But I killed a man just like my mother did. David says it’s okay because I didn’t mean to, and because he was about to kill that little kid. But I’m pretty sure my mom didn’t mean to kill my dad, either, so what difference does that make, meaning or not meaning to do something? Accident or on purpose, the result is the same, and that’s one fewer life than there should be in the world.

Ser sincero en todo momento debe requerir valor. Yo no sabría hacerlo.

I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten.

Uriah looked better than he did an hour ago--he washed the blood from his mouth, and some of the color returned to his face. I'm struck, suddenly, by how handsome he is-- all his features are proportionate, his eyes dark and lively, his skin bronze-brown. And he has probably always been handsome. Only boys who have been handsome from a young age have that arrogance in their smile. Not like Tobias, who is almost shy when he smiles like he is surprised you bothered to look at him from the first place.

I see a few hands stretching out to me at the edge of the net, so I grabbed the first one I could reach and pull myself across. I roll off, and would have fallen face-first onto a wood floor if he had not caught me. "He" is the young man attached to the hand I grabbed. He has a spare upper lip and a full lower lip. His eyes are so deep-set that his eyelashes touch the skin under his eyebrows, and they are dark blue, a dreaming, sleeping, waiting color.

Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.

A sob racks my body again, and he wraps his arms around me so tightly I find it difficult to breathe, but it doesn't matter. My dignified weeping gives way to full-on ugliness, my mouth open and my face contorted and sounds like a dying animal coming from my throat. If this continues I will break apart, and maybe that would be better, maybe it would be better to shatter and bear nothing.