Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [475]

I wish I could take a gun. I don’t own one and Dad won’t let me keep one of his in my room. I mean to try to grab one if trouble comes, but I may not be able to. It would be crazy to wind up outside with nothing but a knife and a scared look, but it could happen. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 475

Note

‘a knife and a scared look’ — the self-mocking precision of that pairing, the thing she’ll carry versus the thing she’ll be, lands harder than any description of danger. The paragraph’s flat conditional mood (‘but it could happen’) is the voice of someone who has already accepted a future her father hasn’t.