Gallant

by V.E. Schwab

How to exist in a world that does not want you. How to be a ghost in someone else’s home.

Olivia plans a hundred different futures, but every night, she is still there, climbing into the narrow bed in the crowded room in the house that is not, and will never be, a home.

outline, the edges just firm enough to mark the absence.

did you know ash holds its shape until you touch it

The girls say love, but what they really mean is want.

They talk of dreams as if they’re solid things, the kind you might mistake for real. They wake with whole stories impressed upon their minds, images committed to memory.

Free—a small word for such a magnificent thing.

That word again—safe. But what is safe? Tombs are safe. Merilance was safe. Safe does not mean happy, does not mean well, does not mean kind.

in her mind a family was a sprawling thing, an orchard full of roots and branches.

“Put the right words into the world,” he says, “never know what you’ll catch.”