sketches in the wind
Summary: "Stop looking at me like that, like I'm going to break." Rachel's breathing changes. "But, Quinn," she whispers into your collarbone, "you did." The months post-3x14, healing, Quinn-centric drabble, Faberry if you want.
AN (1): So I just can't all of this out of my head, haha. April really needs to come soon. This is a long one, so please review! Thank you! :)
AN (2): Recommended listening: "Splendor" by M83.
sketches in the wind
She closed her eyes and followed the car in her mind down the streets that led to their house, until it seemed they had driven past it long ago and were moving on to a place where strange beds awaited them, where they would fall asleep thinking of dark forests and wake to the lives of strangers.
-Julie Orringer, "Pilgrims"
...
one. if you suffer, Love, i'll die a second time
.
There's lot of bustling the first time you wake up-the first time you really wake up-and people whom you don't know, people who are doctors and nurses, are all around you.
"You were in an accident," someone tells you, which you don't remember. You start to cry a little because it's scary.
One, a young one, with green eyes and pretty brown hair, and freckles across her nose, a nurse, you think, stands closet to your head. She brushes aside your bangs with wonderfully gentle features, offers a small, comforting smile.
You try to formulate words to the frantic questions hammering your morphine-clouded brain. Your throat feels like sandpaper and your chest aches. "How long have-"
She shakes her head gently. "You've just been asleep a day or so."
This is moderately comforting. "Am I-"
A doctor cuts you off by asking, "Quinn, can you feel this?"
"Feel what?"
It's then that you see his pen pressed into the nail bed of your big toe.
It's then that you realise you cannot feel your legs.
.
The next time you wake up, Brittany and Santana are there, along with your mother. You immediately start crying-weeping-when you remember earlier.
Miraculously, Brittany manages to weave around the various IVs and tubes and wires connected to you and wrap you in a gentle hug, kissing your forehead.
This you feel, and it is a wonderful thing.
.
Your father comes, and when you see him from just outside the open door, when you watch his eyes get big and shiny-your eyes-and his fingers come up to his mouth, his shoulders slump in grief, you immediately pretend to be asleep.
He walks slowly into your room, and sits in one of the chairs Santana and Brittany had left squished up against your bed from their visit earlier. He doesn't have the courage to take your hand, to hold it like everyone else-everyone else-in your life has, but he quietly cries.
If he knew you better, he'd know that you weren't actually sleeping-your heart rate on the monitor was much too fast. But that's just the thing: he has no idea.
.
You have to have another surgery after a CT scan shows your lung damage hasn't resolved as much as they'd hoped on its own. You're not nearly as scared as you probably should be, because you're really just in pain and you still can't breathe and you're so doped up on meds that everything is probably much worse for everyone around you.
But you make sure to tell everyone that you love them-love them. Just in case.
.
Word of the day: Caprice, n.: a sudden, unpredictable change, as of one's mind or the weather.
.
"Stop," you say. It's meant to sound stern and even bitchy, but it's mostly scratchy, nothing more than a whisper, really, and it's tired.
Rachel recoils, taking her hand from where it was absentmindedly cupping your hip. She sits up. "Was I hurting you? God, I'm so sorry."
You shake your head. "No. Stop looking at me like that." You gesture with a flutter of your hands.
Her brows knit together. "Like what?"
Amelie continues to play on your Mac propped up on the little table that comes over your bed. You close your eyes. "Like I'm going to break."
Rachel's breathing changes-you can feel it, like she's trying not to cry-and she lays back down beside you, cups your hip again. "But, Quinn," she whispers into your collarbone, "you did."
...
two. we burst into colours and carousels
.
On Friday night, everyone comes. They bring pizza and essentially throw themselves a party in your hospital room, cramming onto every spare surface and even spilling into the hallway.
You fall asleep surrounded by an array of colours and smells and Kurt's soft humming near your ear, comforted by the pure notion that you're no longer alone.
.
Word of the day: Bandy, v.: to pass from one to another or back and forth; give and take.
.
Frannie comes, straight from the airport, dragging her suitcase, her purse hanging open on her shoulder.
"I would've been here sooner," she says, flustered, her cheeks red, running a hand through her short hair. There's still paint on the back of her left hand, little splashes of greens. "But I just found out like hours ago. Mom said she waited to tell me after they knew you weren't de-" she clears her throat- "after they knew you'd be okay. I would've been here though. I would've, Quinn, I-"
"-It's okay," you promise.
