But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn’t succeed. That’s what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn’t do it.
Why don’t you ever wait a second and see what I’m planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a chance.
You can’t act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.
Just me and the future, finally together. Now there was a happy ending I could believe in.
He’s getting dumped. And he doesn’t even know it yet. He’s probably eating a cheeseburger or flossing or picking up his dry cleaning, and he has no idea. No inkling.
Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.
If he’d been any other boy, and this was any other world, I would have kissed him. Nothing could have stopped me.
It passed, though. That was the bad thing. It always passed.
In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.
During the long stretches of quiet two-lane highway, with the sun setting in the distance, it was somehow easier to say things aloud, and regardless of what was said, we just kept moving toward that horizon.
As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.
I’d seen another shade of him, and if it had been light where we were now, he’d have seen the same of me. So I was grateful, as I had been so often in my life, for the dark.
As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.
Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.
Her life was perfect. But as was often the case, the rest of us were still adjusting.
You know the minute you stop thinking about it, it’ll happen.
Despite our differences, we did have a history. No one understood where I was coming from the way he did.
It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus.
I didn’t trot my pain out to show around. I kept it better hidden than anyone. I did.
It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities.