But if you want him, you might have to fight for him." I let my head fall to the tabletop. "For the love of all that is dead and Chinese, please, no more fighting. This army needs a break.

— Paula Stokes

Emotions I’ve been working hard to hold back all summer start to spill out of me as I pull Elliott’s mouth toward my own. I’m so eager and impatient that our noses bump and teeth knock together before our lips slide into place. The frigid water is still lapping at my legs, but I can’t feel it anymore. My entire body is flush with heat, with desire. If it weren’t for the faintest hint of dance music from the clearing, I’d think that the two of us were completely alone. I wish the two of us were completely alone.

— Paula Stokes

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me—I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had “borrowed” from her class at school. And then there was L.A.—all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different.

— Paula Stokes

Guilt is basically one of my superpowers. It’s been programmed into me from the moment I was old enough to know what it was.

— Paula Stokes

How do you make me smile when it seems like there’s nothing in the whole world to smile about?

— Paula Stokes

I am not warm. That is why my sister chose the name Winter for me.

— Paula Stokes

I can’t seem to wipe away the blood. I rub my hands against my nightgown, but traces of the red remain, staining the lines of my palms and the crescents beneath my fingernails. Furthermore, I wipe harder, gathering and bunching the soft cotton inside my fists. The fabric has been slit up the center and for a moment I worry that I’ve been cut, that maybe the blood is my own. I try to ask what’s happening, but there’s a mask over my mouth and nose. Suddenly it hits me—I’m in an ambulance. I don’t remember how I got here.

— Paula Stokes

I don’t think you can just choose to believe in God. You either do or you don’t, and no matter what camp you’re in, it would take something life-changing to truly lead you into the other one.

— Paula Stokes

I dream of a small room and a man with one eye. Blood seeps like scarlet tears from his empty socket. I turn away, and the room becomes a hallway that becomes a stairway that becomes a roof. The wind tugs at my body; the sky tries to wrap me in stars. Below me, a gazebo glows with red light. A line of black cars crawls like cockroaches through the streets. An air conditioner exhaust fan hitters angrily near the roof’s edge, one of its blades bent just enough to scrape against the side of the casing. For a second I let the wind push me close enough to the fan’s razor-sharp blades that a lock of my hair gets snipped and sent out into the night. As it twists and flutters toward the gazebo, I think about just letting go, letting the breeze carry my body into the whirling blades, the wind scattering pieces of me throughout the city. Blood and flesh seeping into the cracked pavement. Flowers blooming wherever I land.

— Paula Stokes

If you asked me whether I was the type of person who liked trying new things or preferred sticking with what was familiar, I would have told you I was the second girl. The if –it-paint-broke-don’t-fix-it girl. I also would have told you plays were lame. It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t seem to know very much about…me. It’s a weird feeling, like maybe a stranger is inhabiting my body. Or maybe a stranger was, and I kicked her out.

— Paula Stokes