home

The key to happiness is under the doorstep rug.

I used to play a game where I imagined that someone had abandoned me in a strange place & I had to find my way back home-I thought I could do it blind, the same way a lost dog might trek a thousand miles to return to its owner, relying on some mysterious instinct that drew the heart back to where it belonged.

A criminal always returns home.

I was a tourist in a bizarre land. I was home.

If you are going somewhere. Go, only if you're coming back.

Mom has reorganized the kitchen so that the one room that was everyone's room is foreign to me. My visits are punctuated with me whipping around, angrily demanding, "Where are the forks, WHY DID YOU MOVE THE FORKS?" and she has to calmly open the drawer on the other side of the kitchen as if she moved it just to ruin my life. I just found out where she puts the bowls and their new location feels like such a personal attack that I can barely talk about it without raising my blood pressure.

Even the worst things about Devonairre Street are better than the rest of the city.

Do it double, because some can't do it at all.

Alexa's face whitens. The coil of hair loosens itself from her finger. "You did it for me. You never fought back. Because you thought you were keeping me safe."I pull up my gaze to meet hers. "Yeah.""I--" It's a strangled, high-pitched sound, laced with shock and grief. Then she bites her lips shut. Her chin trembles, just once, before she turns away.

Actually, Jake said, isn't life what we make it, wherever we are, whenever we may be - wherever it is that we are?

I say to my sister, "I thought you were doing the things in our Dream Book. I was sure of it." "Why would I do that stuff without you?" "Because you could.""Well, you were wrong.

The only way to learn who you are is to leave home.

Something contracts in my chest. The air shifts, grows heavy and dense as mud. Alexa twists her hair around her finger and whispers, "Didn't you even try to escape, Charlotte?

My Keeper took everything from me: my home, my family, my voice. He made me powerless. But I'm home now. It may be split in two, but I have it back. My family may be broken, but I have it back. I have my voice back. I am not powerless anymore.

My sister has never not told me something before. We used to share every secret, every thought. While I was in the attic, it felt like we were forever far away. Now I'm with her again. We're so close that we're touching, but there's still a distance between us.

The only thing that gave me comfort in the attic was thinking about my family. Now I'm home, but it's not the home I imagined. Not the family I imagined. I'd convinced myself that they'd continued on with their happy, carefree lives without me, that they were doing it double, because I couldn't do it at all. I was wrong.

Each second of my four years, two months, and seven days in the attic dragged on forever, and nothing ever changed. But outside the attic, everything changed, and so violently fast. Destruction and devastation for all of us, whether we were in the attic or out.

Home isn't a place. It's not having a bed to come home to, or a yard, or a Christmas tree at the holidays. Home is the people who love you.