Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)

by Tahereh Mafi

Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never ever sleeps, is what I don’t tell him. I’ll never be okay.

They never realized they were signing away their souls to a group planning on taking advantage of their ignorance. Their fear.

Most civilians are too petrified to protest but there are others who are stronger. There are others who are waiting for the right moment. There are others who have already begun to fight back.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books.

In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into the semblance of something too passive to punch.

I hope he doesn’t know he just touched my leg. And nothing happened.