Zhenya is feeding on her own anger like a spider.

at the edge of rupture

Clean-shaven, ascetically skinny, slouching slightly.

Fear is a projection of danger ... genuine or imagined.

Like an almost-empty can of dry peas, words that meant nothing rolled around-back and forth along the wires. With every word, the distance between Sasha and her mother stretched farther and farther; they had nothing to say to each other anymore, they could not hear each other, not a single sincere word between them . . .