Once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste...
You're walking funny," Lucy said, a shit-eating grin on her face. Five days of out of this world sex with a starving man could do that to a girl. "You're just jealous." Brenna pushed through the door into DarkRiver's business HQ. Lucy made a mournful...
I've been a Christian since I was a little girl. But my Christianity is a muddy mess of thoughts and opinions and making God into what works for me-like going shopping at the mall and picking out whatever I want, putting together faith like I would a...
Stay," he said abruptly. "Stay, feed me. Read to me, if you like. Do not talk to me of death. Do not offer me your fear. I have fear of my own to drive me, and if my own fear is not strong enough to keep me from my duty, yours will only grieve me, gi...
For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim...
When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how y...
I have the solution to all my problems. I have money, position, the running of one of the country’s legendary cattle stations. I can even get the girl I want. I can’t buy her, of course. She’s got money of her own. But I’m pretty sure if I ta...
The new fashions sold in department stores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see. They’d been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittance in terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industry that...
Hot as hell isn't he?' Exie questioned from over my shoulder. 'Yeah, I guess he is' 'You guess? Are you blind? Girl, he is so fine it's scary. I nearly had an orgasm the other day when he asked me a cup of tea. But don't stare too hard, Meagan will s...
A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stand...
Mama took me in her arms and held me tight. Her embrace was hot and she smelled like sweat, dust, and grease, but I wanted her. I wanted to crawl inside her mind to find that place that let her smile and sing through the worst dust storms. If I had t...
The truth is, it's not the act that I'm scared of, but giving myself so entirely to someone. As long as there are lines to draw and boundaries to cling to, I can pretend that I'm safe from the wanting that threatens to consume me. I'm separate, still...
To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly t...
He's basically a good man. But he doesn't know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can't know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They've seen their fathe...
He leans down, and his lips hover a hair’s breadth from mine. I close my eyes, feeling the tingle of anticipation. Then he presses his lips to mine. His warmth spreads out from my lips down into my chest and stomach. Time stops, and I forget about ...
The girl of my dreams got married to someone else. But that’s OK. I don’t need her beside me to keep her locked in the dungeon of my heart.
On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaning...
The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the ne...
We're going to change. We're going to throw out what's worse in us and keep what's best. But come hell or high water, we three will stick together, all for one, one for all. We're going to grow, Cathy, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not only ...
And so, as quietly as he had lived, he slipped out of town, leaving only a note behind: Well, that's that. I'm off, and if you don't believe I'm leaving, just count the days I'm gone. When you hear the phone not ringing, it'll be me that's not callin...
Why did you tell me it was just a kiss?" she asked, waiting for her voice to break. "I don't even care about that other girl. I mean, I do, but not as much. Why was your first instinct to tell me that what happened between you and me didn't matter? A...
