“She’s a slob. She has this flower child gluttony about her. It’s a waste of energy,” Mel said without hesitating. “You get the sense that she wants the easy way out of everything.”

“That’s a pretty shallow extrapolation. Do tough people have to look tough?”

Mel fixed her eyes on Caroline. “If you look tough, you get treated a certain way and it helps you become what you want to be.”

“You want to be tough?”

“Hard, in fact. Immune to the whims of the body. And what weaknesses I have are my own business.” Mel turned away, and Caroline knew the conversation was over. Mel had such certainty. But she didn’t rant, she didn’t bluster. Caroline admired that. Mel somehow escaped being smug because she didn’t say more than she had to. Rants always make it seem as though the person ranting is desperately trying to convince himself of something. Or maybe the ranter becomes so interested in the rhetoric of what he is saying that convincing is beside the point. It is just about language and pattern and repetition. And the rush of words and adrenaline as it all spills out, exhausting any opposition with an overload of words. Mel was not evangelical in this manner.