Vivian Apple at the End of the World (Vivian Apple, #1)

by Katie Coyle

I don’t want to be meek anymore. I want to be unstoppable.”

You know it’s a lot easier not to try, right? It’s a lot easier to just curl up in a ball and let the world end.” “I know that,” I say. “I have to fight the urge not to every minute.”

They told me they were going and they went, and they made it seem like it was an absence in me that was worth leaving. Now I know: it was only ever their story. If I was part of it at all, I was just a footnote.

I am past goodness, past grief. I’m broken in a way I don’t understand yet, and I’m going to make them feel it.

“What the Church wanted from you wasn’t goodness; it was meekness. And I know because I’ve been meek for seventeen years. That’s what you just called godliness. It’s so much easier to be meek—to read the guidelines and submit and obey, instead of actually dealing with chaos, or pain—but it’s not what good is.