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Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
“You’re being so kind,” Adeline whispers. “‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me,’” says Isabelle. It is a Bible verse.
It would be years before Henry learned to think of those dark times as storms, to believe that they would pass, if he could simply hold on long enough.
There will be other dark nights, of course, other wretched dawns, and her resolve will always weaken a little as the days grow long, and the anniversary draws near, and treacherous hope slips in like a draft. But the sorrow has faded, replaced by stubborn rage, and she resolves to kindle it, to shield and nurture the flame until it takes far more than a single breath to blow it out.
Henry is fourteen the first time he steals a swig of his father’s liquor, just to turn the volume down. He is sixteen when he swipes two pills from his mother’s cabinet, just to dull the ache. He is twenty when he gets so high that he thinks he can see the cracks along his skin, the places where he’s falling apart. His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.
He knows he’s late. He is always late. It has been the start of many quarrels, and there was a time when he thought it was carelessness on his part, before he realized it was some strange attempt at self-preservation, an intentional, albeit subconscious dawdling, a delay of the inevitable, uncomfortable necessity of showing up.
And for once, he isn’t talking himself in and out of every single line, isn’t chiding himself for each and every move, isn’t convincing himself that he has to say the right thing—there’s no need to find the right words when there are no wrong ones. He doesn’t have to lie, doesn’t have to try, doesn’t have to be anyone but himself, because he is enough.
Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?
A boy is sick of his broken heart. Tired of his storm-filled brain. So he drinks until he cannot feel the pieces scraping together in his chest, until he cannot hear the thunder rolling through his head. He drinks when his friends tell him it will be all right. He drinks when they tell him it will pass. He drinks until the bottle is empty and the world gets fuzzy at the edges. It is not enough to ease the pain, so he leaves, and they let him go.
At some point, he is outside his building, and he sinks onto the stoop, and presses his palms against his eyes, and tells himself it is just another storm.
This time, there is no break in the clouds, no light on the horizon, and the thunder in his head is so damn loud.
It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter. It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.
But in the moment, shoes already skimming night, the simple truth is that he would have sold his soul for less, would have traded an entire life of this for just a day—an hour, a minute, a moment—of peace. Just to numb the pain inside his chest. Just to quiet the storm inside his head.
Henry is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “How do you walk to the end of the world?” He looks up at her. “I wanted to hold on to every step.”
And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it. Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain? And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”
He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.
