We're not going to make it," I said. The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, A...
I was six years old when my mother died. For a long time afterward, the sweet and earthy magnolia scent of her would permeate my dreams. No matter what I was dreaming about, good or frightening, my mother's smell would waft through my nighttime adven...
He took her by the hand and led her out of the control room and into a little side room. There, amid a lot of sculpting paraphernalia, was her statue. The statue from the museum. The statue of Fortuna. New and gleaming. Rose gaped. 'But I never posed...
Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with l...
There is a pain you can’t think your way out of. You can’t talk it away. If there was someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. And. You can’t metabol...
He stepped closer with an intense, thoughtful look on his face. "We shouldn't do this." Her heart gave a hard thud. "You probably can't kiss." Another step closer. "What does the doctor say?" "We never kissed," she deadpanned. "Dr. Pratt and I are no...
Derek's breath touched Sara's throat in unsteady urges. "Sometimes," he whispered, "I'm so close to you ... and I'm still not close enough. I want to share your breath ... every beat of your heart." He cradled her head in both his hands, his mouth ho...
Hanged" I hung myself today. Hanged? Whatever, the point is I hanged myself today and I’m still hanging. I feel fine. Just bored. I keep hoping that someone will come home and cut me down but then I keep remembering that if I knew someone like that...
He felt so tired, so weary of holding on with an iron grip to something he knew was slipping away. “You can’t make someone love you,” he said. Her hand stilled for a moment, the dirty tissue between her fingers. “True.” “Even if you love ...
In its quest to discover how the patterns of reality are organised, the story of modern science hints at a picture of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each one more intricately structured and wondrous than the last. Every time the final box appears to ...
I do not want to date you." He groaned. "Liv. You've got to be kidding me. I picked up my whole life, drove halfway across the country, and you've changed your mind? It's only been fifteen days since you told me you still love me!" "Shut up, will you...
You’re always on time, aren’t you?” I said flirtatiously as he arrived. “My darling lady, when it’s you … yes I am.” He opened the car door and as I was securely inside, I reached over to unlock his door on the spur of the moment. I tho...
You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awaren...
I told her about the best and the worst. The slow and sleepy places where weekdays rolled past like weekends and Mondays didn’t matter. Battered shacks perched on cliffs overlooking the endless, rumpled sea. Afternoons spent waiting on the docks, s...
Rowena Clark and I had met on the first day of our mixed media class. I’d sat down at her table and said, “Mind if I join you? Figure the best way to learn about art is to sit with a masterpiece.” Maybe I was in love, but I was still Adrian Iva...
You know what would help?" I asked, not meeting his eyes. "Hmm?" "If you turned off this crap music and put on something that came out after the Berlin Wall went down." Dimitri laughted. "Your worst class is history, yet somehow, you know everything ...
So what's the deal with you and my sister?" He laughs shortly and rubs the back of his neck like something is there, tickling, tapping. "Tamra." Clutching the dashboard, I turn and glare at her. "There is no ." She snorts. "Well, we wouldn't be sitti...
Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go. But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him. And you can accept t...
Ohh,' said the girl with a sad tilt of her head. It was a response Sejal would hear a lot in the following weeks and which she would eventully come to understand meant, 'Ohh, , that must be so hard for you, and I know because I read this book over th...
Fifth grade was fourth grade with something wrong. Nothing changed outright. Instead it teetered. You'd pushed futility at Public School 38 so long by then you expected the building itself would be embarrassed and quit. The ones who couldn't read sti...
I've done this sort of thing before. Not prophecies so much, but you'd be surprised how many people want to realign their ancestral lines to seem nobler, or rewrite their family history to remove more morally questionable episodes." He paused to reca...
