Jeanette Toscano

“Are you all right?" he says
tentatively.
I am not all right. I was beginning to feel that I had finally found a place to stay, a place that was not so unstable or corrupt or controlling that I could actually belong there. You would think that I would have learned by now—such a place does not exist.
"No," I say.
He starts to move around the stone block, toward me. "What is it?"
"What is it." I laugh. "Let me put it this way: I just found out you're not the worst person I know."
I drop into a crouch and push my fingers through my hair. I feel numb and terrified of my own numbness. The Bureau is responsible for my parents' deaths. Why do I have to keep repeating it to myself to believe it? What's wrong with me?
"Oh," he says. "I'm . . . sorry?"
All I can manage is a small grunt.
"You know what Mom told me once?" he says, and the way he says Mom, like he didn't betray her, sets my teeth on edge. "She said that everyone has some evil inside them, and the first step to loving anyone is to recognize the same evil in ourselves, so we're able to forgive them.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant