Red at the Bone

by Jacqueline Woodson

They ate margarine there, spread on white bread and topped with grape jelly. The first time Aubrey offered her margarine, she laughed. You know that’s not real butter, right? But he’d just shrugged. Taste good to me. She couldn’t see a future with someone who only knew margarine.

Guess that’s where the tears came from, knowing that there’s so much in this great big world that you don’t have a single ounce of control over. Guess the sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll have one less heartbreak in your life. Oh Lord. Some evenings I don’t know where the old pains end and the new ones begin. Feels like the older you get the more they run into one long, deep aching.

if a body’s to be remembered, someone has to tell its story.

Maybe it was in high school that you learned to make friends with other girls.

She was all he had now and she knew it. It was a strange power. Jump for me, Aubrey. And he jumped. Only after would he ask, Why?

In a minute, he could be left with nothing. Iris had proved that to him. She had walked out that door and disappeared into a world he would never know. Left him in this one.

Something about memory. It takes you back to where you were and lets you just be there for a time.