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That hat I told uy’s lips inched up, turning a griot a live one"
Come on, cohtness of her shoulders She didn’t understand ould happen to me I wasn’t brave like she was
But I wanted to be I so, so wanted to be
I can’t I didn’t have to say the words aloud She read it easily enough on ether behind her eyes, even before the PSF stepped forward and took her ar her away froed Her blond ponytail inging with each step, rising above the shoulders of the PSFs escorting her out Turn around I needed her to see how sorry I was, to understand the clenching into do with the fever Every single desperate thought that ran through ust The eyes that had been on me lifted two by two, and the soldier never came back to finish his personal brand of torment There was no one left to see me cry; I had learned to do it silently, without any fuss, years ago They had no reason to soshadow Sa out of turn was a day’s worth of isolation, handcuffed to one of the gateposts in the Garden regardless of the te in a le blanket to cover the to scratch patches of bug bites with their free hands Unsurprisingly, the punish back to a PSF or caiven food and, sometimes, not even water
The punish so terrible, Sam wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about it when she finally returned to our cabin two days later She ca like she had slept no more than I had I slid offto her side, before she had even made it halfway across the cabin
My hand slipped around her arm, but she pulled away, her jaw clenched in a way that made her look almost ferocious Her cheeks and nose had been hipped to a bright red, but she didn’t have any bruises or cuts Her eyes weren’t even swollen fro, like mine were There was a subtle limp to her walk, maybe, but if I hadn’t knohat had happened, I would have just assu in the Garden
"Sa the way n to look at me until ere by our bunks, and she had one fist curled in her bedsheets, ready to pull herself up to the top bed
"Say soed
"You stood there" Sah, like she hadn’t used it for days
"You shouldn’t have--"
Her chin caledher expression I felt it then--the way that the hold I had on her had suddenly sprung free I had the strangest sensation of floating, of drifting farther and farther aith nothing and no one to cling to I was standing right beside her, but the distance between us had split into the kind of canyon I couldn’t juht," Sa breath "But then, ould have happened to you? You would have just stood there, and let him do that, and you wouldn’t have defended yourself at all"