In school, they would tell you that life wouldn’t come to you; you had to go out and make it your own. But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don’t. Don’t go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups.

Do you think they missed him terribly when he fell? Did God cry over his lost angel, I wonder?

I’m not interested in being polite. It’s false.

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

Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?

Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.

Forget your pain. It was what I said when I took Father's hand in the drawing room yesterday, what I repeated again tonight. But I didn't mean this. I must be careful. Yet what bothers me isn't the power of the magic or how, to a person, they've all accepted it as truth. No, what unsettles me the most is how much I want to believe it too.