Margo's Got Money Troubles

by Rufi Thorpe

There was no changing Mark. Or Jinx, or Shyanne, or how the world worked. They were like chess pieces: they moved how they moved. If you wanted to win, you couldn’t dwell on how you wished they’d move or how it’d be fairer if they moved a different way. You had to adapt.

Love was not something, I realized, that came to you from outside. I had always thought that love was supposed to come from other people, and somehow, I was failing to catch the crumbs of it, failing to eat them, and I went around belly empty and desperate. I didn’t know the love was supposed to come from within me, and that as long as I loved others, the strength and warmth of that love would fill me, make me strong.