The Broken Girls

by Simone St. James

The school has always been rumored to be haunted,

Books were her salvation.

That was what books did—they turned off your thinking for you, put their thoughts in your head so you wouldn’t have your own.

She felt hideous, as if she’d gone on a bender, though all she’d done was sit in her dark apartment and read.

I’m going to leave it to rot, just like it wants to.”