She doesn't know where to go, so you raise one eyebrow in the direction of a chair.
"They're really shitty parents," you say.
A strangled laugh escapes her throat and she kisses your knuckles as she sits down. "We're miracles, you and I," she says, then looks stricken, her eyes widening, her mouth opening slightly.
You smile at her and catch your bottom lip between your teeth and say, "Yes, we really are."
.
"Quinn?"
"Hmmm?" You're in that loose, warm state just before sleep, exhausted from physical therapy earlier (which merely consisted of you sitting up in a chair beside your bed for an hour, but still).
"Quinn?" Puck says again, louder this time.
"What?"
"Are you scared?" He puts his hand against your thigh, which you cannot feel at all.
"Of what?"
He shrugs.
"No," you say, then shake your head. "Yes."
His hand travels up your leg, and when it reaches just below your hip the sensation of his fingers becomes apparent. "You're allowed," he says.
You bring your hand to his, weave your fingers together, and squeeze.
He says, "I'm scared, too."
You don't promise anything, but instead you smile sadly and say, "I think it's fair for us to be scared together."
.
Mike and Tina bring you your homework-because they're in the most APs with you-and you tell Mike to tell your AP Calculus BC teacher that you had a really tough day, which you didn't, but you just hate math.
He laughs. "You can't have twelve rough days in a row."
"I got hit by a truck." Mike's face falls. You grin. "Of course I can."
He shakes his head a little with a smile, and you all talk about AP European History together and your upcoming paper due, and then, even though it's only 7:30, you start to fall asleep.
They say goodbye and give gentle, timid hugs, and you take out your English syllabus to fall asleep to. Your teacher, Mrs. Stafford, had changed it, Mike had told you. Instead of reading Heart of Darkness now, your class had been assigned Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
It almost makes you cry, this gesture, because you adore Sylvia Plath and Mrs. Stafford knows it. You check your email and she's sent you a short message with guidelines for your next essay. It's silent, but it's there, cesura: the white space, an implicit show of solidarity. Of love.
Only talented, disciplined poets knew how to properly use it.
She offers, and you understand this gesture.
.
"Remember when you had pink hair?" Santana asks.
"You had pink hair?" Frannie says, leaning forward in her chair, her eyes wide.
"It was cool," you say. "Really."
Santana quirks an eyebrow. Frannie starts laughing. "That's awesome," she says.
It makes you smile.
...
three. looking for heaven, for the devil in me
.
Driving home, right after you get released, you have to head by where it had happened. You duck your head into Frannie's chest and Rachel rubs your back because you shudder and it still hurts, but you work up enough courage to look out the window, if only for a moment.
Shiny, fragmented, fractured irrevocably, there is still glass on the road.
.
Rachel helps you get situated, into pajamas, ready for bed. She smiles and goes to leave, turns off the lights. For the few seconds you lay in your room alone in the dark, it's terrifyingly quiet compared to the beeps and white noise of the hospital you'd grown so used to.
"Rach?"
She's still there, just outside your door. "Are you okay?"
"Can you- it's too quiet."
She walks silently to your bed, climbs in. She nestles up against you-and the parts of you that still have functioning nerves are on fire-and starts singing Angus and Julia Stone quietly.
She's still there in the morning.
.
Word of the day: Expostulate, v.: to reason earnestly with someone against something that person intends to do or has done.
.
When you go back to school, Finn and Rachel don't hold hands.
.
After English, Mrs. Stafford asks you to stay for a few minutes. You wheel up to her desk and her eyes are so sad.
"I just wanted to say that we missed you-I missed you-and I'm very glad you're-" she pauses, stuck on whether all right and alive are nearly the same thing.
But you smile and say, "Me too."
You pull one wheel against the other to leave and then she says, "Quinn." You twist towards her. "Your Sylvia Plath piece was excellent."
"Thank you," you say.
She shakes her head. "Promise me you'll be a writer someday."
You take a deep breath, because it needs to be true. "I will."
.
On the first day of spring, you go outside. It's a Saturday morning and you hum Cults and it's sunny and you just marvel at the life still so painfully and fabulously filling you.
