Trust Exercise

by Susan Choi

Talent was a divine thing embodied in humans and you either had it or you didn’t, you were blessed or you weren’t. Either way, you worshipped it. If you were blessed with talent, you worshipped it by using it, and no sin was worse than letting talent go to waste. If you weren’t blessed with it, you worshipped it by serving the people who had it.

The sensation had been precise and satisfying. It had

been a sudden pressure on the sternum, a pressure that meant excitement, and dread, and anticipation, and reluctance, all rolled together, but with an emphasis on excitement and anticipation.

Only the dread of a humiliating discovery could be powerful enough to counteract the burning narcissistic curiosity David must feel knowing Sarah had written about their CAPA years and so presumably about him.

Girls are complicated. They rarely love each other without also hating each other. They often react to differences of situation with envy even if the difference, the thing their girlfriend has that they don’t, is a thing they never wanted in the first place.

and the moment is taken away, it doesn’t end so much as stop.