“I don’t know how I let myself get so cynical,” Charlie went on. “I’ve been wondering about that a lot. All I can figure is this: it hurts to be disappointed. It hurts so much, we’d rather never get our hopes up. And it’s humiliating, too—right? How foolish are you to hope for the best? How pathetic is it to try to win after you’ve already lost? How naive must you be if you don’t know that humanity is dark and vicious and totally irredeemable? But the argument Emma’s been making this whole time—and I’m paraphrasing here—is this: If those are the only stories we tell about ourselves, then those
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