You sit in your wheelchair on the front porch for a while, reading Emerson, and the sun starts to creep towards you. It feels wonderful and gentle against your legs, warm and new, and you just close your eyes for a moment in it.
And then you realise that you feel it, and you drop the book and try to breathe and take one shaking finger and poke your thigh.
It's like tiny pinpricks, like your leg's been asleep, but it's there. You let out a whoop of joy that causes your mother to come rushing outside, concerned.
You manage to cry and laugh messily at once. "I felt it! I felt it!"
When her knees knock against yours as she wraps you in her arms, you feel that too.
...
four. anything can happen, child, anything can be
.
Frannie comes for a weekend to visit again, and you're making slow (achingly slow) but steady progress in physical therapy, more strength and feeling returning to your legs everyday.
You go out for coffee after Rachel drives you to pick her up from the airport (she and Santana are the only people you'll ride with), and after she parks, she goes to the trunk and takes out a walker.
Frannie's almost in tears when you manage to make it into the cafe, your entire body exhausted but satisfied.
You manage to have enough strength to walk out, too.
You nap for the entire afternoon, but Frannie's there, grinning like an idiot, when you wake up. All in all, you're pretty sure it was worth it.
.
Word of the day: Transmogrify, trans. v.: to transform.
.
You and Frannie are in the living room, where she's telling you all about her life in San Francisco, about her boyfriend and her art, and she's so adamant that you'll find the same intense happiness at Yale and then after that, too, when the doorbell rings.
She gets up and answers it, and Puck calls, "Quinn! Someone's here to see you!" and then you can hardly contain your excitement.
He walks in and Shelby follows with Beth, with the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, and Frannie follows them all, a hand to her mouth, her eyes shiny, her dimples peeking out from behind her fingers.
Beth lights up when she sees you, and Shelby places her in your lap. "Hi," you say, trying not to cry yourself.
Beth has the same dimples as your sister when she smiles, and she takes her tiny hands and puts them on either side of your face. You wonder fleetingly if she knows she looks just like you.
"Quinn," Frannie whispers, reverent, "Quinn."
You nod, and Frannie sits beside you and reaches out her arms, and Beth squeals with delight at a new admirer. "This is Frannie," you tell Beth, even though she can't really understand you quite yet.
Shelby adds, "Your aunt," and you're curious in that instant why your heart hasn't burst and bled all over your chest.
Frannie cries into Beth's soft blond curls, and Puck kisses the side of your head, and for the first time in a very, very long time, you feel different.
...
five. i've got nothing left inside of my chest but it's all alright
.
Word of the day: Salutary, adj.: beneficial; also, healthful.
.
Artie takes you to a skatepark, practically begs you to come with him, even though you've now gotten strong enough to only need your wheelchair on days when you have to walk a lot (like school, for instance, or really most things).
But you agree, and Sam and Mercedes and Mike and Tina come too, and Artie presents you with a turquoise helmet when you get there.
It's absolutely ridiculous, you're sure, perched on your head, squishing your hair down, but then Artie gives you a pair of racing gloves and Mike holds the handles of your chair and then it's almost like you're flying, up and down the ramps.
You scream with terror but also with joy.
At lunch, your take one of Sam's fries and pop it in your mouth and say, "I have twenty-four scars."
They don't talk-they don't make a sound-but you look at them and then say, "And this morning I didn't think about any of them."
They all seem to know exactly what this means.
.
Emma calls you into her office one day. She sits behind her impossibly straight desk, smiles at you. "How are you dealing with everything?" she asks.
"Fine."
"Would you like to talk about anything in particular? No pressure," she adds, "but I'm here if you need someone."
You take a deep breath and then nod once. "Sometimes I'm scared of hurting."
"Hurting what?"
You shake your head. "No. Hurting. Everything hurts still sometimes."
"Oh, Quinn," she breathes.
"But I think William Faulkner was right," you say.
"What?"
You bite your bottom lip. "He said that, given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, he would choose pain."
Emma's already wide eyes grow wider.
"I've known both," you continue, "and it's so much better to know that you're hurting when you should."
Emma nods.
"And also being scared isn't always a bad thing," you say.
Emma smiles slightly. "Are you going to major in philosophy at Yale?"
You laugh. "English, I think."
Emma says, "I think that sounds perfect."
You very much agree.
.
