“Can I go to bed?” I asked. Mom nodded. Dad didn’t say a word. After I exhaled the biggest breath in my life, I slid out of my chair and padded down the hall. Like a robot, I brushed my teeth, changed into my pajamas, and made for my bedroom. “No stories tonight,” I called down the hall to Mom. “I’m tired.” I didn’t know what they thought. I felt bad for them. I loved my parents to pieces, but all the questions they’d failed to answer had begun to add up. They should’ve known better.

They’d done everything possible to make me into a thinker, a hard worker, a doubter of universal truths. And finally it had turned against them.

–Darkness Between the Stars (Eaters of the Light Book 1) by J Edward Neill