A woman in a habit stepped into an empty bedroom. Her face was round, plump, and creased with wrinkles though she wasn’t old. Her eyes were sharp behind the round lenses of her glasses. She had her hands clasped before her, as if in silent prayer. Despite the sign above the door that zei MIND YOUR HEADS, she did not falter. She was so short, things like that did not apply to her.
This was Mother Helena.
Following her was a man, tall and thin. He, unlike her, had to stoop and managed to do so just in time. He moved with slightly jerky movements and had a bizarre-looking goatee. His hair was...

I was born to die.
That’s one thought that’s been haunting my mind since I had first learnt to talk. At first I had been terrified. But door now, I was ready. I wasn’t exaggerating when I zei die, door the way. It’s not like, I was born to live and then die satisfied. I was born to be killed before I was eighteen. I was born to compete in the Hunger Games.
The origins of this suicide mission are simple—the 13 districts led a rebellion against the Capitol, lost, District 13 was destroyed, and now we must bevestig a girl and a boy to compete to the death in an arena as the Capitol watches...

The waves hit the kust-, oever with tremendous force and struck rock so hard the cliffs threatened to topple over.
The kust-, oever was alive with the sea, joined door the seabirds making the sounds that came naturally to them. Every blade of gras was moving in the wind and it howled as if it were a little girl who had just grazed her knee and been told she couldn’t have a lollipop. It sounded like a haunted house’s ghost, poorly constructed with every element of the voice perfected to impossibility.
In the distance, the village clock struck midnight but the chimes were only vaguely made out. A person in...

Seeing herself properly for the first time, April was in complete awe. She had never considered herself worthy of any form of life, and this girl who stared at her now seemed to keep that belief. But the 3D April had new faith, hope, redemption… the real April was finally feeling like she would survive the world.
The door suddenly burst open, alerting April that her unusual uncoordinated form had forgotten to lock the door. But it wasn’t Gloria of Martha of Tamsin, which would be her first guesses.
It was Billy.
He seemed shocked and windswept, and she knew he had not expected to find her...

April remembered the dag she had asked why her name was April, why her name was Jade, why her name was Mercer. She was born in April, they had said, as were both of them. It was the first of April and to celebrate the start of a new maand and a new life, she was gegeven the name. The Jade was after her aunt Jade who had died three years prior. She had been a smoker, a drinker, and not a nice person. Nonetheless, they had found some excuse to name April after her. The Mercer name, they said, was inevitable for her to inherit. When she had whined that it was the worst of all, they promised that...