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1 " There is a picture of me in their heads, a picture of someone I don't know yet. She is not the chubby girl with the braces and bad perm. She is not the girl hiding in the bathroom at recess. She is someone new, a blank slate they have named beautiful. That is what I am now: beautiful, with this new body and face and hair and clothes. Beautiful, with this erasing of history. "
― Amy Reed , Beautiful
2 " There is a whole other world with an entirely different version of me, a me that is not pretty, a me that no boys want, a me she would never talk to. "
3 " Your boyfriend smells bad, says Sarah as she sniffs the armpit of the giant sweatshirt.All boys smell bad I say and she nods her head like we have just figured out something very important. "
4 " Maybe this is all love is and all it will ever be-- boys fucking girls and pretending it's love, girls getting fucked and pretending they like it, saying "I love you, too," and wanting to throw up. "
5 " And that's when it hits me, the punch in the stomach, the carving out of my insides. That's when I realize that none of this is a movie. I will not go out with a bang. There is no ending. There are no credits. I will wake up and I will keep waking up and this will always be waiting for me. "
6 " If you are still, no one can hurt you. If you play dead, there is nothing to kill. "
7 " It feels like the ground is breathing and the air has hands, like everything is moving except me, like I am the only thing solid, like it is the rest of the world that is dizzy. "
8 " They are ghosts of people I never knew, which the rain will wash away. "
9 " I want to crush my cigarette on his eyelid. I would rather he keep fucking me for the rest of the night than lie here staring at me tracing my ribs with his fingertips, acting like what happened meant something. "
10 " Smoke follows beauty. "
11 " He backs out the door batting those eyelashes I thought were so sexy when I first met him. Now I want to pluck them out one by one. "
12 " People don't just let you change identities, not unless there's something in it for them. "
13 " Maybe that's all love is-one person saying it because they think they're supposed to and the other person feeling to guilty to say anything else "
14 " I feel the ghost of his fingers inside me. "
15 " And my name sounds like flowers in his mouth. "
16 " I feel myself floating without the weight of him on my body. "
17 " Smoke is not chasing me and making my eyes sweat. My eyes are not burning. I am not crying. I am not standing behind my mother and she is not facing the wall and she is not saying, 'Smoke follows beauty.' Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty. "
18 " And what they're doing could be called kissing but it's more like sword fighting with tongues. "
19 " There are voices you can silence. "
20 " They said the doctors could tell from the scars.""Stop.""Scars can tell you how old the wound is.""Stop.""When I stopped going to school, they came and found me. They found me in the closet.""Sarah. "