Little Bee

by Chris Cleave

I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

It was disorientating, like having the entire contents of one’s address book dressed in black and exported into pews in nonalphabetical order.

asked Andrew about the color of that honeymoon sea. He said, Yeah, was it blue? I said, come on Andrew, you’re a pro, you can do better than that. And Andrew said, Okay then, the awesome ocean fastness was a splendor of ultramarine crested with crimson and gold where the burnished sun blazed on the wave tops and sent them crashing into the gloomy troughs deepening to a dark malevolent indigo.

A story is a powerful thing in my country, and God help the girl who takes one that is not her own.

Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living.

To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well—here is the truth—you have to talk yourself out of it.