Carrie Emberlyn [extra Quality] -

The loneliness was the worst part. Dating was a minefield. The first date was fine—curiosity, compliments. The second date was a gentle interrogation. By the third, she would inevitably find a man reaching for her hair, a certain gleam in his eye. They didn't want her. They wanted the phenomenon. She was a magic trick, not a partner.

Carrie Emberlyn, the woman who had become a museum exhibit of one, finally had a visitor who wasn't there to stare at the glass case. He was there to open it. And for the first time, she didn't try to douse the flame. She let it flicker. Just a little. Just for him. And it felt, at last, less like a curse and more like a name. carrie emberlyn

He didn’t ask if it was natural. He didn’t call it fire hair. He just reached out, very slowly, and touched the tip of the strand that had formed the glowing question mark. It was cool to his fingers. The loneliness was the worst part

She fell in love with him in the stacks of a university library. He was showing her a book on lichen— yes, lichen —and he was so animated, so unapologetically excited about the symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga, that she felt a warmth spread from her chest. She looked down. A strand of her hair, the one above her left ear, had curled into a perfect, glowing question mark. She quickly tucked it behind her ear, her heart hammering. The second date was a gentle interrogation

Carrie felt a crack in the dam she’d built around herself.