ruby

“No one ever found out what was happening inside me. How the pain was eating me away. No one ever came to my rescue, or stood up for me.”
― Julie Anne Peters, By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“I want him to take her tomorrow. I want that little girl here now, where I am. I want her to be Ray's love, to bear it. I don't care that TV and the preacher at church say that children are treasures or little miracles or special.

They are flesh and blood like the shell around me, a thing waiting to be molded by someone's will, and Ray wants that job. I don't care if he takes it. If he takes everyone and everything, every child from every place. I just want him to leave me.”
― Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl

“Once upon a time, there was a girl. She lived at 623 Daisy Lane. Her parents were named Helen and Glenn and she had a room with blue walls.

She had a computer and a desk and nail polish that she could wear to school. She would put on eye shadow in the school bathroom with her friends. Blue to match her eyes.

She was almost ten. And right before her birthday, she got sick and had to stay home and missed the big trip to see the aquarium, but her friends said it sucked and there weren't any dolphins and her parents said she never ever had to go there.

She had her party and ate cake and ice cream and then... and then...

And then that's where the story ended. Even then, in the beginning, when I tried to pretend, I couldn't.

Nothing waited for that girl after she missed her trip. Nothing I could see past her room and her parents and they didn't fade, never faded, but froze, never moving.

What had been became what was and a story only works when you know the ending. When the people in it don't seem like pretend. When you can think about that girl and how she was once upon a time, and see her.

When you don't already know the story is a lie.”
― Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl

“The men were afraid she could no longer do her job. They were afraid that she'd never been able to do her job. That every mistake she'd ever made was because she was a girl, and not because she was human.”
― Claire Eliza Bartlett, We Rule the Night