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“Deep breath in,” Jude was chanting, “deep breath out. Deep breath in, deep breath out. You are not in an airplane; you are floating through the sky. Deep breath in . . .” “I think you actually have to be taking deep breaths for that to work,” I told him.
LMAO
I’d find Liam, and I’d keep both of them safe—because that was the only option. That was the only one I was willing to accept.
IM GONNA KMS
“I don’t want to just see someone’s face; I want to know his shadow, too.”
jude quote :)
Ghosts don’t haunt people—their memories do.
ruby quote :)
Jude gave me a little salute and clenched his teeth in a way that made me think he was trying for a reassuring smile or trying not to puke all over himself. “Later, gator.” The door slammed shut behind them. In an hour, sunflower.
“Rob, listen, I just want to know their names. I want to know if you even bothered to ask before you killed them.” “Do you think this is a game? Stop lying, goddammit! When I find you—” “You better hope you never find me,” I said, ice edging each word. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to see that girl’s face. I felt her walking beside me, her eyes open, forever fixed on the barrel of the gun and the hand that held it steady. “Because what I’ll do to you will be so much worse than a bullet in the skull.”
+1000 aura
This was the kid who had sat with me for every meal, when half of the League was too afraid to look me in the eye. He didn’t flinch when I touched him; he waited for me to get back from Ops to make sure I was safe. As annoying as it had seemed to me then, I had never thought about what it would be like to lose it. Him.
i hate this book
Her eyes rolled back as she crumpled to the ground. “Oh my God,” I said, dropping down beside her to feel for a pulse in her neck. “I just gave her a little love zap,” Jude said, every hair on his head standing on end.
i love jude
I just didn’t have the strength to fight them back anymore. I burst into tears. “Oh, for the love of . . .” Chubs shook his head and sighed, but I heard the affection in his voice all the same. “It’s just me, you dumbass.” And without another word, he crossed those last two steps between us and wrapped me up tight in his arms.
CHUBSSS
Jude turned back toward Chubs, his thick eyebrows drawing together as he moved his finger our way. “Also not Liam . . . ?” At that, Vida turned to stare at him. “In what universe does this tool look anything like Cole Stewart?” Jude’s voice went high when he got defensive. “I don’t know! Brother from a different mother? There is such a thing as adoption—”
HAHAHAHA
“You are actually the worst person I have ever met,” Chubs said. “And people like you are the reason we have middle fingers.” “Guys . . .” I started.
what is vida so mad for
In the strangest way, it made me feel closer to Liam. He was alive and vivid in my thoughts. Solid, warm Liam with his sunglasses on, the sunlight in his hair, and the words of a favorite song on his lips. I half expected to look up and see him in the driver’s seat.
no yeah rip my heart out thats fine!
His bottom lip was white where it was caught between his teeth. But he was looking at me—not with fear or any of its ugly cousins. Just a deep, sincere sadness. He could still stand to look at me.
DUDEEEEE
I will come down on you so hard, they’ll be naming hurricanes after me for a fucking century.”
hurricane katrina? More like hurricane tortillaaaaaa (vida)
Daly, Ruby. The picture was of a ten-year-old me, eyes wide under a ratty mess of wet, dark hair. That’s right, I thought. It had been raining the day they brought us in.
MY SHAYLAAAAA
I leaned in and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I’m—I mean . . .” he began. I felt his hands bunch up the back of Liam’s jacket with the effort to keep me there.
tears in my ruby chubs eyes
“It’s all different now. I just want it to go back to the way it was, when we were in that stupid minivan—Jesus, will you say something?” “Don’t,” I said, “call Black Betty stupid.” I don’t know if he was laughing or just crying again, but both of us shook with the force of it.
BLACK BETTY MENTION
“The fact of the matter is, I would have done a lot worse. I would have done anything to find you guys. It scares me. I feel like if there’s not someone there to stop me, I’m not sure what I would do.”
“I don’t know the exact number. Ten or more. Vida wouldn’t have let herself be taken by any less.”
vida knows her worth!!
