There were always bullies, but the adults were still in charge. Now? Now the bullies rule. Different game, brother, a whole different game. We play by the bully rules now.
She almost cried out with relief when she saw the eyes of the boy who had never backed down. She saw the eyes of the boy who had first stepped forward to fight Orc and later Caine and Drake and Penny. She saw Sam Temple. Her Sam Temple.
It’s the beauty of light, don’t you see, Sam? It reveals, but it also distracts and blinds. It’s even better than darkness.
I am too perfect for Evening,” Adam volunteers. “But that’s all right.” He smiles shyly at Aislin. “I am not too perfect for Aislin.
I knew the eyes. I didn’t know the Kraut, but yeah, I sure knew that look. I see it when I look in the mirror, even now. If you stay too long in the war, it’s like your eyes try to get away, like they’re sinking down, trying to hide, wary little animals crawling into the cave of your eye socket.
Forgive. Forgive him and forgive yourself. And come back to the land of the living.
I hated the world. I hated what it did to gentle people.
This time he had seen it coming, like a monster in a slow-motion nightmare. This time he had seen it coming, like standing rooted on the railroad tracks, unable to jump aside.
Superpowers,” he said to himself, “don’t always make you a superhero.
Fantasies don’t have to make any sense,” he snapped. “That’s what makes them fantasies. They aren’t meant to be logical, they’re meant to keep you from losing your mind or panicking or wanting to kill yourself.
No. I believe in free will. I think we make our own decisions and carry out our own actions. And our actions have consequences. The world is what we make it.
We were girls, you see, not even women, just girls, most of us when we started. And the boys were just boys, not men, most of them. We’d only begun to live life, we knew little and understood less. We were unformed, incomplete. It’s funny how easy it is to see that now. If you’d called me a child three years ago when this started I’d have been furious. But looking back? We were children just getting ready to figure out what adulthood was all about.
Misery needed to believe in a better future.
Will you understand if I tell you that there are times when it is better to feel the pain yourself than to see it and hear it in another?
Albert wiped sweat from his forehead. “Quinn, why do you think people work hard? Just to get by? You think your folks worked just to get by? Did they buy just enough food? Or did they get just barely enough house? Or a car that barely runs?” Albert’s voice was urgent. “No, man, people like a good life. They want more. What’s wrong with that?
God forgive me for being a creep who starves people?” Diana suggested.
He started reading. He jumped from volume to volume, understanding only part of what he was reading, but understanding enough to follow another lead and then another. It was exactly like following hyperlinks, only slower, and with more lifting.
I think you should send Penny away.” When Caine started to object, Albert, finally evincing his impatience, raised his hand. “First, because Penny is a sick, unstable person. She was bound to cause problems, and she’ll cause more. Second, because what happened to Cigar turns everyone against you. It’s not just Quinn: everyone thinks it’s wrong. And third, if you don’t and if Quinn stands firm, this town will empty out.
Sadie was like that, one of those people untouched by trend or fashion, comfortable building her own world out of what she liked, from tunes and styles and reads that could be so ancient they were cobwebbed, up through to things so new they barley existed yet.
Both sides, parents and children, now saw the huge gulf that had opened between them.
Guilt is a parasite on the soul, a worm that begins small and grows, grows, feeding on every moment of fleeting happiness. It stabs at you when you laugh. It cuts when you recognize beauty, receive affection, experience joy. It reminds you at the very worst moments that you have done wrong and are not worthy of happiness.