we roll our bodies down the hillside
everything feels so green

It is as if by submerging yourself in a horror story, you will be unmade, but you can also re-emerge, different than before, if you choose. The overused adage is true: we imagine horrors in order to cope with real ones.

“Damn, I felt how my dad looked. BLACK. Bleachers. BLACK. Dancefloor. BLACK. Fools started shoving motherfuckers. Did a fight break out? “

“I tried putting myself in Mert’s shoes—I was in his underwear after all—and wondered at how easily he had offered me something so intimate. Realizing that all my efforts had been so transparent, that I had no protective cover whatsoever, was like being shoved into cold water again and again.”

It was clumsy in the best way possible. Smooth clumsy, easy clumsy. Familiar. It was the first time, Natalie was the first time, that I’d felt something beyond a rush of blood and an inward lurch. She didn’t leave afterward and I didn’t want her to

You people read about our town in the news—first the rape allegations, then Dolly Molly, then the car accident—and you think you know what happened. You think you know something about who we are.