Boys with Sharp Teeth

by Jenni Howell

Most people turn away before the claw marks widen. Before the lies sink deeper. Before the soul seeps through.

So I say what I should, and leave everything else to fester.

I thought it would be easier, this sinking into a made-up person’s skin. All it’s taken me before was the crack of a book’s spine, my imagination eagerly shaped beneath an author’s touch.

I’ve lived a thousand lives, all of them more interesting than mine.

And that’s what I loved about him—I didn’t need to be who he expected. I didn’t need to be anybody. I just needed to be there.

We were an us that never got chosen, just was. And now, wasn’t.

“Too much faith in man,” he says. “Hmm.” Breathe. Speak. Don’t scream. “Common failing. He should try woman instead.”

I know that I could stand shoulder to shoulder with them if I’d been taught the same things, the same way.

It was never easy, trying to fit in, and having my slot in Amberdeen be the space she left just made it worse.

“There’s a boy, and there’s a girl. She likes the way his muscles move while he’s stacking firewood, and he likes that she’s never met another man to compare him to,

I wish my dreams didn’t have such sharp teeth.

This isn’t right. Every word is true, and that can’t be right. He can’t know Sam this well.

and God help me, God help me—I want to not be afraid of dying. I want what happened to have been the beginning of Sam’s story, not the end.

Of course, the one time the legal system works quickly, it’s going to be against me.

Life is a waltz with the tune perfectly measured to their strides no matter how slowly they spin.

“Is that all it takes to prove truth? Pain?” Leckey asks. Pain is the only thing that’s held me grounded. Everything else has failed, but this blazing pain in the center of my chest when I look at Graves, the ache of loss, reminds me what’s real. What’s worth fighting for.

We are Zion, but the wires we have hooked to our brains are plugged in with our own hands.

This is all he can do. Empty himself over and over again. Keep the mirror sated. Keep her safe from its hungry teeth. But it isn’t only the mirror she needs to be kept safe from. It isn’t only the mirror that wants her.

he took everything they offered, not because they made him but because it’s what he wanted.

everyone else is right except me. Maybe I’m ruining my life the way my mom ruined hers, walking away from every hand that’s held out to me except the ones belonging to the dead.

Trying to fill him back up with lives lived to the fullest, but you can’t fill a void.

He doesn’t care if I hate him or love him as long as he’s the sun at the center,