At the tips of the feathers there is air and at their base: blood. I hold up bones; I wish like broken glass they could court light....still I try to place these pieces back together, to set them firm, to make murdered girls live again.

I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either.

These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. 'Inside, inside,' she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell.

Who would have thought something that happened that long ago could have such power?

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.

And there she was, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose tot ell it, even to one person at a time.