He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the titanic. Somebody who’d be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old-blooded. Also cute.
You look like a protagonist.
Things she knew now, that she hadn’t known two hours ago: Park was covered with skin. Everywhere.
Ophelia was bonkers, right? And Juliet was what, a sixth-grader?
He looked exactly like a rat. Like the human being version of a rat. Like the villain in a Don Bluth movie.
And because I’m so out of control, I can’t help myself. I’m not even mine anymore, I’m yours, and what if you decide that you don’t want me? How could you want me like I want you?
Have you ever heard sculptors say that they don’t actually sculpt an object; they sculpt away everything that isn’t the object?
For the first time in weeks, Park didn’t have that anxious feeling in his stomach on the way home from school, like he had to soak up enough Eleanor to keep him until the next day.
There’s only of him, she thought, and he’s right here.
That’s because you ooze preemptive leave-me-alone death rays.
It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity thing felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.
He wished that they could go through life like this. That he could physically put himself between Eleanor and the world.
Levi was smiling. He kicked her chair again.
Levi’s smile broke free and devoured his whole face. It started to devour her face, too. Cath had to look away.
She didn’t have words for what Levi was. He was a cave painting. He was The Red Ballon. She lifted her heels and pulled him forward until his face was so close, she could look at only one of his eyes at a time. “You’re magic,” she said.
Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing you had to do to knock some sense into yourself? Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing that showed you which way was up?
He wound the scarf around his fingers until her hand was hanging in the space between them. Then he slid the silk and his fingers into her open palm. And Eleanor disintegrated.
She saw him after seventh hour in a place she’d never seen him before, carrying a microscope down the hall on the third floor. It was at least twice as nice as seeing him somewhere she expected him to be.
The first time he’d held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.
Nothing was dirty. With Park. Nothing could be shameful. Because Park was the sun, and that was the only way Eleanor could think to explain it.