The Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers, #1)

by Katherine Locke

Places can be victims of history too.

I couldn’t rely on my family, I could make a family to rely on.

Sometimes, I thought my memory was lying to me. Maybe I remembered things wrong. Maybe I only remembered things the way I wanted to remember them. I built the maybes up inside me like a wall around my heart and hid behind them.

“This city,” Kai said, “is allergic to trust. And desperate for it. Even cities want what they can’t have.

Fear was the foundation of all types of Walls,

He sounded lonely, all the way up there by himself in that head of his.

“Please do not keep me safe at the expense of my sanity.”

I was the girl with the red balloon who shouldn’t be in the black-and-white world of Walls and fear and lies. He was a kaleidoscope boy born at the wrong time in the wrong place, too bright for here, too much for everywhere else.

“Good intentions mean very little when the bodies start piling up.”

“Most of the things we think are selfish aren’t at all. We’re just so conditioned to think that wanting things is wrong.