I feel uneasy. It's not often that you encounter the real person behind a good-natured mask, the darkest parts of someone. It's not comfortable when you do.

I wonder if that fear still creeps up on her now though she worked so hard to face it—I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.

I was beginning to feel that I had finally found a place to stay, a place that was not so unstable or corrupt or controlling that I could actually belong there. You would think that I would have learned by now—such a place does not exist.

If someone offers you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it. I know that without having learned it from anyone.

How many different kinds of ruin do you have to see, before you resign yourself to calling it all 'ruin'?

It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt."
We stay in the silence and the loneliness of the otherwise empty dormitory for a few more minutes, and I try to let her words work themselves into me.