an extended abridged quote because i'm still not done reading this book:
Older girls, like babysitters or a friend's sister in high school, were pedestaled beings with perfect jean jackets. They were white girls mostly. Close-talkers with side-swept bangs who never appeared too wowed by anything, because they had yet to and might never encounter what it means to be denied. I coveted their casual nature, believing their incuriosity was a sign of self-possession; of not harboring some secret longing to be seen. Seen alone, not in comparison or as other, or through the bewildering construction of compliments that seemed to only further other. [...]
Even their bad skin conveyed a type of beauty that desperately drew me in because it wasn't beauty alone. It was notional. What I perceived as built-in unhindered-ness. Like ripping and ruining one's clothes at one's pleasure. Drawing with ballpoint pen on the rubber sidewall of one's Converse--a truly satisfying motion, actually. It was things done just because. It was disinterest. Inconceivable amounts of it. How exquisite I thought it would be to not care.
