Penelope in Retrograde

by Brooke Abrams

“I don’t know why I worry about someone kidnapping you.” My mother groans. “They’d bring you back within an hour. Hurry home, and for the love of god, do not drink any caffeine.”

“We were in rival gangs,” I deadpan. “My family colors were plaid. His were floral. Twice a year we’d street fight with pool noodles, and the winner got to smash the loser’s china piece by piece like they do in those mafia movies; except in the movies, they smash fingers instead of china. It was all very hard core.”

Starbucks and Cher never sleep.

“Because that’s what books are made for. They’re made to connect you to people, real or fictional, even when you feel like you’re completely alone.”

“I don’t like who I am when I come here. It’s like I become the worst version of myself, which only ends up pushing my family away instead of bringing us closer together. I know they love me, because they’re good and decent people, and I love them. I just wish when we all got together it didn’t feel like we were just tolerating one another. I want them to like me for me.”

“It’s not the beginning that’s painful in my opinion. It’s the ending that came before it. New moons represent that too. The end of one phase and the beginning of a new.” She takes my hand, the one that used to have my engagement ring—her old engagement ring—on it, and places the slip of blank paper inside. “We don’t always get to choose when one phase ends and another begins, but we can choose how we face it.”

“Happiness isn’t a place you go back to. Happiness is a place you build and rebuild and then tear down and remodel a thousand times over inside you.”