Excerpt: The Girl with Papier-Mâché Wings

I built wings out of fairytales and white lies. Fly higher, higher, higher! Touch the clouds and dance on the moon, Tempy! But I’m Icarus—always Icarus with an ever warning Daedalus shaking his head in disappointment—and I flew too high. Questions, how I hate them! My bête-noir, my bogyman, my thing that eats at my chest cavity and I can’t lie. Hyperbole is my savior and I’ve become a master at loopholes and almost truths that slip from my chewed up lips without a second thought. Don’t ask me directly; don’t block my exits unless you want to know. Because I’ll tell you and you won’t like it like he didn’t and you won’t know what to say anymore so everything will fall into deadly silence. And, if there’s one thing I hate more than questions , it’s silence like hospital waiting rooms. That was not a simile.