K.M. Walton > Quotes

“I wanted you, precious reader, to feel the pain of the bullied, the neglected, the heartbroken, and the humiliated.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Mom now takes pills to wake up in the morning. She takes pills to help her sleep at night. She takes pills to calm her nerves and pills for her depression. She takes pills to lower her blood pressure and stop her heartburn and deal with her allergies.

I think the pharmacy hired my mother because she’s their best customer. She knows her drugs. The pharmacist always jokes that my mom should be filling the prescriptions instead of ringing people up at the register.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Sadness releases from my chest. Like a snake, it slithers down my legs. I swear I feel its mouth bite into my thigh. Its miserable venom seeps into my bloodstream. I grind my teeth together to stop the sadness from penetrating my brain, my heart.... my soul.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I stare at the ceiling and thoughts start slamming into one another. I am no longer a virgin. I had sex. I didn’t want to. Was I raped?

Isn’t rape, like, violent and forceful, with blood and anger? Could I have really stopped him? Did I try hard enough? He didn’t even put a condom on. What if I’m pregnant? Oh, my God. Maybe I wanted it. I had a guy’s penis inside of me. Someone else’s guy.

Sex is a rite of passage. That’s what my seventh-grade health teacher told us, and Brandon stole that from me.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“He leans down and kisses me. All 286 pounds of me melts into the daisies. I don’t want him to stop. Brandon is a good kisser; tender, not too much tongue and he keeps his spit in his own mouth.

As he’s kissing me, his hands are doing all kinds of things. One is up underneath my shirt trying to unhook my bra, while the other unbuttons and unzips my jeans. I am amazed at his multitalented hands.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Donna Ritch was (and still is) the ticket-taker at the parking garage that’s attached to the building where my dad works. She’s tall, skinny, young and my baby sister is smarter than she is.

Cara and I had lots of fun with her last name. Donna Bitch. Donna Witch. Donna Snitch. Donna Ditch. When the rhyming got old, I named her Donna Dumbass. It works for me.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“The walk to school is an ugly, ugly walk. My thoughts are so heavy, I don’t know how my feet aren’t sunk into the sidewalk.

A few times, I stop and lean against a tree just to calm down. What if everyone knows what Brandon did to me? That he thought it was some kind of a joke?”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I feel small right now. Like a flea on a rat. And the rat is Brandon Levitt.

He jogs down the hall, ending our first post-sex conversation.

Clearly he wants to forget what he did. Clearly he has no intention of apologizing. Clearly he wants nothing to do with me. Clearly he is a total dick.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I curl into the fetal position and listen to the birds. Their peppy chirping captivates me, because happiness and its trappings remain a dark mystery.

I palm my head and run my fingers through my hair. My skin hurts. I was raped and I can’t tell anyone.

I cover my ears because the birds annoy me now. My brain can no longer appreciate the good and the beautiful. It’s too busy cranking out shame and misery.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I wish my mother was a hugger. A hug right now would help a lot. A hug would fill me up, make me feel as if I exist and maybe even douse the anger. Instead, I get a shoulder squeeze as my mom heads back to her room.

A shoulder squeeze can in no way be compared to a hug. They’re like the difference between a size twenty-four and a size two. The squeeze is so inadequate, and the hug just the right thing. I want perfect and I get insufficient.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I want a lot of things I can never have: a different body, my virginity back, for Brandon and whoever taped that drawing to my locker to explode like watermelons stuffed with dynamite, a best friend who would die for me, way less math homework and cute clothes to wear for the talent show on Friday.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“In a single motion, he yanks down his jeans and boxers and kicks them to the side.

I have never seen a naked guy before. Well, I’ve seen them from the waist up, but never full-on wiener. I blink a few times and grin. He is beautiful. All of him. But why is he naked? He shouldn’t be naked.

Before I can figure it all out, he lays me down and then straddles me. I now have a nude Brandon Levitt on top of me.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I want to tell him that he looks hot and that I like the way his black hair curls out from under his baseball
hat and how his faded T-shirt with the old-fashioned Phillies logo hugs his chest and arms perfectly. But I don’t. I haven’t had that many beers.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“The tingling happiness I’d felt after tryouts is dead. The demon ate it. Or maybe it was the cow. And the thought of shopping for an outfit to wear while an auditorium full of people stare at me makes me want to lock myself in a closet.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I’m a mess. She’s a mess. My whole life is a damn mess. All I want to do is lick the salty cheese off the inside of the bag.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“If my sister were older, I would talk to her. Meggie was so cute when I picked her up from day care. She said, “I miss you, Dehwy, when you go.” Then she kissed me right on the lips.

