The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

The cat, also named Toby (“So I can talk to myself without it being weird…” he explained) looks at her as she blows on her tea.

Those stories he gathered, the way one gathers wood.

everyone speaks of her as if she is a summer bloom, something to be plucked, and propped within a vase, intended only to flower and then to rot.

It will be many years before she can read Greek, many more before she hears the myth of Sisyphus, but when she does, she will nod in understanding, palms aching from the weight of pushing stones uphill, heart heavy from the weight of watching them roll down again.

There is the hollow silence of a man who has stopped praying, and the airy silence of an empty synagogue, and the held-breath silence of someone hiding from themselves.

“Take your echoes and pretend they are a voice.”

“The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”

Now she plays in the field, and does not leave a mark. The world remains unblemished, and for once she is grateful. She spins and twirls, and dances partner-less across the snow, laughing at the strange and simple magic of the moment,

A fraction of a moment when Luc looks wounded and confused, and she wonders if he meant only what he said, if, if— But then, it is over.

i think this is genuine, he’s faking it being a game

That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.