Quotes from Elizabeth Scott

working to my potential.' It's like every teacher I have has some sort of manual to use when talking to me. She finished with, 'You have so much going for you,' which was the dumbest thing anyone, even Laurie, has ever said to me.

As it turned out, she was alone after all. She prayed that he'd come back to her, because she missed him and needed her connection, her fix.

Tal vez tú y yo tenemos que aprender a vivir con lo que vimos. Con lo que sabemos.

I want you to know that when someone offers you their heart, you shouldn't push it away. I mean, how often are you going to get that? I haven't had to deal with it, but if it ever does happen I know I wouldn't.

I broke my own heart once. I gave it to someone who I knew didn't want it, and had to take it back when he refused to hold it.

I hurt all over even more now, like someone has shattered my insides, like I've been torn apart and put back together but I'm missing something. Her. And him. My brother.

A family is more than one Person.

She's gone, but I can be happy. I can be in love. I can be both those things and scared too, and I am. I am, and this is what life is.

I will always carry Mom in my heart. I will always miss her. I will always wish she was here.

It's torture, not being able to talk to him!! She's been so, so worried. How she hopes he's finally doing better now and sleeping soundly.

I love books. I love that moment when you can open one and sink into it. You can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting than yours will ever be.

It is good for women to look like little girls now, to have no hair between their legs. The women out in the waiting room, the ones who will not look at me, are here for that too, to be made into smooth, hairless creatures. They will have their skin polished, smoothed, so everyone can pretend they are young again. Everyone wants the young.

Get up." Those were the first words I ever heard. Open my eyes, see a girl, black and blue all over, dried blood along her thighs. Red brown stains smeared across the hairless juncture between. "Get up and take a bath, Alice," the man in the blue shirt said, and Alice did. I did. That's how I was born. Naked, hairless, covered in blood like all babies. Named, bathed and then taken out into the world.

Ray likes how smooth I am, how raw my skin is. It burns by the time he's done touching it.

God and monster all in one, and mine to worship. ~Kyla

The thing about hearts is that they always want to keep beating. ~Kyla

I could run, but he would find me. He would take me back to 623 Daisy Lane and make everyone who lives there pay. He would make everyone there pay even if he didn't find me. I belong to him. I'm his little girl. All I have to do is be good.

God-monster, ruler of my world. ~Kyla

Sometimes, in the afternoon, if the soaps aren't any good, I'll watch movies about angry, scared women who fight back or teenage girls who suffer but then overcome. There are always shower scenes in them, shots of the women scrubbing their abuse or grief away. I don't understand this. You can't make yourself clean like that, and fresh-scrubbed skin only invites attention.

Ray makes me shower once a week and I hate coming out of the bathroom. I hate knowing he's waiting for me, that he will rub his hands and himself all over me and whisper things. His hands used to make me cry, but now I'm used to them. The thing is, you can get used to anything. You think you can't, you want to die, but you don't. You won't. You just are.

Under the idea that we can all make our fates, that we have choices, is the reminder that sometimes we don't. That sometimes life is bigger than our plans. Bigger than us.

Ray has never come out and said it, but I know from years of listening to him dream that his mother did to him what he does to me. Held him down, rubbed him raw, broke him open. In them, he cries and begs her not to touch him, that he doesn't want to go inside her, that he is a good boy, he really is. I let Ray have his nightmares, watch him thrash and listen to his voice squeak with fear. I lie there and watch him and wish he was trapped back there, with her and had never broken free.

I will find him one, a beautiful little stupid girl, as dumb as the one at 623 Daisy Lane used to be and show her to him. He will want her, with her little limbs and happy face and solid, live flesh. She will become the new Alice and he will want her so much he will forget all about me. Kill me to teach her a lesson, probably, and then move on. Yes, that is what will happen. What must happen.

I have found Ray's new girl. I have found the new me. I think about her all the way home, how she will cry and scream and plead just like I did. It makes me smile. Everyone on the bus who sees me smile looks away. They see that I am all wrong, that my smile means someone else's pain, but no one says anything.