The Sugar Queen

Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.

Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.

I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.

Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.

Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.

It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.

She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.

Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.

It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.

Safe is just another word for scared.

He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.

To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.

She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.

When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.

She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.

Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.

She'd fallen into the best part of her past.

Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.

Not every man was sorry when he hurt a woman.

He used to believe good things happened in this kind of weather.

He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.

The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.

There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over their less beautiful daughters.

You're dying with the way things are," Della Lee said harshly, causing Josey to lower the handful of popcorn she was about to put in her mouth. "You're going to lose yourself in this, Josey. It's going to happen if you don't change. I know. I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back.

Even at seventy-four, with a limp from a hip replacement, Margaret could still enter a room and fill it like perfume.

Ice queens didn't break, after all. They melted. And Marco didn't have enough warmth for that.

So you stay, you don't tell anyone, is that it?" "Sure," Della Lee said easily. "That's blackmail." "Add it to my list of sins." "I don't think there's room left on that list," Josey said as she took a dress from its hanger. Then she closed the closet door on Della Lee.

He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn’t give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat...

Josey?” She heard her mother’s voice in the hall, then the thud of her cane as she came closer. “Please don’t tell her I’m here,” the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white-blond with about an inch of silver-sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip-dried, like she’d been walking in the rain, though there hadn’t...

And you couldn't make a snowman in your neighborhood because? Because you weren't there.