If a heart could break once, it shouldn’t have been able to happen again. But here I was, and here he was, and it was all so much more terrible than I ever could have imagined.
MY HEART JUST SHATTERED 10x WORSE
I am here, I thought as I stepped out into the rain. He is here. We are all here. And we would be leaving together. Today.
AHHH
“If you had been able to recover fast enough to do something, then you really wouldn’t be human.” “As opposed to what?” She shrugged. “A mannequin? An unfeeling, heartless bitch who feeds on others’ misery and is physically incapable of crying, unless it’s tears of blood?” I flexed my good hand in my lap. “Is that my rep at HQ?” “They call you Medusa,” Vida said. “One wrong look and your brain turns to stone.”
OHH MY GOD
And, honestly, the awful truth of it was that while the kid was about as sneaky as a pair of cymbals crashing to the ground, he was also the kind of person you wouldn’t necessarily notice was missing. Not from a crowd, at least not right away.
oh my god like his death
His name is Mason. My thoughts were spilling over themselves, trying to comprehend what had just happened. He lived in a house with a blue fence. His mom made his lunch for him every day. He had friends and a dog, and all of them disappeared when the men came and took him into the van. He had White Sox posters on his bedroom wall. He rode his bike in the abandoned lot behind his house. His name was Mason, and he had a life.
his name is mason :(
“Being smart doesn’t mean being soft,” I continued. “You can stay or you can go, but just remember—if you run, you run alone. And trust me, it’s a long, lonely road.”
hadestown mention???
I felt the scream burning at the base of my throat. NOT HIM. Not Liam. Please don’t take him, too. I wondered if this was what all of those parents had felt like once IAAN had gone public and they knew there was a 98 percent chance their kids wouldn’t make it through, no matter what they did to help them.
i hate this damn book
“Yes,” I said. “You have to go after her.” He raised his eyebrows in challenge. “It’ll get infected,” I reminded him. “She would drive a saint to murder. Like, ten-stab-woundsto-the-torso murder.” “Good thing you’re not a saint.”
LMAO
“You’re . . . awfully pretty. What’s your . . . name?” The words wheezed and whistled out of him in a heart-stopping way, but I was caught so off guard by how coherent he was, it took me several precious moments to respond. “Ruby,” he repeated in the warm, caressing tones of his Southern lilt. “Like ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ That’s nice.” Then Liam’s expression dissolved completely.
I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO DIE MORE
“A dream?” I pressed, hoping to keep him talking. “What kind of dream was it?” It wasn’t . . . No, it wasn’t possible. I had seen people become confused after I’d messed with their memories, a bit muddled on the details, but I had gone through and picked every instance of me clean from Liam’s mind. I had replaced myself with thin air and shadows. A faint smile formed on his lips. “A good one.”
OHHH BROTHER.
“Safe.” The word sounded hollow. He closed his eyes on it. “Don’t go again,” he whispered. “Don’t go . . . where I can’t follow, please, please, not again . . .” “I’ll stay right here,” I said, rubbing a thumb along his cheekbone. You have to stop this. You have to leave. Right now. “Don’t lie,” he mumbled, at the edge of sleep. “This is . . . a place we don’t have to . . .”
AHHHHH
Maybe I was still broken and would always be—but now, at least, I was piecing myself back together, lining up one jagged edge at a time.
roo i love you
Jude crossed his arms over his chest and began to rub them. “Feels like it, I guess.” “Fifteen,” I said with a low whistle. “You’re getting up there in years, old man.”
oh my god and he'll never get any older :(
“You are to come with us,” he said, “on authority of the Psi Special Forces commander, Joseph Traylor. If you do not cooperate, we will respond with force.” “Yeah?” Brett called. “You can tell Joseph Traylor that, on our authority, he can suck it!”
