Re: Cass & Mat: the Quiet Home
"Forever," Cass said, steadily. She understood the rules here now well enough. Regret, sham-acted well enough to star on a Broadway stage or incubated in the soul until the truth was a vanishing line, a horizon that swept itself away beneath the gray dreariness of perpetual self-flagellation. "Or you give up, I think. It's an alternative to jail," she explained, as if it did explain things.
Rich people avoided the sensations of the real world that rushed to embrace them. But you could dull a knife's edge only so long, you couldn't avoid consequences. Particularly those wreaked by another rich person, savage for blood. "They drug you until you don't notice, I think."
But she turned, slight body in nothing-colored scrubs and led the way through halls, the ends of her hair washed dull gold-green and trailing her shoulderblades, overgrown. They passed an orderly, who stopped to look in Matilda's direction and Cass cocked her head, curious to observe other things in action.