She tasted like strawberries. I held her the whole walk home and breathed her in. By the time we got back, I swear I felt better. I don’t know what it is about her smell, but I’m pretty sure it’s what heaven smells like.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I just don’t want to deal with the stares, mean comments, and whispers. I want someone else to do something stupid, so everyone can move on to the next bullshit drama. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to move on. I feel stained, like, ruined.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Brandon and Taryn are at the end of the hallway. He has her skinny little body pinned up against the lockers and is kissing her neck. He turns his head, sees me, and pauses (midkiss) and stares.

His look speaks volumes: "Keep your mouth shut, fat girl."

If I had an ax, I’d love to hold him down and chop his nuts off. Or if I had the guts, give him the finger, but I busy myself in my locker.

By the time I slam it shut, they’re long gone. I’ve broken out in a cold sweat. My T-shirt clings to my stomach and back. A single bead of panic rolls down my spine, tickling my skin like a spider. I shiver as I round the corner.

If I tell anyone about the rape, I risk major backlash. People won’t believe that Brandon raped me. I know it.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Tears roll down my temples into my hair. I have nothing to say. I make no move to cover my nakedness. I lay there like a blob of inhuman matter.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and do everything in my power to smell the “perfect love smell” of my little sister.

I need to smell love right now. It doesn’t work because it never works, and all I smell is sweat.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I know I could make the effort and join them, but if I jumped, there’d be a strong chance I’d bust through the hardwood floor and land in the basement in a heap of splintered wood and concrete. The stoners would have the laugh of the century. The party would be ruined.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I’ve liked Brandon since seventh grade, and that’s a long time. I think I fell for him when he complimented the grand slam I hit during gym. He said, because I remember it verbatim, “Hey, Dell, killer hit. You have a good swing.”

He said it in the nicest voice. I remember my stomach had flip-flopped, and I’d bumbled out a thank-you. Then he smiled and bit his lip, and I blushed.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Standing onstage with people cheering for me filled me with so much contentment, even more than any bag of chips or sandwich could.

I overflowed like a pot of spaghetti, bubbling with intensity, boiling over the stage. That was me. An intense, boiling pot of spaghetti.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Despite my lighthearted outward appearance, horrible thoughts take up all of the space in my brain. The most awful? My friendship with Cara just isn’t the same anymore. It doesn’t feel right. Or comfortable.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I’m so padded with jolly bullshit that I could probably survive a ten-story fall. Hell, I’d probably bounce on the sidewalk.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Somewhere along the next three blocks my thoughts jump from anger straight to terror: Taryn Anderson.

If Taryn knows about the sex, my miserable life will plunge into the fiery depths of hell. She will verbally tear me to shreds, publicly humiliate me and do everything in her power to ruin my life.

I’ve seen her do it to other girls; girls who didn’t even have sex with her boyfriend.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Why can’t I tell them that Brandon forced himself on me? Took advantage of my drunkness, told me to stay still and put himself inside me. I told him to stop. I didn’t want to do it. Or did I?

Oh, my God. Maybe I did. I’m, like, double his weight. I could’ve pushed him off me. Could I have? Maybe this is all my fault.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Brandon leans in and says all breathy in my ear, “I want you . . . to stay.”

His answer doesn’t register in my beer-soaked brain. Brandon begs me to moo in front of people. He just showed me a video of a fat, diapered Japanese dude’s ass, which I’m sure reminded him of me.

There is no way Brandon Levitt is asking me to stay with him in this daisy bedroom. This bedroom with a ginormous bed. No way.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I’m done before everyone else. I sit back and watch my team in various stages of undress and marvel at their smallness. Don’t get me wrong; they’re definitely not a girly-girl group. Our best pitcher could probably level half the baseball team with her eyes closed, and she’s less than half my size. Some girls have their legs up on the bench, untying their cleats. I couldn’t get my leg up on this bench anymore with a crane. But not for long. Good-bye pizza, ice cream, and cheese fries. I want to win.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“Cara’s not good with emotional stuff. She sort of shuts down or changes the subject instead. She’d probably abandon our friendship if she knew how fragile I feel right now and then I’d have no one. So I keep my sadness to myself. It’s private and it’s all mine.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty

“I’m fat and what you might call mannish-looking. That’s what Taryn Anderson told me in sixth grade. She didn’t even have the decency to say it about me. No, she said it right to my face.

My eyes are close together and my brown hair is both curly and frizzy, which is the worst hair possible. My nose is wide in the wrong place. My lips are the only thin part of me.”
― K.M. Walton, Empty