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The aftertaste was of something exotic and rotten, but she didn’t care, because alcohol was not consumed by teenagers because of its palatable qualities. It was consumed because it was a useful tool to make you cooler and funnier and less of a socially awkward mess.
The worst part was that anxiety didn’t just affect the way you thought, or the way you talked, or the way you were around others. It affected the way your heart beat. The way you breathed. What you ate. How you slept.
She took a few deep breaths, tried to expand her lungs against the crushing tightness of her rib cage, which didn’t help much because anxiety was a bitch. So she drank some more wine and waited for the alcohol to go to battle with her demons, because she was a totally sane and healthy seventeen-year-old girl.
When you have anxiety, you don’t really get to have deep breaths. Your ribs are too small to let your shriveled lungs expand beyond half their size.
Have you ever seen a horror movie where someone gets murdered with a string of madly flashing lights wrapped around them? Of course not. No one wants to murder ridiculous people. It gets the cops asking too many questions. Plus, no one was going to forget if they saw Wednesday Addams wrapped in string lights.
His street was nice, but his house looked more sad and disheveled than the rest, like one of the starters you move into at the beginning of The Sims when you’ve got no money, six children, and no other choice.
Esther was pretty sure most teenage girls had fantasied about the idea of some guy painting a goddamn mural with them in it, but this was dangerous territory. Murals were a well-known gateway drug to feelings, and she couldn’t have any of that.
“You gonna let that kid out-spelunk you?” Jonah said. “That child is going to be viciously hunted and eaten by troglofaunal flesh-eating humanoids.” The child in question’s parents overheard her say this. “Sorry,” she said. “Have you not seen The Descent?” They both shook their heads. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. Just fine.” The kid was definitely going to die. “Did you memorize the Wikipedia page for that movie?”
She’d passed the fear barrier, and she’d lived, and she’d discovered not certain death, as she’d imagined, but impossible splendor. What other beautiful things had fear been hiding from her? What else had the curse long kept her from discovering? For the first time in a long time, she wanted to find out.
Depression was a real sneaky asshole.
depression was a king at playing hide-and-seek. It concealed itself in reservoirs deep inside the mind, waiting for the walls you built around it to eventually erode. Depression could be at undetectable levels for months or years. You’d be all happy and stable and think you were cured, you were a survivor, and then BAM, out of nowhere it resurged.
“If you’re really worried about him, maybe he should see a therapist or something.” Which is what people always said when they knew people were mentally ill. Like it was so easy to treat and fix and cure.
Esther thought about who she could tell. Thought about who would care enough to do anything to help Eugene. Their parents? People so weighed down by their own fears that they could barely function? Or a school counselor perhaps? Someone who’d look at her brother and not see him as the complex, brilliant human that he was, just a problem to be solved, a sickness to be medicated, a darkness to be locked away.
Fear protects you. You gotta be scared right down to your bones”—he touched his fingertips to her collarbone—“for bravery to mean anything.” Esther looked over at him. “What if I die?” “What if you live?”
Eugene was afraid of demons, and monsters, and above all the dark, but he was not afraid of death. That scared her more than anything.
“You really wanna let M. Night Shyamalan do this to you? That’s like crying to a Nickelback song. Have some self-respect.”
People got tired of mental illness when they found out they couldn’t fix it.
“I don’t hate her for what she’s become. I want to, but I can’t. I love her too much. That’s the problem. That’s what’s wrong with love. Once you love someone, no matter who they are, you’ll always let them destroy you. Every single time.” Even the very best people found ways to hurt the ones they loved.
“One day,” he said, “everybody’s gonna wake up and realize their parents are human beings, just like them. Sometimes they’re good people, sometimes they’re not.”
Perhaps falling and remaining in love with people, even if you didn’t want to, was not the great disaster she’d always imagined it to be.
What are you doing? ESTHER: Contemplating alcoholism as a legitimate form of teenage rebellion.
How could you save people who were drowning in themselves?
the ever increasing pressure from school to STUDY HARD AND DO WELL OR YOUR LIFE IS GOING TO SUCK SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS WE’RE NOT EVEN JOKING WITH THIS.
most of the time people were neither good nor bad, not righteous or evil, they were just people. And sometimes love, even if it was all they had to offer, was enough. It had to be.
hurt us. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t, but that’s not a reflection of us, or our strength. Loving someone who hurts you doesn’t make you weak.”
“Sometimes you’re brave if you run. Sometimes you’re brave if you stay. It’s important to know the difference. Important for both of us, probably.”
But life was rarely full of clean and tidy resolutions. Good moments would inevitably, again, lead to bad moments, which would lead to more good moments, until there was nothing left but dust and stories.
