The Grace Year

You eyes are wide open, but you see nothing.

That’s the problem with letting the light in—after it’s been taken away from you, it feels even darker than it was before.

My father always told me that a person is made up of all the little choices they make in life. The choices no one ever sees.

Sometimes I feel like we might burn down the world to cindery bits, with our love, our rage, and everything in between.

Heaven is a boy in a treehouse, with cold hands and a warm heart.

I’m trying to hold back my emotions, but I can feel my face contorting. That strange heat moving to my cheeks. I always thought it was magic moving through me, but now I know it to be rage.

In the county, there’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind. That’s what happened to Eve, you know, why we were cast out from heaven. We’re dangerous creatures. Full of devil charms. If given the opportunity, we will use our magic to lure men to sin, to evil, to destruction.” My eyes are getting heavy, too heavy to roll in a dramatic fashion. “That’s why they send us here.” “To rid yourself of your magic,” he says. “No,” I whisper as I drift off to sleep. “To break us.

It feels like freedom, but we know it's a lie. This is how they break us. They take everything away, our very dignity, and anything we get in return feels like a gift.

But a flower is never just a flower.

The things we do to girls. Whether we put them on pedestals only to tear them down, or use them for parts and holes, we're all complicit in this. But everything touches everything else, and I have to believe that some good will come out of all this destruction.

She's so incredibly grateful, but she shouldn't have to feel grateful for this-for being treated like a basic human being. None of us should.

A person is made up of all the little choices they make in life. The choices no one ever sees.

We hurt each other because it's the only way we're permitted to show our anger. When our choices are taken from us, the fire builds within. Sometimes I feel like we might burn down the world to cindery bits, with our love, our rage, and everything in between

We are the only Gods here.

Because isn't that the biggest sin of all for a woman? Not to be of use.

I shadowed my father a million times before, watching him sneak off to the outskirts, but it never occurred to me to follow my mother—that she would have a life of her own.

I think growing up is one very long grace year. I mean it's brutal for girls, right? We place this impossible set of standards on them, and project all of our fear and desire on them, and when they falter, they're entirely to blame. --An Interview with the Author at the end of the book

I feel dead inside. But maybe that's exactly what I need to get through this.

They call us the weaker sex. It's pounded into us every Sunday in church, how everything's Eve's fault for not expelling her magic when she had the chance, but I still can't understand why the girls don't get a say. Sure, there are secret arrangements, whispers in the dark, but why must the boys get to decide everything? As far as I can tell, we all have hearts. We all have brains.

I want to believe we can be different, but when I look around the church, at the women comparing the length of their braids, reveling in another woman’s punishment, scheming and clawing for every inch of position, I can’t help thinking the men might be right. Maybe we’re incapable of more. Maybe without the confines placed upon us, we’d rip each other to shreds, like a pack of outskirt dogs.

Life can be cruel. No one is immune to that, no matter how good you are.

To be at odds with your nature, what everyone expects from you, is a life of constant struggle.

In the county, everything they take away from us is a tiny death. But not here . . .” She spreads her arms out, taking in a deep breath. “The grace year is ours. This is the one place we can be free. There’s no more tempering our feelings, no more swallowing our pride. Here we can be whatever we want. And if we let it all out,” she says, her eyes welling up, her features softening, “we won’t have to feel those things anymore. We won’t have to feel at all.

The magic is real. Maybe not in the way they believe, but if you're willing to open your eyes, open your heart, it's all around us, inside us, waiting to be recognized.

And I wonder if this is the magic taking over. Is this how it starts—the slip of the tongue? A loss of respect? Is this how I become a monster the men whisper of? I turn and run up the stairs before I do something I regret.

The wounds the women held so close that they had to clamp their mouths shut for fear of it slipping out. I saw the hurt and the anger seeping from their pores, making them lash out of the women around them. Jealous of their daughters. Jealous of the wind that could move over the cliffs without a care in the world... A heart with walls so tall that it slowly suffocates, choking on its own secrets. But here, in this room, my mother and my sisters gathered around me, I understand there's so much more to us... a world hidden in the tiny gestures that I could never see before. They were there all along

Michael leans in to kiss my cheek. “You can keep your dreams,” he whispers. “But I dream only of you.

Just seeing the display makes me realize how much we've lost out here, but maybe we had to destroy everything in order for something to be born anew. From death there is life.

Or Amy Dumont. Delicate, sweet. She would make for a docile wife, but her hips are too narrow, beddable to be sure, but not sturdy enough to withstand childbirth. Of course, some men like breakable things. They like to break them.

I always thought of myself as such a solitary creature—oh, how I longed to be alone—but I didn’t realize until I got out here how much of that is false. Something I told myself to feel strong … better than the rest. I spent most of my life watching people, judging them, sorting them into some category or another, because it kept the focus off myself.