Elsewhere

by Gabrielle Zevin

Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful—most of the time—of her grandmother’s elves.

“On Elsewhere, we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be.

“We never know what will happen,” Betty says, “but I believe good things happen every day. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that’s life, isn’t it?”

Why do they keep their eyes closed? she wonders. Don’t they know there’s so much to see?

There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backward, she thinks.

On Earth, the attempt to stay young, in the face of maturity, is futile.

And it isn’t a sad thing growing younger, either.

There was a time Liz was afraid that she would forget things, but by the time she truly began to forget, she forgot to be afraid to f...