Amory Blaine’s Reviews > A Deadly Education > Status Update

[1] "So—I’m sorry. And—I’d like to hang out sometime. If you wanted.”
Yes, because just what I wanted was to make a friend of a rich enclave girl so I could routinely rub my face around in all the luxuries I couldn’t have, all of which were in fact quite nice even if they didn’t measure up to the things I’d chosen in their place.

"You just—you know, you get used to things. And you don’t think about whether they’re good. Or even okay. You don’t want to think about it. And nobody else seems to, either."
“And there’s nothing you can see to do about it.... Because there’s not meant to be anything you can do about it.”
She was quiet, and then she said, “I don’t know anything I can do about it. But I don’t have to make it worse."

[4] And sure, it’s not like that, it’s not some simple equation like me in an enclave means kids are dying in here; the kids will go on dying in here anyway, whether I’m in an enclave or not. But just because it’s a forty-sixth-order derivative equation or something doesn’t mean that I can’t work out which side of that equation is the guilty one.

[3] [...W]e all get the illusion of a chance. But the only chance they're really giving us is the chance to be useful to them. [...] I wanted to pretend that all of that was fair and okay, like Orion bleating how we've got the same chances. But I can't pretend that, because I didn't grow up in that lie. So I don't actually want in. I don't want that safety and luxury at the cost of other kids dying in here.

[2] And they didn't stop at safety either. They wanted comfort. And then they wanted luxury. And then they wanted excess. And every step of the way, they still wanted to be safe. Even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target. And the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.

[1] They wanted to be safe. It's not that much to ask, it feels like. But we don't have it to begin with, and to get it, and keep it, they'd push another kid into the dark...