He stands there with me and murmurs into my hair and kisses the top of my head and lets me cry over losing another boy, a boy I loved better.
He passes beyond me and stops by the new girl. “Here,” he says. His voice is gentle, the voice of the old Alex, the Alex of my memories. “I brought you some water. Don’t worry. It’s clean.
As I lie there with the hurt driving through my chest and the sick, anxious feeling churning through me and the desire for Alex so strong inside of me it’s like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don’t care.
His easiness and self-assurance aggravate me, just like they did at the labs. It’s so unfair, so different from how I feel, like I’m about to have a heart attack, or melt into a puddle.
In the morning light the seagulls perched on the roof of city hall look like they’ve been coated in thick white paint; as they light up against the pale blue sky I think I’ve never seen anything so sharp and clear and pretty in my life. Rainstorms are incredible: falling shards of glass, the air full of diamonds.
I am tired of fighting, of hitting and being hit. This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors. It’s the upside-down nature of life.
Another day bleeds out on the horizon, red and pink and gold; staring up at the sky.
They told us that love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.
Above our heads, the stars flare and glitter and flash: thousands and thousands of them, so many thousands they look like snowflakes whirling away into the inky dark.
Something was wrong. People were shouting. Doors slammed. Footsteps echoed in the halls. Through the windows, she saw the zigzag pattern of flashlights cutting across the courtyard, illuminating silvery specks of rain and the stark-white statue of a man, reaching down toward the ground, as though to pluck something from the earth.
He has made no secret of the fact that he thinks it was a mistake to have rescued Julian and a liability to have him with us.
Perhaps it is not too late for revenge. Northeastern.
It’s like the smell of bread baking at Subway. You know it’s not the way nature or God intended it to smell, but something about it’s addictive.
I can see Alex watching us. He looks amused. I wish I had something to throw at him. I take Julian and swivel him around, so he blocks Alex from my view.
Everyone knows that only wishes that are kept secret will ever come true.
Only memory remains slippery and elusive. Memories won’t keep faith with you. They’ll go sliding away into the ravenous void of non-being. Memories must be staked to the back of something, swaddled in objects, wrapped around table legs.
I thought I would live forever too. – Before I Fall.
And kissing Kent, because that’s when I realized that time doesn’t matter. That’s when I realized that certain moments go on forever.
His calmness is infuriating.
They’re pretty subtle. Only a few dozen of them. I can see how you might not have noticed.