Esta época del año me vuelve loca. Como si s me estuviera acabando el tiempo, o algo así. Como si estuviera desperdiciando mi vida.

I have no choice but to pretend I'm the same as ever, but a canyon surrounds me now, sets me apart. I'm not sure if sex created the canyon or if it's been there all along and [he] finally made me see it. [He] says it's the latter.

The nine other students pack up their things and leave the classroom to carry on with their lives, to practices and rehearsals and club meetings. I leave the room, too, but I'm not part of them. They're the same, but I'm changed. I'm unhuman now. Unthetered. While they walk across campus, earthbound and ordinary, I soar, trailing a maple-red comet tail. I'm no longer myself; I am no one. I'm a red balloon caught in the boughts of a tree. I'm nothing at all.

I’m starting to understand that the longer you get away with something, the more reckless you become, until it’s almost as if you want to get caught.

Esta época del año me vuelve loca. Como si se me estuviera acabando el tiempo, o algo así. Como si estuviera desperdiciando mi vida.

I'm not mad at him. I'm mad at them. I'm mad at the world that turned him into a monster when all he did was have the bad luck of falling in love with me.

I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge.

To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing

I don't remember, not exactly. So many of my memories from back then are shadowy, incomplete. I need him to fill in the gaps, though sometimes the girl he describes sounds like a stranger.

So when my mother asks me to forgive her, I say, "Of course I do."I don't tell her again that she couldn't have stopped it, that it wasn't her fault and that she didn't deserve it. I swallow those words instead. Maybe somewhere deep in my belly, they'll take root and grow.