Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible.

Here, makeup meant something different; it sent a signal of effort that was unacceptable.

Did she seem depressed? She was distant. She didn’t make many friends. She was struggling in her classes. All true. But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.