Her world fragmented into dozens of sharp cutting shards shedding the salty blood and saltier tears that ringed the bitter cocktail of her despair. She was caterpillar and butterfly both caught in a cocoon of raw nerves and open sores she was insanity wrapped up in the thin transient wrappings of a temporary lucidity and she was afraid because an innate desire lay in the bottom reaches of her psyche for the very poison that was killing her.

Her eyes were of different colors the left as brown as autumn the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old or thereabouts her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God it seemed had withheld that possibility as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touchedby genius by madness by the Devil or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever. p.33

Gavin I cant talk to you here. People will call me crazy.My imaginary friend smirked. But youre already talking to me.Well I have to stop.His smirk grew cocky. I doubt you can resist.And he was right. There was nothing I wanted more than to give my full attention to an imagined shadow and ignore those who ignored me in the real world. I wanted to talk out loud to Gavinto play and laugh boisterously with him. In a dream I could justify such behavior but to succumb to hallucinations while wide awake would only prove me insane.