All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

by Bryn Greenwood

I loved her then, right as I was getting ready to leave her.

After Liam and Butch took Kellen away, I thought about how he left spaces for me when he talked. If I saw him again, I decided I might put words in those spaces.

We could let her and Donal come live with us, we could call Child Protective Services, or we could “leave well enough alone.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it was always the decision Mom and Dad came to.

All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less.

God also didn’t want you to “pollute yourself.” Touching yourself for pleasure wasn’t what God designed your temple for, according to Charlotte. Either God was stupid or Charlotte was confused, because my temple was clearly designed for that.

You make people interested in you by keeping secrets, not by passing them out like candy at Halloween.

The quizzes helped Renee empty her heart, and she filled it so quickly with the wrong things, it was no wonder she needed to empty it.

Renee ate in darting little bites and without chewing enough. The same way she filled her heart. Too quickly, and with too much talking and not enough feeling.

Those letters seemed so wonderfully tragic to me. Each one a message he would never get. A note in a bottle, bobbing on the ocean. Lost.

I didn’t regret kicking my electric typewriter down the stairs. Aunt Brenda had given it to me for my high school graduation, and whether she intended it or not, gifts take up space in your heart. I needed that space now.

No woman had ever looked at me the way she did, or touched me that way. Like she wanted me, like I was worth wanting.