“The first and only time I walked through the room I felt like millions of dead eyes were following me, all those frozen hands reaching out, as if they were all Peter's mother trying to protect her son in the darkness. That was when Peter started leaving the flashlight out for me."

"Rob pushed my head down with one hand and I closed my eyes and bent over and he was pushing his hand into my mouth and I could taste him and the denim scratched my cheeks and I sucked and pulled on the little fingers that weren't, trying to make them grow, to stretch them like a starfish, and I knew then, in that perfect moment, that I would never comb Rob's hair and feed him Doritos–I would be lighting his cigarettes and forging his disability checks–I would be his hands–and I knew then, as I was tracing little nubs with my tongue, that I would never be happy.”