Karen Green sat on the floor in Ryan’s room, fingering the book the girls had made for Exene. It was filled with poems, abstract drawings rendered in black and red crayon, headless figures sketched in charcoal, and ironic phrases decrying the perversity of love and the dark abyss of a future they might not live to see.
The words scribed in their journal tended toward the morose and poetic. ‘Exene is light and life and beauty and pathos, guarding us at death’s door.’ Or flippant and immature: ‘Life’s gonna suck no matter what you do, so party while you can!’ But all of it was sincerely felt, streaming like fractured light from their bursting, expectant hearts.
From what she was able to glean from the journal, it seemed there was a divide between those kids who understood, who felt in thei
