1
Keep your eyes on the future, because that's where the answers are. It's where the hope is.Holly Cupala
2
I thought of Shelley in the hospital, how she said sometimes sadness only looked like anger and judgment. Maybe fear did too.Holly Cupala
3
At home, they'd clipped my wings and then caged me so I couldn't fall. Here, they bandaged one another's broken wings, helped each other fly.Holly Cupala
4
We're all family--the only family we've got. It doesn't have to be blood.Holly Cupala
5
I started to sway Lexi again when I realized she was quiet. Waiting. Both of us paused on the cusp of the unknown. I couldn't go backward or even retrace my own steps, let alone Xanda's. I could only go forward. The threads of time weren't unraveling but weaving into a tapestry -- a future, and a hope. The only way to discover was to step into it.Holly Cupala
6
I thought of what pride would look like, a jowly old guy in a smoking jacket. Vanity was a tall, beautiful woman with a face like a mask. Envy was a treasure-hoarding dragon, dainty and diabolical. As I sketched in the dragon's face, I gave her eyebrows like mine, my turtle necklace around its scaly neck. Xanda drew them as cliffs and valleys, irrevocably linked pride as a mountain, envy as a valley, hating its lowness and longing to reach, overtake, conquer. She drew vanity as a volcano with an abyss at its core.Holly Cupala
7
If pregnant girls were sinner, what were liars called?Holly Cupala
8
Under the bridge, traffic above us and coats around us, hearts thudding with the steady perfection of this moment, I thought of every word I had never before dared to think about him. Future. Hope.And love, as the rain slowed to a misty trickle through the long and beautiful night.Holly Cupala