Santana sits with you in the waiting room, attempting to beat you at Words With Friends on your (new) phone.
Of course, you're winning (granted, you read the dictionary for fun), which seems to frustrate her, which makes you smile.
A nurse calls your name-you have to go in every few weeks to see some different specialist for some different checkup-and you slowly follow her to the small clinic room.
Today's checkup is with a pulmonary specialist-for your lungs-so you know to take your shirt off, leaving exposed the scar from just below your left shoulder blade, across your ribs, ending just before your left breast. "Don't cheat," you tell Santana, handing her your phone.
"Me?" Her eyes grow wide in mock-surprise. "Never."
The doctor comes in a few minutes later and puts his cold stethoscope against the end of your scar on your back, and tells you to breathe.
You relish the oxygen that goes into your lungs (what's left of them, at least: you're missing the lower lobe of your left lung), and the doctor nods and scribbles a few things on your chart down before smiling up at you.
"You're making remarkable progress," he tells you.
You smile. "Breathing became one of my priorities."
He and Santana both laugh. It's funny, but you really are serious.
...
six. i sing and am rewarded by people who listen. this is why i am a poet
.
You ask Mr. Schue if you can sing a solo three weeks before you're going to graduate.
He nods very seriously and very happily and says, "I've been waiting for you to ask."
.
Word of the day: Sacrosanct, adj.: sacred, inviolable.
.
The next day, you stand (and this is important, this is an act, this is agency), you sing Birdy's cover of "Shelter" by The xx, and you may or may not actually make it through the entire thing before you lose yourself completely.
You sing to everyone. Everyone.
When you finish, not a second goes by before Brittany is squishing you in a tight hug and Rachel is wiping your tears and Puck is kissing the top of your head and Mercedes is cheering.
Moments have given you life. This is one of them.
.
You stand to give your speech as Valedictorian, clinging to the podium more because you're nervous than weak. Frannie is there, pale and blond and beautiful, with the man you're sure she's going to marry, Robert, whom you've found to be wonderful.
Just before you go, you take a deep breath and find Rachel's smiling face in the crowd.
.
Being brave is about not stopping, about never giving up. It's doing the right thing for the right reasons. It's loving, really, letting it in and, more than anything, giving it away as freely as the air we breathe.
.
You vow to never stop making beautiful things. Words are important, you know, and for you they are sacred. Saying them correctly, then-singing them, sometimes-is an act of love. An offering up of yourself, for everyone to know and hold and cherish.
You hope they know how much you mean them.
You think they do.
...
seven. after this, i should think nothing of falling down the stairs
.
You spend the few weeks after school ends mostly sleeping. It feels like you haven't done this in absolutely forever, although you did spend almost an entire month not that long ago mostly conked out on pain meds.
This is different, though. You end up falling asleep with Santana and Brittany before the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban even though it's absolutely your favorite one. You fall asleep at Shelby's one night, curled up against Puck after you put Beth to bed. You fall asleep tanning with Kurt (which hurts later, but not too badly). You fall asleep with Rachel most of all, lulling off whenever you watch Funny Girl or My Fair Lady or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
It's not that you haven't slept, it's just that for the first time in years, you feel young. You feel safe.
.
You dream a lot.
.
Babysitting one night, Beth whacks you on the head with a rattle. It hurts, and it makes your eyes water, but Puck starts laughing and then Beth starts laughing, which is just so wonderful you have to join in.
.
Kurt and Blaine agree to go swimsuit shopping with you, because Santana and Brittany are out of town and you're going to visit Frannie in a week in San Francisco and you can't find any of your old ones.
You try not to have a breakdown in the dressing room-you'd even sort of planned for this feeling-when you put on a pretty yellow bikini that lays bare all of the vivid slashes against your skin.
It invariably happens, though, and you sit on the floor and put your head in your hands, the air hot and moving with each silent sob that passes through your chest.
Kurt knocks and you crawl to open the locked door, and he instantly takes you into his arms and just holds you.
After an indeterminate amount of time in which you manage to calm down only because you exhaust yourself, you look up at Kurt. He's been crying too, although you hadn't noticed before.
"We're a mess," you say, sniffling with a little laugh.
He smiles then, nodding. "No one will care, you know. About your scars."
You close your eyes.
"Because you're beautiful, Quinn. Beautiful and lovely and young and wonderful. Those don't change anything."
You whisper, "Thank you."
He shakes his head, stands, offers his hand, helps you up. "It's just the truth."
For a wonderful moment, you believe him.
.
Word of the day: Salad days, n.: a time of youthful inexperience, innocence, or indiscretion.
...
eight. if your heart wasn't such an ocean, i wouldn't sink like a stone
.
It surprises you, the way Rachel starts crying so powerfully in the middle of your hairdresser's. You were just getting a trim-really, you promised-and you were just going to go to lunch after your appointment, but then she starts sobbing, loudly, in the chair next to the one you're sitting in.
You look at her and then your hairdresser looks at her and then at you, and your eyes are wide and you shrug. "Rach?" Half of your bangs are cut, your hair still wet, but you get out of the chair quickly when she doesn't stop, wrapping her up as best you can with the cape still on. "Hey, hey, Rachel."
"It was my fault," she mumbles. "It was."
"It wasn't."
She meets your eyes, hers determined. This is the first time she'd talked about it. "I knew you were driving."
"So did I. And I still texted you back."
She shakes her head.
You quirk an eyebrow. "I chose to text and drive, Rachel. I chose it."
"Quinn-"
"I'm threatening hair rebellion if you don't believe me."
Her head snaps up and she glares at you then, and you bite your lip to fight back a smile. "You wouldn't," she breathes.
You sit back down in the chair. "Watch me."
"Quinn, if you-"
"-Puck and I could match," you tell her.
Rachel starts to cry again, softly this time, in frustration. "You can't go to Yale with a-a mowhawk," she sputters.
You shrug. "Why not?"
"Because you just can't."
"Then believe me."
She crosses her arms defiantly. "No."
"Fine," you say, turning back towards your hairdresser. "A super cool mowhawk," you instruct.
"Quinn, okay!"
"Say it."
"I believe you. I believe you, okay? But it wasn't your fault either," she adds quietly.
"I can work with that."
Rachel rolls her eyes. "Sometimes I really hate you," she says.
You laugh and tell your hairdresser, "Just a trim."
.
Word of the day: Extricate, v.: to free or release from a difficulty or entanglement.
.
Later that day, you lay out on towels by the pool in your backyard. You rest your head against Rachel's stomach and she runs her fingers through your hair.
"Would you have really gotten a mowhawk?"
You laugh. "Honestly, I have no idea. That's weird, isn't it?"
Her giggle makes your head bounce against her stomach. "Maybe you're just irrationally brave." It comes out more seriously than you'd expected, and your breath catches.
"Maybe," you whisper.
You exist in silence for a few minutes before she says, "No matter what, you would look beautiful."
...
nine. it's only that i still love you deeply, it's all the love i've got
.
San Francisco is fantastic. Even more enticing than the city, though, is your sister, and her happy smile upon seeing you at the airport, and her tiny apartment in the Mission, and her restaurants and concerts and art museums.
There is a whole world out there for you, too, and she helps you understand that.
"The most important thing," she tells you one night over shared souffle and the best, darkest cup of French roast you've ever had, "the most important thing, Quinn, is to love yourself. Everything about you."
You study her fingers.
"Because other people already do. We love every single fucking cell that you are. And once you get that, nothing will ever stop you again."
.
Rachel and Santana and Brittany help you pack after your last (ever, maybe) physical therapy session. You can't believe all of the weird crap you find, all of the different people you were during the past few years. In a corner of your desk drawer, you find red ribbon for your Cheerio's ponytail, and tucked away as a bookmark in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends are two hospital bracelets: one from when you'd given birth to Beth and one from your accident. At the bottom of your underwear drawer your nose ring is wrapped around a lock of pink hair (which, drunkenly, one night, you'd chosen to save, apparently).
Santana laughs and looks at you perplexedly. "Have you finally settled on something?"
You shake your head and smile slightly. "I think I like this Quinn for now."
"Good," Rachel says, wrapping her arm around your shoulders, "because I do too."
.
Word of the day: Brobdingnagian, adj.: gigantic, enormous.
.
"Rachel?"
"Hmmm?"
"I love you."
She smiles in the hum of the streetlight, the facsimile of grass crackling under your feet as you walk her home. "I love you, too."
