Outpost (Razorland, #2)

by Ann Aguirre

While they kept danger out, they also locked the ignorance in.

“Then speak louder, girl. Don’t let them put out your spark.”

Yet sometimes being a friend meant letting people do things that hurt, like putting distance between you, just because it made them happy.

If so, I couldn’t imagine how the opposite gender managed to get out of bed in the morning. They might be lovely to look at, but clear thinking wasn’t their strong point.

Until then, I hadn’t realized I was so much like my own knives, sharp edged, cold, and perfect for keeping people at a distance.

knew I wasn’t as pretty as some girls at school, but that seemed irrelevant. I was strong and I could fight; surely that mattered more.

“They had machines to do their work for them: solve problems, cipher numbers, and print writing. People grew lazy. They knew too many blessings, and so they lost the ability to appreciate what they had. They always wanted more, more, more, and that road,” he intoned, “led down into darkness.

“People try to make sense of things, and if they don’t know the answers, they make them up, because for some, a wrong answer is better than none.”

I couldn’t help what I’d done before I learned it was wrong. I could only do better in the future.

“Don’t thank me for doing what my heart asks, Deuce. I’ll be with you as long as you let me.”

I resolved, then, deep in my soul never to let him go. I’d be the one never to leave him. I’d prove to him that some things could be for always—that we could be.

My common sense had already packed a bag, prepared to abandon me for the evening.

so many versions of the girl I glimpsed in the mirror. I felt grown, enough not to need to attend Mrs. James’s stupid school, but maybe I wasn’t the person I might become yet either. Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn’t, you died—or stopped growing—which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I would slide in and out of different roles until I discovered the one that fit me best.

But folks took for granted their blessings and often didn’t appreciate them until it was too late to offer thanks.

I believed love hadn’t weakened me or left me soft; instead it made me powerful, determined beyond all belief.

The whole world was a ruin, a place of sharp angles and pitiless lines that could cut you to the bone.

I’d learned that family ties didn’t always come from blood.

Fine, I thought, was a relative term, but he couldn’t sew up the wounds he couldn’t see.