She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.

When death captures me," the boy vowed, "he will feel my fist in his face." (31.26)

The pages and the words are my world, spread out before your eyes and for your hand to touch. Vaguely, I can see you face looking down into me, as I look back. Do you see my eyes?

It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.

Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.

But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.