You think of Whitman and Pound and Neruda and Cummings and Ginsberg and Keats and Dickinson, and you still have no words to say. You can't remember ever being speechless before.
"New York really isn't that far from New Haven," Rachel offers.
"No," you whisper, "it's really not."
...
ten. fragility, the way i just keep waking up
.
At Yale orientation, the first night, for some reason you missed, some girls in your group start talking about driving.
You still haven't, not since the accident, and it's still even hard to just ride in cars. When you tell them you don't drive, they ask why, and you take out your phone and show them pictures of your car from after the accident, its roof caved in, the windows gone, twenty feet off the road, glass and blood (your blood) everywhere. You still don't remember the accident, which is probably a good thing. You tell them, "I got really, really hurt. Like I'm missing part of my lung and I couldn't walk for months afterwards."
One girl, Norah, with long, light brown hair and green eyes, whispers, "How did you survive that?"
When you look at the pictures you have a hard time believing it yourself. "I'm still not sure," you say.
.
Frannie Skypes you. You're almost asleep when you hear her call, bundled in a gigantic Yale sweatshirt you'd coerced from some drunk frat guy the night before because it was freezing outside, and she practically jumps up and down with excitement when your face pops up on screen.
"Did you know that every seven years of your life, your body will have completely regenerated itself?" she asks.
"Nope," you say, amused.
"It's true."
"I believe you."
She bites her bottom lip and her dimples appear and then she says, "I'm engaged."
You wish you could hug her, but you settle on shouting and crying a little and then putting your hand up to the screen.
She laughs at your reaction and shows you the ring and then says, "I know you're really busy with school and everything, but we're not going to get married until next summer, and I know that you're not really into weddings, and I get that, but you're my sister and I just really- will you be my maid of honor?"
"Of course!" you say, and, for as much as that had almost cost you your life before, this feels wonderfully different. You put your fingers to where Frannie's cheek is on the screen and you're so full of life that you imagine you can feel her.
She's perfect, she really is.
.
When Rachel comes to visit you, it's windy. The leaves twirl around and her hair whips across her face. She'd fallen asleep with you last night, crammed into your tiny dorm bed. You've tried to consider waking up each morning since the accident a miracle, but this was something you'd marveled at especially reverently, her arm over your waist, her chin pressed to your collarbone, her lips ghosting breath on your neck.
You walk to get breakfast this morning, to the coffee shop you already love because they have live readings all of the time and also good coffee.
You both love school, for different but the same reasons. Rachel gets to star in Les Mis, the first show of the semester at NYADA, and you got to write your first paper on Godard's inclusion of William Faulkner in A bout de souffle (which you got an A on, you tell her with an indulgent smile).
She takes your hand, which is one of the only things in the world that makes you know you are absolutely solid.
"We got out," she whispers.
"Yeah," you say, "we did."
.
You decide you will grow up to write things that make people cry, that will make people wake up in the morning and marvel at the fact that they are alive. You will say things that make people want to go outside and just feel the sunlight, or hear their child laugh, or watch people they love be happy.
You decide you will be a real person, you will be something, you will be a full-fledged thing. You will be Quinn Fabray, and you will learn to love your scars because they are why you're alive and why you are this being, full of marrow and blood and lungs and a thumping, pounding heart.
You will love someone who will love you back forever, who will tell you things like I fancy you, someone who will appreciate your British accent and ability to recite a vast number of erotic poems, someone who reminds you of childhood and of tomorrow, someone who makes you laugh and lets you cry, who will kiss your scars with lust and reverence. You will love someone who will dream as passionately as you have learned you do, as enormously.
You will find this person, you're sure of it, because maybe you already have. You will fight for them with every cell you are, and you will never, ever let them go.
.
Word of the day: Ab ovo, n.: from the beginning.
...
References (and yes, I love these too):
title: "Thought of You", directed and animated by Ryan Woodward.
one. Cien Sonetos de Amor by Pablo Neruda.
two. "Starry Eyed" by Ellie Goulding.
three. "Shake It Out" by Florence and the Machine.
four. "Listen to the Mustn'ts" by Shel Silverstein.
five. "All Alright" by fun.
six. The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me by Sherman Alexie.
seven. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
eight. "So Far from Me" by Brett Dennen.
nine. "Age of Adz" by Sufjan Stevens.
ten. Excerpt from an interview with model Emily Wroe.