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Competency is the perfect antidote to anxiety. She doesn’t know who she is if she’s not a teacher.
Still, she listens to “Bitch” whenever she feels the intense need to rage, because raging is so much safer than the alternative: the untethered spiral of anxiety that spools out whenever she loses control.
“We can’t all drive quirky Volkswagens like some manic pixie dream girl in a movie written by a man.”
She still grieves their lost friendship, still sometimes imagines finding a way to stitch them back together again.
“El gran poder existe en la fuerza irresistible del amor.”
“I never read The Secret Garden. I don’t fuck with hetero books.”
So, most days, instead of going home to an empty house after school, Rosemary went to Mr. Delgado’s classroom. When she struggled with her anxiety, when she struggled to manage her stress, when she began questioning her sexuality, her mom wasn’t the adult she turned to for emotional support.
“I had perfect grades because I thought I had to be perfect to be worthy. I obsessed over every assignment, stayed up all night studying, took too many AP classes and forced myself to be the best in all of them. I wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping… sophomore year, my hair started to fall out from the stress. And it felt like none of my teachers cared how sick I was making myself. They all held me up as this model student. Except Joe.”
“But queer and trans people are hurt for a lot less than this, especially Black and brown queer people. We might have a lot of privilege. We’re white and straight passing—”
“I, for one, am happy to let my past trauma resurface at unexpected times. It’s like a never-ending game of emotional Whac-a-Mole.”
“I hate Logan because she treats people like Barbie dolls and tosses them aside as soon as she gets bored with them.”
Hale is brilliant, hardworking, and hyperfocused—everything Logan is not. But sometimes, the supercomputers go a little haywire. Sometimes, Hale’s anxiety gets the best of her.
“Holy Dickensian antihero, what are you wearing?”
lol
“And you should know better than to think queerness is supposed to look a certain way.”
“And you’re not the only neurodivergent person in this bathroom. I also have ADHD, not that you’ve ever cared to notice.”
“I didn’t get my diagnosis until a few years ago because I’m a woman, and because my ADHD doesn’t look like restlessness or disorganization or blurting out. It looks like intense hyperfixations and overcompensating with perfectionism and poor emotional regulation.”
my ADHD brain loves being good at things.”
“My brain does nothing in moderation.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about trying that.” “Then why haven’t you?” “Because I have ADHD! Follow-through is not my jam.”
It’s classic Hale, assuming she screwed up instead of realizing the other person is just being an ass.
“Don’t burrow into your little self-blame hole. You didn’t say or do anything wrong.”
Hale cares too damn much. She strops around in her high heels and argues at staff meetings because she cares. She gets to work before everyone else and carries around papers to grade because she cares so damn much. Some of it is perfectionism, sure, but most of it is just Hale never learning how not to care. And unlike Logan, she never hides it, never fakes indifference or disguises her passions. She’s impossibly brave. Always has been.
“Life is the prickly pear. It’s always going to be a combination of beauty and hurt, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself from the hard parts. There is no way to avoid pain.”
“Because some people are worth the hurt!”
He’s so… human, this man she’s immortalized. He loves and he fucks up and he regrets. He makes mistakes and makes amends.
Some people are really good at acting like everything is fine even when they’re falling apart inside.”
I may be a fuckboy, but I’m also a fan of enthusiastic consent.”
Sex with Rosemary hadn’t felt like fuckery. It felt like having the bud of a prickly pear flower without the barbs. All beauty, no pain.
And that’s the problem with her ADHD brain. If she lets it feel one thing, it will feel all the things, all the time. It doesn’t do moderation either. Every emotion is always at eleven, which is why it’s easiest not to feel anything at all.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been Prince Zuko–level obsessed with you for the better part of twenty years.”
Or maybe time doesn’t exist here at all. There is nothing to do, nowhere to be.
“I think I might be a shitty first draft too,” Rosemary confesses as they’re falling asleep. Logan scoots closer to her in bed. “I think you’ve been rewriting yourself bit by bit this entire trip.”
“You’re allowed to be a flawed person, Rosemary. You’re allowed to take risks and make mistakes.”
“Your brain is an asset. Not a liability.”
“I don’t want to celebrate the Fourth of July.” Logan shudders. “America is being a shady bitch, and I’m not going to her birthday party.”
Same Logan
“I haven’t been to a drag show in over thirty years. Drag shows were supposed to be a place where we were safe. A place where we could escape their hate and love ourselves. But they don’t want us to love ourselves, not even behind closed doors. And that’s hard for me because I love safety.”
“Your big feelings are one of the most beautiful things about you.”
This is love. Love is seeing perfection in every flaw. Seeing every flaw as a miracle because it belongs to the person you care about most. Love is saying, yes, still. Even after all these years.
“I’ve never been in love before, but I’m pretty sure it feels like this. Kisses that feel like waking up. Touches that feel like dreaming. Love is finding someone who helps you rewrite the story of yourself.”
You made me feel like I was too much and not enough. You made me believe no one would ever stick around for me.”
Death is a to-do list.
Joe lives in every student he’s ever taught. As expansive and incontrovertible as the ocean.
