I glide under a sky so blue, so purple, so golden I fight as hard as anything to keep my eyes open, because I want to remember it forever, however long that lasts. Because I know it’ll be the last thing I see.
I thought I had escaped the monsters, that I’d left them locked up behind an electric fence. But the shadows were alive, and they had chased me here.
Stop trying to make me feel better,” Sophia ordered. “It won’t work. I’m determined to be angry and guilty about this for at least another two days, and then again when I’m punching your corpse.
Fire is calling my name. It is whispering words of encouragement, sweet things. It wants out, for me to fan the heat until it’s a vortex that can’t and won’t be stopped.
If each memory that drifted up were a star, I was standing at the center of a galaxy. Beneath vast constellations of lost smiles and quiet laughter. Whole, endless days of gray and brown and black that we’d spent with only each other to hold on to.
The worth is in the fight, not the conquest. Do not give up.
The rage flared up in me so fast, so strong, that I actually forgot to slap him.
No,” Chubs said, rolling his eyes. “I flew in on a cloud and came blitzing from the Heavens like a bolt of lightning on this kid.
There needed to be a distance. The one thing the past few weeks had driven into me over and over was the more you got to know someome, the more you inevitably came to care about him or her. The lines between you became blurred, and when the separation came, it was excruciating to untangle yourself from that life. Even if I had wanted to tell them, there was no way to put that kind of pain into words. No way to make them understand.
You gotta stand up and walk, Gem,” he said quietly, turning his back on them. “You have to walk out of here. Not just for them, but for yourself. Come on. You have to walk out of here on your own two feet. So I did.
I was looped in on your little romantic quest. The only way to get me out without it looking suspicious was to suggest that I come after you dumb asses, since I supposedly know your crappy personality so well.
Hey, this ship hasn’t sunk yet,” she said, tearing her gaze away from the museum. “We may have one sail, but we’re still going.
Chubs didn’t have to finish. I knew what I’d been when I’d found them: a terrified splinter of a girl who had been shattered a long time ago. I had nothing, and no one, and no real place to go. Maybe I was still broken and would always be – but now, at least, I was piecing myself back together, lining up one jagged edge at a time.
What I’m trying to get at is, as bad as everything seems, I think, life is good. It doesn’t throw you anything at us that we can’t handle.
There was something else that Hall used to say–that life itself was uncertainty, and the only remedy to its madness was to act boldly.
The new car’s a lot prettier than Lucy, my Sweet Caroline – she’s a newer sedan, and, if I’m being perfectly honest, is actually a little bit of a risk. She’s flashier than what I’d usually pick. I just couldn’t resist her gorgeous shade of ruby red.
Liam was a great many things, but mysterious and unpredictable weren’t included in that deck of cards.
That’s right, you get him, Mary. Don’t let him change the subject!
I walked until I lost the light from the fire pit, clawing at my T-shirt, trying to pull it away from my skin. It smelled like his room. Like evergreens and spice and old, decaying things. I pulled it over my head and threw it as hard and far as I could, and still – still – I couldn’t shake the smell. It was everywhere: my hands, my jeans, my bra. I should have run straight for the lake, or even the showers. I should have tried to soak his venom out.
A part of me wonders if it’s not what she went through that has shaped her into something so solid and strong, but the people who went through it with her.