She wiped me off the face of her existence.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson is one of my favorite books. I'll write more about it when I do my BR post, but I just had to share this passage from it:

The last time she called me was six months ago, after I got out of the hospital for the second time. I'd been calling her four or five times a day, but she wouldn't pick up or call me back, until finally, she did.


She asked me to listen and told me this wouldn't take long.


I was the root of all evil, she said. A negative influence, a toxic shadow... She needed to move on with her life, redefine her boundaries, she said. I was the reason she cut classes and failed French, the cause of everything nasty and dangerous.


Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.


I was the reason she didn't run away freshman year. I was the reason she didn't eat a bottle of sleeping pills when her boyfriend cheated on her. I listened for hours when her parents yelled and tried to stuff her into a mannequin shell that didn't fit. I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them. I knew how much it hurt to be the daughter of people who can't see you, not even if you are standing in front of them stomping your feet.


But remembering all that was too complicated for Cassie. It was easier for her to dump me one last time. She turned my summer into a desert wasteland. When school started, she looked right through me in the halls, her new friends draped around her neck like Mardi Gras necklaces. She wiped me off the face of her existence.


My eyes start to water every time I read this. I feel like I am both Cassie and Lia, the betrayer and the betrayed.