A pause while my mother made high-pitched sisterly devotions of gratitude.
The questions that creep around at four thirty in the morning are not the kind that can be easily dismissed. You can beat them with a shovel, and they’ll just keep getting back up.
Fear can’t hurt you,” she said. “When it washes over you, give it no power. It’s a snake with no venom. Remember that. That knowledge can save you.
I still have a whopping bad case of what you call scag magnetism. I thought i had gotten rid of it there, but it looks like scary guys still materialize from thin air in my presence. They are drawn to me. I am the North Pole, and they are the explorers of love.
I could pretend, at least, and if I pretended long enough, maybe I could make it into a reality.
Before I take you into the beating heart of the story, let’s get one thing out of the way. I know from experience that when it comes up later, it will distract you so much that you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else I will tell you. My name is Jubilee Dougal. Take a moment and let it sink in.
It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.
English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.
Although it was very cold, he wore no coat. I think some English people think coats are for the weak.
It took about three minutes for the unassuming Waffle House to become the new offices of the law firm of Amber, Amber, Amber, and Madison. They set up camp in a clump of booths in the corner opposite from us. A few of them gave me an “oh, good, you are still alive” nod, but for the most part, they had no interest in anyone else.
Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.
She didn’t even notice right away that a small animal had come out from behind a nearby car and was slowly making its way toward the trash can she was standing near. She flipped through some old files in her mind, trying to come up with what this thing might be, and after a few seconds decided that – impossible as it seemed – it was a fox.
The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.
I had always assumed the weekend was a holy tradition, respected by good people everywhere. Not so at Wexford.
I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.
It was like the entire world was colluding to make me feel insane, and it was doing a really good job.
It was as if the news itself wanted to reassure me. Even Jack the Ripper himself had reappeared as part of the greeting committee.
The English play hockey in any weather. Thunder, lightening, plague of locusts... nothing can stop the hockey. Do not fight the hockey, for the hockey will win.
Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.
This kind of thing always amazed Ginny – people who just walked away from institutions. People who left school when they didn’t see the point. Aunt Peg had done that. Ginny knew she never would. That either made her someone who worked hard and finished things, or someone who didn’t have the guts to break away from the pack. Maybe both.
Stuart, who had just witnessed me go through an entire rainbow of emotions and experiences. There was parents-have-just-been-jailed me, stuck-in-a-strange-town me, insane-and-can’t-shut-up me, kind-of-snarky-to-the-strange-guy-trying-to-be-helpful me, breakup me, and the extremely popular jump-on-top-of-you-unexpectedly me.