The truth is that in our lives we are all going to encounter questions that should be answered, that deserve to be answered, and yet prove unanswerable.
She is close enough to me that I can see her, because even now there is the outward sign of visible light, even at night in this parking lot on the outskirts of Algoe. After we kiss, our foreheads touch as we stare at each other. Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness.
But once that string gets cut, kid, you can’t uncut it. Do you get what I’m saying?
Colder by the hour, more dead with every breath.
I could try to pretend that I didn’t care anymore, but it could never be true again. You can’t just make yourself matter, and then die, Alaska, because now, I am irretrievably different, and I’m sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice.
She has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin’s so pale she looks like she’s just broken dawn.
People are different when you can smell them and look up close, you know?
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it’s awesome.
They belong to their readers now, which is a great thing–because the books are more powerful in the hands of my readers than they could ever be in my hands.
Once you think a thought, it is extremely difficult to unthink it.
Tiny, the next time that you try to set me up with a girl with a secret boyfriend can you at least INFORM me that she has a secret boyfriend? Also, if you don’t call me back within five minutes, I’m going to assume you found a way back to Evanston. Furthermore, you are an asshat. That is all.
I don’t want to hear another negative word about cheerleaders. If it weren’t for cheerleaders, who would tell us when and how to be happy during athletic events? If it weren’t for cheerleaders, how would America’s prettiest girls get the exercise that’s so vital to a healthy life?
Breaking down that wall is the kind of story that might have a happy middle – oh, look, we broke down this wall, I’m going to look at you like a girl and you’re going to look at me like a boy, and we’re going to play a fun game called Can I Put My Hand There What About There What About There.
My stomach sank. JP had come so close. His immigrant parents had sacrificed so much.
C’mon Pudge. I’m teasing. You have to be tough. I didn’t know how bad it was – and I’m sorry, and they’ll regret it – but you have to be tough.
And then I was asleep. That deep, can-still-taste-her-in-my-mouth sleep, that sleep that is not particularly restful but difficult to wake up from all the same.
Daddy is trying really fugging hard to think of a not-terrifying reason why you’d wake Daddy up in the middle of the night to ask that fugging question. But no. No. Daddy does not have a match or a lighter.
I don’t really care how people read. I care if people read.
Being a person, I had come to realize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But people do not know how to be people unless and until they learn from other people.
A small olive-skinned creature who had hit puberty but never hit it very hard, Ben had been my best friend since fifth grade, when we both finally owned up to the fact that neither of us was likely to attract anyone else as a best friend.