That Was Then, This is Now

by S.E. Hinton

I’m a big guy, dark hair and eyes—the kind who looks like a Saint Bernard puppy, which I don’t mind as most chicks cannot resist a Saint Bernard puppy. Mark was small and compact, with strange golden eyes and hair to match and a grin like a friendly lion. He was much stronger than he looked—he could tie me in arm wrestling. He was my best friend and we were like brothers.

M&M was the most serious guy I knew. He always had this wide-eyed, intent, trusting look on his face, but sometimes he smiled, and when he did it was really great. He was an awful nice kid even if he was a little strange. He had big gray eyes—the kind you see on war-orphan posters—and charcoal-colored hair down past his ears and down to his eyebrows.

If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.

You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love best in the world.

“Do you ever get the feeling that the whole thing is changin? Like somethin’ is coming to an end because somethin’ else is beginning?”

“The difference is,” I said evenly, “that was then, and this is now.”

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

Mark had absolutely no concept of what was right and what was wrong; he didn’t obey any laws, because he couldn’t see that there were any. Laws, right and wrong, they didn’t matter to Mark, because they were just words.

“Like a friend once said to me, ‘That was then, and this is now.’”

I am too mixed up to really care. And to think, I used to be sure of things. Me, once I had all the answers. I wish I was a kid again, when I had all the answers.