A Beautiful Poison

by Lydia Kang

She had the sort of beauty that left you bleeding internally after gazing for too long.

But the Biddles didn’t bleed. Like the Fieldings, they were bankers; they bled other people.

With all eyes on her, she felt a spark of something that amounted to more than just one dull life.

He was too busy to be friendly to strangers, and most people burnt time he didn’t have.

“This is a terrible idea.” “Don’t you just love those?” Jasper said, smirking.

Like sticks of chewing gum, their sweetness lasted for only so long before he no longer wanted them.

The past few years had made him ancient.

“You don’t belong here on earth with the rest of us, Birdie Dreyer.”

Allene felt slightly unhinged, and it was wonderful.

“Well looking” never seemed reasonable compensation for not being heartbreakingly beautiful.

God, he smelled delicious. Like crisp, new money.

It’s a dreadful vexation to be a shadow when you’re supposed to be the sun.”

“Welcome, Mr. Jones, to the chemistry of death.”

The chauffeur looked bleakly at the little girl and sighed, as if the world’s problems were the fault of adorable children.

It’s amazing how much a person will talk if you give them the time and patience to fill up a conversation.

Allene never knew that murder could make Monday mornings so wonderful.

She was a trolley with no brakes, this girl.

But a funeral reminds you to be alive, doesn’t it? It slaps you across the face and points out that there’s still warm blood doing a jig in your veins.”

What were they, really, to each other? There wasn’t one word that could explain the truth.

He knew what it was to have orphan status thrust upon you. Like someone had pushed you through a door, locked it, and left you in a new land with no map.

You’re so beautiful. I know you were not born so beautiful for nothing.

Birdie was homesick for the time when hope was a bright thing.

Birdie’s heart was a mosaic of cracks, and there was abundant room for more breaking if she wasn’t careful.

In her world, all gifts became payments for something, sooner or later.

Nature was fierce in her efforts to cover the dead with life, rooting them down without mercy and preventing them from haunting the living.

He resembled none of the fine-bred Joneses of yore, and she wondered if hard living could sour blue bloods after only four years.

The air in October was different.

He strode through the October day that hadn’t yet decided whether to be a preview of fall or a bit of tired, leftover summer.

It troubled him because he preferred to be around corpses, who asked nothing of him but the truth, and yet their reminder of time’s finality made him want to peel his skin off and flee. In the morgue, he found peace and torture.

She was a woman, after all. It was their lot in life, wasn’t it? Never to own yourself completely.

Yesterday he had lived, loved, and perhaps watched his last sunset through a dirty window.

He ought to make a mental note never to love anyone in such a way as to lay himself open to such a wound.

Allene didn’t know what she wanted, but she knew what it felt like to lose it.

Funny how he didn’t realize he’d been lonely until he wasn’t.

“You know, it’s funny growing up and realizing that you—and the circle of friends and family and your life—aren’t this big, bright, enormous thing that eclipses everything. It’s the opposite, isn’t it?”

The most acceptable gifts . . . are the ones made precious by our love of the giver.”

Somewhere in the world at that moment, there was a birth, a death, a sunrise, and a sunset. There was despair, and a burst of laughter, a promise broken, and a vow made.

In the spring, this ice would melt and the lake would reappear. In ten years, these skates would be irreparably rusted. In thirty, his hair would gray, if he were that lucky. How capricious and temporary everything was.