- "believe what you want," she said, turning away and heading for the stairs. / but that was impossible and greta knew it. you could try to believe what you wanted, but it never worked. your brain and your heart decided what you were going to believe and that was that. whether you liked it or not.
- i stared out the car window and understood that i was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit.
- there's just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. it makes you believe you're special, even though you know you're not.
- there was no way to ask him about it. and until then i don't think i really understood the meaning of gone.
- i sat there watching the japanese chef with his high white hat frying our dinner and wondered what would happen to me withough finn. would i stay stupid for the rest of my life? who would tell me the truth, the real story that was under what everybody else could see? how do you become someone who knows those things? how do you become someone with x-ray vision? how do you become finn?
- i knew toby had stories. he had little pieces of finn i'd never seen. and the apartment. maybe there would be a chance to see the apartment again. my mother would call it scraping the bottom of the barrel. looking for the very last crumbs. my mother would call it being greedy, but i didn't care. if you think a story can be like a kind of cement, the sloppy kind that you put between bricks, the kind that looks like cake frosting before it dries hard, then maybe i thought it would be possible to see what toby had to hold finn together, to keep him here with me a little bit longer.
- i felt like i had proof that not all days are the same lenght, not all time has the same weight. proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.
- "whats the difference?" i asked cautiously. / "being a romantic means you always see what's beautiful. what's good. you don't want to see tge gritty truth of things. you believe everything will turn out alright." / i breathed out. that wasn't so bad. i felt the blood wase away from my face. / "well, what about you?" i dared to ask finn. "are you a romantic?" / finn thought about it. he looked right at me, squinting, like he was trying to see into my future. that's what it felt like. then he said, "sometimes. sometimes i am and sometimes i'm not."
- i guess the idea is that opposites attract, but i don't think that's what it's like in real life. i think in real life you'd want someone who was as close to you as possible. someone who could understand exactly the way you thought.
- i stared out the window for the rest of the journey. building, tree, car, car, van, wall, vacant lot, van. i stared hard, trying to find a pattern. thinking if i kept looking hard enough maybe the pieces of the world would fit into someting i could understand.
- nothing had changes. i was the stupid one again. i was the girl who never understood who she was to people.
- i like the word clandestine. it feels medievel. sometimes i think of words being alive. if clandestine were alive, it would be a pale little girl with hair of the color of fall leaves and a dresss as white as the moon. clandestine is the kind of relationship me and toby had.
- i thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible.
- there were all my secrets, spread out on the table. like someone had taken my insides and scooped them for everyone to see. look. here are her stupid hopes! look, here's her dumb soft heart!
- i really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. it seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. you could be anything. then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. you were a boy, and already it was certain you couldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. then you started to grow up and aeverything you did closed the tunnel in some more. you broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. you failed every math test you ever took and you cancelled any hope of being a scientist. like that. on and on through the years until you were stuck. you'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. or an accountant. and there you were. i figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.
- i'd become transparent, naked. the girl with the see-through heart.
jun 1 2021 ∞
jul 13 2021 +