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It turns out that even if you hate your family, you still inherit from them.
“What are you thinking?” “Nothing.” He swallowed. “You give a good funeral, is all. Do mine one day?” I squeezed his hand. “Be serious.”
“Pain is how you know you’re alive, Ruth. It’s not something you should bury.”
“If I was a bird, what would you be?” “Whatever hawk eats birds.” A laugh burst from me. “What?” He grinned. After the water and the sun, his lips were watermelon-red. “To keep the other birds away.”
I’m beyond giddy: the earth is wild and beautiful and I’m alive inside it.
Back then, I’d been convinced I’d never see him again. Yet here we were two years later in the lovely dead of night, our canoe parting the stars. It was the surest proof I had that redemption existed.
“You’re sitting right there,” I continued, “and somehow I already miss you.”
“You’re going to marry him.” Ever’s voice is full of conviction. “And grow old with him, and have his children.” He cuts his eyes away and squares his jaw, trying to master himself. “You’ll make a private world with him.” He swallows hard and nods, as if it’s already decided, a thing he can see clearly. “And I’ll be the ghost who haunts you every summer.”
Influence is a contagion.”
“I love you, Ruth. Of course I love you. It’s the only thing that’s ever redeemed me.”
What is it about us teenage girls that claws so deeply under people’s skin? We’re reviled and desired in equal measure; cringed at, laughed at, then lunged at. The sheer effort people like my father and my teachers have spent trying to control us. So many dress codes and rigid rules and unspoken ones we have taken on the mantel of policing ourselves, looking in the mirror and wincing at our reflections, drawing our own blood first, before others can.
