Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Gemma Lou had lived there when they were little, before they got to be too much trouble and she forgot how to love them. (That was what their mother said, anyway, and Jillian believed it, because Jillian knew that love was always conditional; that there was always, always a catch. Jacqueline, who was quieter and hence saw more that she wasn’t supposed to see, wasn’t so sure.)

Without Alexis, she might have forgotten how to love.

Red was an anomaly. Red was aftermath.

Red was an anomaly. Red was aftermath.

The butterfly may never again become a caterpillar.

“Willing to learn, but not to lie?”

Children are not formless clay, to be shaped according to the sculptor’s whim, nor are they blank but identical dolls, waiting to be slipped into the mode that suits them best. Give ten children a toy box, and watch them select ten different toys, regardless of gender or religion or parental expectations. Children have preferences. The danger comes when they, as with any human, are denied those preferences for too long.

Their story had finally begun.

Other children were allowed to be mixed up, dirty and clean, noisy and polite, while they each had to be just one thing, no matter how hard it was, no matter how much they wanted to be something else

“Where did the clothes go?”