A teenage girl lay asleep on the sofa, curled up under a red-and-black knitted afghan. She was on her side, with one slender arm cradling a throw cushion nestled under her head. Long wavy blond hair spread across her back and her shoulders like a cap...
Why would anyone want to fight Henry?" Loondorf looked hurt. "Because he's a ballplayer." "So?" "So he's a baller. He's got cash, chains, crisp clothes. He's got a hat that says Yankees and it's the real deal, yo. He didn't buy it at no yard sale. He...
Jocks were pretty much exempt from the standards that bound the rest of us. Teachers and administrators humor them because it's in everyone's interests to coax them through school and get them out of the building. Since it's unethical to turn them lo...
I’m positive I wouldn’t consider having sex with Guy if I hadn’t already had sex beforehand. I always knew I wanted my first time to be with someone I loved and who loved me, which it was . . . but shouldn’t I want that for every time? I disa...
The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am, supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside. A realization creeps over me, the words tumbling into my head quietly like falling leaves. I. Am. Crazy. This...
Joe Spork opens the door. The man departs. Joe turns to Polly to say something about how they’re obviously not going to Portsmouth, and finds an oyster knife balanced on his cheek, just under his eye. “Can we be very clear,” Polly Cradle murmur...
Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?" [...] "'When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right.'" I stop finish my J&B in on...
Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there's a space between us, enough to paralyze me with all of the things I could do to her next. I could raise my hand and hit her in the face or bring my knee into her stomach, take a fistful of her hai...
It’s okay to feel whatever you need to feel. Just promise me that you will never, ever feel guilty. Promise me that you will never blame yourself. It’s not your fault. You’re just a little girl and it’s not your fault that your life is so muc...
I'm really hoping he’s being genuine because I can already tell he isn't the kind of guy a girl gets a simple crush on. He’s the kind of guy you fall hard for, and the thought of that terrifies me. I don’t really want to fall hard for anyone at...
Oh, are you doing magic? Let’s see it, then.” She sat down. Ron looked taken aback. “Er — all right.” He cleared his throat. He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed gray and fast asleep. “Are you sure that’s a real spel...
So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way - not a drama of victimization b...
If you're signing up all the pretty girls in Alden, I want to join too," Max told Christy. "We aren't taking men," she explained. He cocked his eyebrow. "What? We aren't sensitive enough for your kind of literature?" Christy turned to Annie and both ...
When you kissed me, Clyde? I felt more in that one pissed-off kiss than I felt in those three or four attempts at making love. And I realized it wasn't a lie, after all. That was the best kiss I've ever had. By far. So tell me what I have to do to ea...
The Libertarian Party convention wasn’t much better. You will never find a more stammering, awkward, inarticulate group of people than libertarians. I still remember the convention the previous year, entitled 'Women of Liberty.' All of the speakers...
I could feel God. It was like he was setting fine fingerprints all over the moment. I could feel him in it, as if he were saying to me, “Girl, I’m gonna blow the hinges off anything you think a love letter is, was , or could be. If you would just...
...the word “fine”. As in “I’m fine”, “it’s fine”, “that looks fine”, etc. For a man the word fine has, tops, three or four meanings and that’s only because of the fairly recent edition of “Dang, girl! You look fine!” Otherw...
No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?" "They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer. "And what is hell? Can you tell me that?" "A pit full of fire...
But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses - mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior had found in the depths of thos...
I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'w...
Alice might end up neither good nor bad. She might end up somewhere in between. That would make her very dangerous to know. That girl could be the bane of your life, a blight, a poison on everything you do. Or she might turn out to be the best and st...