Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children, #8)

by Seanan McGuire

That was the fourth thing she lost: the belief that if something made her unhappy or uncomfortable, she could tell an adult who loved her and they would make everything better.

Her mother nodded and let her go, and she didn’t realize that by telling Antsy to keep a secret from two of the people she trusted most in the world, she had just broken something small, and fragile, and irreparable. When Antsy made the lists of things she’d lost, to justify being Lost herself, she didn’t include her belief that adults could be trusted. That thing, out of everything, had been so small and fundamental that she couldn’t even see that it was gone.

Somewhere in the time between her father’s collapse and now, she realized, she had lost the belief that her mother would always protect her, and somehow that burned the worst of all.

“You seem clean and well fed and healthy, so you didn’t run away a long time ago. Someone loves you. Someone has been taking care of you. And then something bad happened. Something bad enough that you looked at all that love and all that care and decided that they weren’t enough to balance out the size of the bad thing. Am I close?”

“You’re a child. If an adult hurt you, that’s on them, not on you. Being bruised doesn’t make you bad, unless you’re a peach, and even a bruised peach is good for making jam.”

“Whatever bad thing this person did or was getting ready to do, it was bad enough you needed to get away from there. Maybe running away wasn’t the best choice you could have made, but it was the choice you chose, and the Doors respected it.

The mind is bad at holding on to terror,

That’s one of the things about living in a body. It can change, but the ways it changes today will be the ways it has always been tomorrow. If the modification isn’t noted in the moment, then it can be all too easily dismissed.

Only the ones who aren’t made right for the worlds where they started out need Doors. All children may want them—who doesn’t want a grand adventure? But needing and wanting aren’t the same, and the Doors can see the difference. Some children need to escape from places that will only hurt them, or grind them away until they’re nothing. And some children need to go somewhere else if they’re ever going to grow into the people they were meant to be. The Doors choose carefully.”

The Doors have to choose you, but then you have to choose yourself.

she is gone to the Library where all of us must one day be Returned, and she will pay no overdue fines on her soul.