I really have to wonder who or what made Daddy become this way. Babies aren't born cruel or filled with sick desire. Evil is not intrinsic. It's fashioned.

We kissed for about the thousandth time, No promises, no demands, Just solid rebuilding of shattered trust.

I felt angry, frustrated. I felt I didn't belong, not in my church, not in my home, not in my skin. Amidst the chaos, i felt alone, in need of a friend instead of a sister, someone detached from my world. The "woman's role" theory disgusted me. I would soon be a woman, and I knew I could never perform as expected. I was tired of my mom's submission to her religion, to her husband's sick quest for an heir, to his abuse. I was sick of my dad, of reaching for him as he fell farther away from us and into the arms of Johnnie WB.

Me? Beautiful? I'm plain as cardboard. That may be how you see yourself, but the rest of the world would be hard to agree. You shine brighter than the Milky Way. Now there are those who might try to take that from you, but you don't have to give it away. Keep on shining Pattyn. And when the right young man comes along, he'll love you all the more for giftin' this sad planet with your light.

All I can do is lie here, brain turning somersaults. It's nights like these when memories stir, whipping themselves into stiff peaks of pain.

Believe it or not, I sold my first novel, Crank, with only seventy-five pages complete. It was in verse then, and it was hard-hitting then.

Pretty That's what I am, I guess. I mean, people have been telling me that's what I am since I was two. Maybe younger. Pretty as a picture. (Who wants to be a cliché?) Pretty as an angel. (Can you see them?) Pretty as a butterfly. (But isn't that really just a glam bug?) Cliché, invisible, or insectlike, I grew up knowing I was pretty and believing everything good about me had to do with how I looked. The mirror was my best friend. Until it started telling me I wasn't really pretty enough.