One of the first questions I get about the skeleton is... is it real? Usually they’re plastic, but this one is the real deal. It was a private donation to the academy, and every year, someone attempts to steal it. It is alarmed. Don’t steal the skeleton. His name is Mr. Nelson. Be nice to Mr. Nelson. – Pix.
No moose,” Stevie said. “The moose is a lie.
Something in the room had changed. My hand was on the floor, next to Stephen, but he wasn’t as close to my hand as he had been. He had moved several inches over, toward the table. Just as I realized this, his arm shot out for the knife. In the next moment, he had rolled up on his knees and had Sadie caught in the crook of his arm. His face was pale, and he looked a bit shaken by the sudden movement. He was alive.
I always wanted stories to be real, so I started writing my own.
It just seemed like telling the truth would mean admitting some weakness.
The whole thing smelled like a thrift shop that had been baked in a low oven and felt like a too-tight and too-long hug by a rejected Muppet.
Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for.
Games are not fun when you don’t know you’re playing.
Knowledge is the heaviest weight of all.
Oh my God,” he said. “What are you, a saint or something?” “I stole this mug,” she said. “So, no. Besides, if the school closed down, you’d have to go home and finish your book or something. I did it for you. I’m not even telling anyone else. I mean, aside from my friends. Like you.” “Are you trying to make me have an emotion?” Nate said, his eyes reddening a bit. “Because I’ve spent my whole life learning how to repress and deflect and you’re kind of ruining my thing.
The expression is: a boy’s best friend is his mother. It’s not: a boy’s best pimp is his mother. It is that way for a reason.
That particular April day was strange and foggy, blurring spaces between the trees and blanketing all of Ellingham in a milky mist. Dottie decided that the weather lent itself to a mystery. Sherlock Holmes would be perfect.
England and Britain and the United Kingdom are not the same thing. England is the country. Britain is the island containing England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom is the formal designation of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as a political entity. If you mess this up, you will be corrected. Repeatedly.
My moose,” she said in a low voice. “I finally got it. The universe paid me in moose.
Dawn broke over Ellingham Academy in a swirl of rose pink going into a bloodless blue. Stevie watched the newly risen sun come up over the Great House like a celestial game of peekaboo.
How could she be anxious when everything was so cheerful? Very easily, as it happens. Brain chemistry doesn’t care about how pretty things are.
Before she could answer, the waiter sprang at his chance to brush some crumbs from David’s chair. He had been hanging around their table like a vulture, waiting for them to eat the last papadum crumb so he could take away the basket. He eyed the last piece sadly, as if it were the barrier between him and eternal happiness. Ginny grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth. The man looked relieved and took the basket but immediately returned to stare mournfully at their water glasses.
Stevie had often wondered how these conversations worked, when people talked about feelings and touching and all of the stuff she thought was meant to be kept carefully bottled inside her own personal apothecary. Now someone wanted in, to take the lids off the vials, to peer at the contents. Stevie was unaware that people were even allowed to talk about emotions this frankly. This was not how things happened at home.
Panic attacks are mean little freaks.
David had, in fact, done the Sherlock thing that Stevie had dismissed for herself, specifically, the BBC one. He was wearing a sharply cut blue dress shirt, slender, tailored pants, and a long gray-black coat with a red interior. He had teased out his hair a bit and made sure it curled. In many ways, it was a perfect costume while not being a costume at all. And it was obviously intentional, directed at her.