stuffed-animals

Sister, why do you do that?""Do what?""Cage the animals at night?""Well..." She looked up and out through the barred window before answering me."We don't want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn't cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them.""But if somebody loved one them," I asked, "wouldn't it be a good idea to let them have one? To keep, I mean?""Yes, it would be. But not everyone would love them and take care of them as you would. I wish I could give them all away tomorrow." She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. "But I can't. My heart would break if I saw just one of those animals lying by the wayside uncared for, unloved. No, Jennings. It's better if we keep them together.

Patches don__ look it, but when attached to your soul they can get pretty heavy. They go over the holes in your soul, like when you patch a sock. When you have a hole in your soul, it__ because you__e hurting from something. I don__ know if you noticed, but that girl had a lot of holes.

Somehow her hula hoop had cut into the driver__ side door like the vehicle was made of cheese.

Because I am, just as you are you. We don__ always get to pick who we are, Shelly Wynn, but we can choose to celebrate it.

There__ nothing wrong with you at all. Sometimes people say or do things that are mean because there's something the matter with them. With Lydia, it seems there__ always something wrong with her.

She could spin it between her legs, skip with it, twirl it around her neck and transfer it from one arm to the other. Shelly hooped because she enjoyed it; it calmed her whenever she would have an argument or a bad day at school, and it also allowed her to think. Today, she needed to hoop more than ever.

Soon, all the children were chanting it. __o school! No school!

Aloha Oukou. It looked like your soul was escaping so I put you in a tree.

The shadow self is what lies beneath the makeup. It__ those ugly parts that you haven__ accepted about yourself. You hide those parts in the shadows until you__e ready._ Her face remained a haunting calm. __hen you realize the scars are who you are, that there was nothing wrong with you and that you were beautiful all along - that__ when you decide to take the makeup off.

It__ no big deal. It__ kind of like a tattoo. It won__ hurt, not too much, just a few stitches and it__l be all over. It__ really interesting how it__ done. You won__ believe where your soul hides. Go on, take a guess. Where do you think it is?

Lydia displays her right hand and instantly bathed the room with a blinding light. It lasted only a moment before it drew back into her palm. __ can fix you if you__e ever broken.

I__ afraid they__e not coming._ Abby said fearfully. __ur parents, our teachers _ everyone! They__e disappeared. That__ it. Lights out, Shelly. We__e on our own.

Shelly shook her head and made sure she had plenty of space so that she wouldn__ hit anything. As many times before, she kept the hoop close to her waist and then twirled it with small, tight bursts of speed. As the hoop gathered in momentum it started to give off a hum that soon took on a light blue illumination far brighter than the streetlamps. It was so bright, that it lit up the entire backyard.