For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.

We have to acknowledge that adolescence is that time of transition where we begin to introduce to children that life isn't pretty, that there are difficult things, there are hard situations, it's not fair. Bad things happen to good people.

I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page

I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

I like cheeseburgers too much to be a model.

I wish adults would spend less energy freaking out about the cutting itself and work harder to understand what drives kids to self-harm.

This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.