from Marisa Silver's Mary Coin:
She reconsidered the party. It was foolish to think she could hide in an elegant outfit when her history was as plain as her plain face and was apparent to anyone the moment they saw her take a step. She could summon the exact details of her illness and its aftermath as if it had all happened yesterday and not thirteen years before, when she was Vera Duerr, a seven-year-old in Hoboken, New Jersey. She’d woken in the center of night, feeling like she was balanced perfectly between dreaming and wakefulness. Her brother, Leon, was asleep in the bed next to hers; she could hear his adenoidal breathing, the slurp and effort of it. There was another person in the room, too, a dark shape by the closet door. She was not frightened the way she was when she had nightmares about kidnappers, only curious that a stranger should be standing near her closet, as if he wanted something to wear. She had always known there was a shadow world of ghosts and goblins and witches, known that life was made of things you could see and things that you couldn’t, like your thoughts or wind. These ideas often absorbed her, and Miss Hildt had sent a note home saying that if Vera didn’t learn to pay attention she would have to repeat the second grade. Her mother had given her a stinging potch on the fanny and said dreams were for sleep. Period. Das Ende der Geschichte. The end of the story.
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