But nothing came from Ciaran. Nothing came, and it had become impossible to hurt myself with the convincing rage I once had. I had grown reflexively weak and self-protective, not able, as I was back then, to harm myself without thought, without fear of the pain that would follow whenever I showered or dressed in the days to come. Inside me things were boiling and rupturing and sprouting, and twenty feet away he sat looking out the window, calmly smoking, with a book resting on his lap, an indefinite horizon of stillness, silence. A great fear swelled in my chest as I crouched there holding my
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