Aurora is an intellectually precocious, depressed high-school senior at an existential crossroads, with a wounded heart and an intense inner conflict that leads to alienation, repression, sexual frustration and self-loathing. Aurelia is a nurturing, empathetic, emotionally sensitive, congenitally blind classmate who fast becomes her closest confidant. Together, these two special girls take solace in each other, cope with their respective challenges and ultimately find intimacy and fulfillment.

Steve’s breaking up with me was an emotional disaster. Luckily I had my family. My Dad even let me cry on his shoulder while I was wearing this smashing looking dress. “My dear,” he said, “you have us, and believe me, this is not the end of the world, even if it seems that way to you. While I now know how wrong Steve’s parents are, it appears that he will not stand up to them like you did to me. Most important, we all love you.”

He handed me a tissue to wipe away my tears. “By the way, that’s a very pretty dress, and you don’t want to get tear stains on it,” he said with a smile.

Vanilla Sky Part 1 by Bailey Summers

One of the only real femme things is my face…I’m a strawberry blonde so kind of baby faced and I keep my hair long…but the rest of me is…I’m five ten, one seventy almost and got too much size…too much shoulder from working as a contractors helper for my step dad.

I hate my body.

And not really looking like a girl gave people plenty of ammo at school to make my life hell. Pushed, shoved, kicked from behind…spit on. Getting yelled at and accosted by the preachy kids, prank calls, online torture…then the last straw was getting jumped by a crowd of kids…I was lucky some good Samaritan had showed up with a baseball bat. But the teachers didn’t do a thing with the stuff in school and the cops with the swarming attack…

Yeah well why wasn’t I pulled out of school?