I’m still irritated at the end of the day when my brother, Jonah, and I are standing outside school, waiting for our dad to pick us up. It doesn’t help when Brandon says, “Bye, Crabby Abby,” as he strolls past me. He walks home from school by himself. Either his parents trust him to make his way home alone or they think he’s awful, too, and are hoping he gets kidnapped.”
“All the pent up, helpless rage formed a wrecking ball inside of me. Maintaining human form was near impossible. I wanted to hit something—destroy something. I needed to.
“Daemon, no one—”
“Shut up,” I said, turning to where Matthew sat in the corner of the room. Right this moment I wanted to destroy him. “Just shut the hell up.”
“Days when I came to flower serenely
in Lycée gardens long ago,
and read my Apuleius keenly,
but spared no glance for Cicero.”
“I mean I never feel I feel what I ought to feel.”
“But was you not afraid, good sir, when you see him come with his club?"
"It is my duty," said he, "to distrust mine own ability, that I may have reliance on him that is stronger than all".”
“And, most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats - the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to desertion - the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent.”
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