Aster knew these insults weren’t meant for her. She was playing a part. They hurt anyway. They hurt because of the people they were meant to target, and they hurt for all the ways she’d been targeted in the past. With everyone insisting it was true, it was hard to believe she was any good at all. She felt Lieutenant was right about her. She didn’t understand, but when she thought about herself, she was repulsed. Aster was a vile fiend, a dyke, uglier than a dog. She was other things too, more dreadful things, things that were not so easy to say or admit. A bevy of parts cast off secondhand, to
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