The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark. Estele Magritte 1642–1719

Seven freckles. One for every love she’d have, that’s what Estele had said, when the girl was still young. One for every life she’d lead. One for every god watching over her.

What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?

She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.

This is the grass between the nettles. A safe place to step.

the restless days, when the warmer-blooded gods began to stir, and the cold ones began to settle. When dreamers were most prone to bad ideas, and wanderers were likely to get lost.

It feels as if the doors of her world have been thrown wide, so many rooms added to a house she thought she knew.

by the time they return home to Villon, she will already be a different version of herself.

Her mother says that the woman is bound for Hell, and once, when Adeline repeated as much, Estele laughed her dry-leaf laugh and said there was no such place, only the cool dark soil and the promise of sleep. “And what of Heaven?” asked Adeline. “Heaven is a nice spot in the shade, a broad tree over my bones.”

And Adeline understands—and still does not understand at all—feels as if she’s being punished for simply growing up.

It is like waiting at a neighbor’s door after you’ve knocked, when you know they are home. She can hear the steps, the low rasp of the lock, and knows that it will give.

“The old gods are everywhere,” she says. “They swim in the river, and grow in the field, and sing in the woods. They are in the sunlight on the wheat, and under the saplings in spring, and in the vines that grow up the side of that stone church. They gather at the edges of the day, at dawn, and at dusk.”

Adeline is sixteen now, and 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. Like Isabelle, who dreams of family instead of freedom, and seems content to briefly blossom and then wither.

No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.

She doesn’t remember when it started, only that one day she cast her gaze about the village and found every prospect wanting.

Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.

Practice long given way to perfect.

a pair of sisters that remind Addie of Estele, if the old woman had been two instead of one, divided along the lines of temper. If she had been kinder, softer, or perhaps if she had simply lived another life, another time.

Stubborn as stale bread.

attraction can look an awful lot like recognition in the wrong light.

The rise isn’t worth the fall.

Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.

she swears sometimes her memory runs forward as well as back, unspooling to show the roads she’ll never get to travel. But that way lies madness, and she has learned not to follow.

Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. Already seen. Already known. Already lived.

she could—could find a way to skip from house to house, like stones skating across the river—but she will not. Because when she thinks of it, she feels neither like the river nor the stone, but like a hand, as it tires of throwing.

tonight she is tired, and hungry, and loath to waste what little energy she has on gods that will not answer.

My name is Adeline LaRue, she tells herself. My father taught me how to be a dreamer, and my mother taught me how to be a wife, and Estele taught me how to speak to gods.

she still feels like a lion caged, pacing its enclosure.

it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.

A secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.

It is easier to be alone among so many people.

One version of the city replaced by another. Palimpsest. She doesn’t know the word just yet, but fifty years from now, in a Paris salon, she will hear it for the first time, the idea of the past blotted out, written over by the present, and think of this moment in Le Mans. A place she knows, and yet doesn’t.

the brilliant thing about New York. Addie has wandered a fair portion of the five boroughs, and still the city has its secrets, some tucked in corners—basement bars, speakeasies, members-only clubs—and others sitting in plain sight. Like Easter eggs in a movie, the ones you don’t notice until the second or third viewing. And not like Easter eggs at all, because no matter how many times she walks these blocks, no matter how many hours, or days, or years she spends learning the contours of New York, as soon as she turns her back it seems to shift again, reassemble. Buildings go up and come down, businesses open and close, people arrive and depart and the deck shuffles itself again and again and again.

She stands there until she realizes she is waiting. Waiting for someone to help. To come and fix the mess she’s in. But no one is coming. No one remembers, and if she resigns herself to waiting, she will wait forever. So she walks.

“I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”

The memory clings like spider silk.

Aut viam invenium aut faciam,

To find a way, or make your own.

“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”

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.

And now he knows he’s had too much to drink. He was trying to reach the place where he wouldn’t feel, but he thinks he might have passed it, wandered somewhere worse.

Water drips into his hair, streaking his glasses and soaking through his shirt. He does not care. Maybe the rain will rinse him clean. Maybe it will wash him away. Henry reaches his building, but can’t bring himself to climb the six steps to the door, the twenty-four more to his apartment, that belongs to a past where he had a future, so he sinks onto the stoop, leans back, and looks up at the place where the rooftop meets the sky, and wonders how many steps it takes to reach the edge. Forces himself to stop, press his palms against his eyes, and tell himself it is just a storm. Batten down the hatches, and wait it out. It is just a storm. It is just a storm.

For once, Henry is early. Which, he figures, is better than being late, but he doesn’t want to be too early because that’s even worse, even weirder and—he needs to stop overthinking it.

Take a drink every time you hear a lie. You’re a great cook. (They say as you burn toast.) You’re so funny. (You’ve never told a joke.) You’re so … … handsome. … ambitious. … successful. … strong. (Are you drinking yet?) You’re so … … charming. … clever. … sexy. (Drink.) So confident. So shy. So mysterious. So open. You are impossible, a paradox, a collection at odds. You are everything to everyone. The son they never had. The friend they always wanted. A generous stranger. A successful son. A perfect gentleman. A perfect partner. A perfect … Perfect … (Drink.) They love your body. Your abs. Your laugh. The way you smell. The sound of your voice. They want you. (Not you.) They need you. (Not you.) They love you. (Not you.) You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don’t exist. (Not you.) (Never you.) They look at you and see whatever they want … Because they don’t see you at all.

Sometimes Henry wishes he smoked, just for the excuse to get some air.

“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.”

Lying is its own language, like the language of seasons, or gestures, or the shade of Luc’s eyes. So she knows that Henry is lying to her now. Or at least, he’s not telling her the truth.

How strange, the winding way a dream comes true.