The dagger pin is all I have left. It is comfort and pain, both, because it reminds me of all I’ve had, held, and had taken from me.
It is my pen, too. With it, I write my story, again and again, in the walls. So I don’t forget. So it becomes real.
I think of: Conrad’s hands, Rachel’s dark hair, Lena’s rosebud mouth, how when she was an infant, I used to sneak into her bedroom and hold her while she slept. Rachel never let me—from birth, she screamed, kicked, would have woken the household and the street.
But Lena lay still and warm in my arms, submerged in some secret dreamland.
And she was my secret: those nighttime hours, that twin heartbeat space, the darkness, the joy.

Lauren Oliver