TEL HIM BRETT
I thought of Liam, of Chubs, of Vida, of Jude. We had to get back and tell the others; we had to move them in case any of the soldiers traced our path. “Jude . . .” I mumbled, my foot slipping out from under me. Something boiling hot raced down over my hip. “Jude . . . Vida . . . Chubs . . . Liam . . . Jude . .
thinking of them to keep herself alive oh im SICK
“Sometimes you’re the one speeding along in a panic, doing too much, not paying attention, wrecking things you don’t mean to. And sometimes life just happens to you, and you can’t dodge it. It crashes into you because it wants to see what you’re made of.”
nice quote from ruby's mum
I forced myself to relax, to remember that here, now, and always, I was the predator.
hell yeah!!
But the ache in my throat was still there, solid and unmoving, and something very much like a sob started to bubble up from my chest. There was no one there to see me cry and no point in trying to stop the tears from coming.
I killed that man. No, it wasn’t just that. I had tortured him with fear. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve to be punished for the crimes he’d committed, it was how I had done it—how I had used those kids, manipulating them and their memory, when they were already victims.
Liam had always been an easy read. He couldn’t hide any of his thoughts or feelings, no matter how many smiles he forced. His face was as open as it always was, so heartbreakingly perfect even with pain tightening the line of his mouth.
liam i love you
His eyes were—they were so pale in this light, jumping from my eyes to my nose to my lips like he had never seen me before but never wanted to stop looking.
OHHHH MY GOD
“I don’t . . .” he began, the words edged with soft desperation. “How can I help? What . . . what can I do to make it stop hurting? Make it better?” Liam, you can’t. Not this time.
HE ALWAYS WANTS TO HELP HER OH IM SO SAD.
When you have people relying on you, you can’t put on anything other than a brave, determined face, otherwise you chip away at their confidence, too.
I had no idea you could keep sinking, even after you’d hit the dark bottom of your life. But letting him get that close, letting him comfort me after everything I had done, was a bruising low.
i could never hate her
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” came Vida’s shrill voice from inside the tent. “Can you two shut the hell up and just go back to spooning? We don’t need to hear this same shitty argument for the tenth fucking time before five A.M.!”
SPOONING LMAO
“You—you—I can’t—” Chubs sputtered, too furious to form an actual sentence. “Come out here. Right now!” “Come and get me, big boy,” she sang back. “I know I don’t have the parts you like, but we can always make it work.” “Oh, like a functioning brain?” he shouted.
is vida calling him gay
I scooted, giving him half of the stump so he wouldn’t have to sit in the snow, and threw one end of the blanket over his shoulder, drawing him in close. He still smelled faintly of laundry detergent and hand sanitizer, only now I could pick up earthy scents, too—the
she always sniffing people bro
“Thanks,” I said after a small stretch of silence, “for not giving up on me.” “You seriously thought we would?” he asked. “That we wouldn’t have done everything and anything we could to find you?” “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “It’s just . . .” Maybe it would have been better if you had let them take me. The buzz in my ears drowned out the world, and I felt the first touch of panic creep back in.
“It wasn’t the full truth, but it’s the best I can do. I’m going to help you guys get wherever it is you decide you want to go, then head back to Cole to finish this.” Chubs’s grip on me tightened, but it was the shock and hurt and fear he let off that choked me up while I struggled to speak. “You know . . . you know how important this is. I feel like if I’m not there to make sure it happens, if I don’t see for myself what caused this”—I motioned between us—“I’ll never forgive myself. If I can’t . . . if I can’t be around Liam anymore, I can at least do that for him. That was his dream,
...more
“No,” he whispered, “I can’t do this again—it can’t be the way it was with Zu, the way it was the last six months. I know it’s selfish, but I have to know you’re safe, and you’ll never be safe with them. At least think about that, okay? Give me a chance to change your mind, too.” No, I thought, giving him a weak, reassuring smile. Even if Liam didn’t look at me with such hate in his eyes, even if he had kissed me down by the falls, none of it would have mattered. I wasn’t the blank slate I’d been when Liam, Chubs, and Zu found me. I had done things I was ashamed of then, sure, but now I’d gone
...more
she think she's too far gone :(
Instead of trying to gather the scattered supplies, he crouched down next to Jude and helped him stoke the fire, debating whether Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. was a better album than Born to Run.
underrated duo
