So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

I handed my tools. The two of them reached down to help me out of the crater I'd dug. ''Isn't that a little deep?'' Yoda asked. ''It'll help the roots get established,'' I explained. ''Established where? China?

I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with.

I inscribe three lines, hush hush hush, into my skin. Ghosts trickle out.

Adrenaline kicks you in when you’re starving. That’s what nobody understands. Except for being hungry and cold, most of the time I feel like I can do anything. It gives me superhuman powers of smell and hearing. I can see what people are thinking, stay two steps ahead of them. I do enough homework to stay off the radar. Every night I climb thousands of steps into the sky to make me so exhausted that when I fall into bed, I don’t notice Cassie. Then suddenly it’s morning and I leap on the hamster wheel and it starts all over again.

Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For awhile. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's to late because you are maintaining it now,straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop.

I need to finish this scarf/shawl/blanket thing so I can start something for Emma- a hat, maybe, or a sweater for her stuffed elephant.