The uncertainty of our future is nothing more than a fog of breath on a windowpane.

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.

Did they find something wanting in you, Gemma, at the party? You didn’t speak too freely or behave…strangely?” I grew claws and bayed at the moon. I confessed that I eat the hearts of small children. I told them I like the French.

Just once, she'd like to be the exciting one, the girl somebody wanted.

Meraa mitra yahaan aaiye," he murmurs. I understand only a little Hindi, enough to know what he has said: Come here, my friend. I've never known a braver girl," he says.

The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.

There are times when one friend requires the blind faith of another.