Plastic stars wait on the cold ceiling, watching the light switch, nervous, ready for the dark and their cue to glow. This girl has math homework. This girl has an art project due and last weeks history test and makeup quiz about WWI and some stupid story.

This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.