Nothing had changed. I was the stupid one again. I was the girl who never understood who she was to people.
Going into the woods alone is the best way to pretend you’re in another time. It’s a thing you can only do alone. If there’s somebody else with you, it’s too easy to remember where you really are.
I had no idea how greedy my heart really was.
My mother gave me a disappointed look. Then I gave her one back. Mine was for everything, not just the sandwich.
The bed was warm and ordinary and perfect, and it had been such a long, long day. Probably the longest day of my life. I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.
There was something so lonely about that moment, everyone around me completely involved in this thing I wasn’t a part of, me with nowhere to go.
None of those things should have mattered, but I guess they did. I guess they were like water. Soft and harmless until enough time went by. Then all of a sudden you found yourself with the Grand Canyon on your hands.
But being a monk is just one more impossible thing, like traveling to the past or having Finn here forever, because to be a monk you’d have to be a man and you’d also have to believe in God, neither of which was ever going to happen. I don’t think God would create a disease just to kill people like Finn, and if he did, then there’s no way I’d ever even consider worshipping him.
Greta always wanted to know everything. Every little detail. But I understood. You can ruin anything if you know too much.
And I suddenly understood that getting drunk was just one more way to leave this place, this time.
That’s one of those snapshot moments. I don’t know why some memories are like that, where everything is perfectly preserved. Frozen.
Yeah, okay. I’ll drop it,” I said, and although I held it back with every muscle in my body, what I really wanted to do was cry. Not only because Finn had never told me about this guy, but because there was no way to ask him about it. And until then I don’t think I really understood the meaning of gone.
I didn’t know how to seal a promise with a dead person.
Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart.
Who could resist the two of us all squashed into one beautiful person, right?” He smiled.
I was afraid he wouldn’t remember the joke. I always remember jokes, but some people forget right away and then I end up looking like a weirdo for still remembering something so small.
I told my mother he looked like a deflated balloon. Greta said he looked like a small gray moth wrapped in a spider’s web. That’s because everything about Greta is more beautiful, even the way she says things.
Beauty parlor was a game was used to play when we were little, when we were still best friends.
Heart. Hard Heart,′ I said, not sure where it came from. ‘The hardest heart in the world.’... ‘The question is, stone or ice? Crack or melt?
That’s the difference between you and Greta. She has better things to do. She gets involved in clubs, activities. She has friends. But you? You slump around in that room of yours –.