If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)

by Gayle Forman

I’d wandered over to the cello in music class—it looked almost human to me. It looked like if you played it, it would tell you secrets, so I started playing. It’s been almost ten years now and I haven’t stopped.

He is so not the kind of guy to end up with someone like me.

It feels like some kind of cosmic coincidence. I concentrate on the notes, imagining myself playing, feeling grateful for this chance to practice, happy to be in a warm car with my sonata and my family. I close my eyes.

You wouldn’t expect the radio to work afterward. But it does.

this quote has tormented me for YEARS!!!

the pavement grows slick and there are gray chunks of what looks like cauliflower.

Pieces of my father’s brain are on the asphalt. But his pipe is in his left breast pocket.

Dad sometimes joked that the hospital where I was born must have accidentally swapped babies because I look nothing like the rest of my family. They are all blond and fair and I’m like their negative image, brown hair and dark eyes.

Sometimes I did feel like I came from a different tribe. I was not like my outgoing, ironic dad or my tough-chick mom. And as if to seal the deal, instead of learning to play electric guitar, I’d gone and chosen the cello.

And after the recital, I got my present. It was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, looking as human as that cello I’d been drawn to two years earlier. It wasn’t a rental. It was mine.

When we got back home, Gramps dropped me off and enveloped me in a hug. Normally, he was a handshaker, maybe a back-patter on really special occasions. His hug was strong and tight, and I knew it was his way of telling me that he’d had a wonderful time. “Me, too, Gramps,” I whispered.

I’ve never actually seen Kim pray. I mean, she prayed at her bat mitzvah and she does the blessings at Shabbat dinner, but that is because she has to. Mostly, she makes light of her religion. But after she talks to me for a while, she closes her eyes and moves her lips and murmurs things in a language I don’t understand.

“Hello, duck,”

Because I was the only kid in Mom and Dad’s group of friends, I was a novelty.

But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow. I love that you’re fragile and tough, quiet and kick-ass. Hell, you’re one of the punkest girls I know, no matter who you listen to or what you wear.”

And I think about what she told Adam, that I need him now. More than ever. And that’s how I know. Teddy. He’s gone, too.

I know that all the magic kisses in the world probably couldn’t have helped him today. But I would do anything to have been able to give him one.

I’m looking for him, even though I know I won’t find him. Still, I have to keep looking.

I picture myself nuzzling his head one last time, and I can’t even imagine it without seeing myself crying, my tears turning his blond curlicues straight.

I’m not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I’m not sure that I want to wake up.

“I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.”

At my funeral no one is allowed to wear black. And for music, I want something poppy and old-school, like Mr. T Experience.”

shouldn’t have to care. I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams.

am still not entirely clear on the particulars here, but I do know that once I fully commit to going, I’ll go. But I’m not ready. Not yet. I don’t know why, but I’m not.

I wonder if every dying person gets to decide whether they stay or go.

“It’s okay,” he tells me. “If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.” His voice cracks with emotion. He stops, clears his throat, takes a breath, and continues. “But that’s what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting.”

Years later, shortly after his daughter was born, Henry called our house one night in tears. “I get it now,” he told Dad.

Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you. Does that make any sense?”

Adam is mumbling something now. In a low voice. Over and over he is saying: please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Finally, he stops and looks at my face. “Please, Mia,” he implores. “Don’t make me write a song.”

You guys seemed, still seem, in love, truly, deeply.” She sighed. “But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.”

“All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.

Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.”

Either way you win. And either way you lose. What can I tell you? Love’s a bitch.”

Even going to jail would be easy compared to losing you.”

And I bet she’ll be a stronger person because of what she’s lost today. I have a feeling that once you live through something like this, you become a little bit invincible.

“You still have a family,”

“If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would just be too painful, that maybe it’d be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I’d do it. I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”

Love can make you immortal.