But Emma. There was Emma. Maybe it wasn’t so strange, what we could have. Maybe I could stay for a while and love her and then go home. But no. By the time I wanted to leave, it would be too late. She was a siren. I had to be strong.
War is a germ that can rarely be contained.
It was a strange and sour thing to know that such hatred had been directed at me.
You could never understand what it’s like, being this close to death all the time. And.
I should warn you: this is an ambrosia den, and there’ll be peculiars in there who are lit out of their minds. Don’t talk to them, and whatever you do, don’t look them in the eye. I know people who’ve been blinded that way.
If my body was cold in the night mist, I didn’t feel it. If the sea roared in my ears, I didn’t hear it. If the rock I sat on was sharp and jagged, I hardly noticed. Everything outside the two of us was a distraction.
We’re peculiar,” he replied, sounding a bit puzzled. “Aren’t you?
I think they worried that my grandfather would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I’d never recover.
That was our friendship: equal parts irritation and cooperation. The cooperation part was an unofficial brains-for-brawn trade we’d worked out in which I helped him not fail English and he helped me not get killed by the roided-out sociopaths who prowled the halls of our high school.
I knew then that, from now on, every word that passed between us would hurt, would be wrapped up with and marked by the pain of this moment, and that I needed to pull away now or it would never stop. So I nodded sadly, hugged her one more time, and retreated to a corner to sleep, because I was very, very tired.
That was our friendship: equal parts irritation and cooperation... That he made my parents deeply uncomfortable was merely a bonus... He was, I suppose, my best friend, which is a less pathetic way of saying he was my only friend.
Nowhere am I deadlier than in a field of wildflowers.
Even here – running for our lives, sleeping exposed, facing death – even here, in her arms, I was able to find some measure of peace.
There were more like her, which meant that – perhaps – peculiar society could be made a safer, saner place, no longer ruled by the shortsighted whims of prideful men.
I haven’t known you too long, but I feel I know your heart, and it’s a strong, true thing – a peculiar heart – and I trust you.” She.
We are echolocators,” Joel-and-Peter said. They were also, apparently, very sharp of hearing.
Holmes says that “a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use” – and little else.
Inside, neatly arranged and labeled, were a carved coconut husk, a whale vertebra fashioned into a comb, a small stone axe, and a few other items, the usefulness of which wasn’t immediately obvious. A placard on the glass read Housewares Used by Peculiars on the Island of Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, South Pacific Region, circa 1750.
We all scooted closer on our stools, like it was story-time in some morbid kindergarten.
One of the peculiar children’s perspective out of time allows him to take minute interest in every resident of the town and to chronicle everything we did for the entire day he lives over and over.