That Was Then, This is Now

by S.E. Hinton

I suddenly felt like I’d swallowed a spoonful of red pepper. I felt cold and hot and sick and mad all at once. I only felt it for a second, only for a second and then it was gone—but sometimes now I wonder how it would be to feel like that all your life. You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love best in the world.

We were like brothers, not just you and me, but all of us together. We woulda died for each other then. And now everybody’s kinda slipped away, and then we woulda died for each other. Really, man, remember? It was great, we were like a bunch of people makin’ up one big person, like we totaled up to somethin’ when we were together.”

“It’s kind of a good thing too,” I said, “when you know your own personality so you don’t need the one the gang makes for you.”

It’s funny how you don’t think about people until after they’re dead. Or gone.

You can’t walk through your whole life saying ‘If.’ You can’t keep trying to figure out why things happen, man. That’s what old people do. That’s when you can’t get away with things any more. You gotta just take things as they come, and quit trying to reason them out.