I’m the girl who trips on the dance floor and can’t find her way to the exit. All eyes on me.

I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.

Emma is a mattress who got thrown off the truck when her parents split up. It's not like you can blame a mattress when people don't tie it down tight enough.

If I ever form a clan, we'll be the anti-cheerleaders and walk under the bleacher forming mild acts of mayhem.

I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hid under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care.

The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.