The World Cannot Give

by Tara Isabella Burton

One day, they tell her, she will have to develop that necessary carapace that other people seem to be born with by default, the one that means things no longer make you cry.

How can she be afraid of anything, she feels herself so dimly think, when Virginia is there?

Laura knows she will do whatever Virginia asks. She no longer remembers how to do anything else.

You could stand not having her, she thinks, so long as nobody else could.

she must remember everything, she thinks, so that when she is an old woman, when she is living the tail end of a life without Virginia in it, a dull life, an ordinary life, a life that she now knows will never be World-Historical, she will at least be able to remember that the air smelled like frankincense; that Virginia wore her braids as a crown;

Laura prays. She doesn’t know if there is a God, or if He looks anything like Virginia’s God, but she prays, anyway, to whatever is out there: Do not make me do this without her.

“All the things they tell you when you’re little, right? Fairy tales, fables, things like that. Cinderella and her prince. Wicked stepsisters with their eyes pecked out.” “Yes,” says Laura. “I remember.” “And then you grow up—and you realize it isn’t like that at all. You do things—good things, bad things, cruel things, and they all just—I don’t know—evaporate. Like rain. And you’re just supposed to accept it.”

“there’s been an accident,” as if the only wicked things that happen in the world are the ones that happen by mistake.