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one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down.
But mothers lie. It’s in the job description.
like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face.
She said I love you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.
“pupillary sphincter,”*
And that—to use the kind of complex word you’d expect from a prodigy—blew.
“Right, except I’m not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?”
Colin stared up at Mr. Harbish and tried to look as screwed up as he possibly could.
and since the AC in Satan’s Hearse hadn’t worked in this millennium, the windows were cracked open.
It kept the loneliness of crushlessness from being entirely crushing.
but a word that described only her, a word that smelled like lilacs, that captured the blue of her eyes and the length of her eyelashes.
The preschool said that Colin was too advanced for their school and anyway, they didn’t accept children who weren’t yet fully potty-trained.
And so the periodically incontinent prodigy
She asked him an endless string of wonderful questions, and Colin loved her for it.
but he wasn’t the kind of prodigy who goes to college at eleven.
But Colin knew better. They weren’t jealous. He just wasn’t likable. Sometimes it’s that simple.
“Dude, if Kentucky is going to remind you of Paris, we’re in a hell of a pickle.”
Hassan’s not-interestings had helped Colin figure out what other people did and did not enjoy hearing about.
Or, in the case of Katherines, humored then ignored.
and I’m already sweating like a whore in church.”
“We’re on a road trip. It’s about adventure,” Colin mimicked.
“Shit, Colin made a funny. This place is like magic for you.
Shame about how we’re gonna die here, though. I mean, seriously. An Arab and a half-Jew enter a store in Tennessee. It’s the beginning of a joke, and the punch line is ‘sodomy.’”
“I just find it amusing that you know that but can’t figure out a way to speak without using your vocal cords.”
Colin wondered just how rich balls were,
What Colin liked about Curve was not its smell on the skin but its sillage, the fruity sweet smell of its leaving.
Colin Singleton’s distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.
that stomach-flipping mix of awestruck fear and entrancing fascination.
sometimes he felt un-understandable and sometimes he worried when they bickered and she went a while without saying she loved him,
They laughed. He had never loved her so much as he did then.
which incidentally is one of those words that sounds like it wouldn’t be a word but is.”*
the recitation of the words caused something to wash over the omnipresent hole in his gut. It felt, just for a moment, like medicine.
because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it.
oh God, this is boring,” he said, hoping it wasn’t.
He found stuff fascinating for a reason.
it was the connection his brain made, connections he couldn’t help but seek out.
He loved the scratching of pencil against paper when he was this focused: it meant something was happening.
All roads led to her. She was the nexus of all the connections his brain made—the wheel’s hub.
and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn’t there can hurt you.
Colin felt sad, but it was an exhilarating and infinite sadness, like it connected him to Hassan and to the ridiculous songs and mostly to her,
“Dingleberries!”
“Daddy is leaving you here if you take one more step!”
And he remembered everything about it, and also everything about everything else, and why couldn’t he forget and beep.
And I was remembering walking through the snow coming back from that ridiculous movie. Do you remember that, K? We were on Giddings, and the snow made it so quiet, I couldn’t hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it’s hot, and dead quiet again, and I love you still.”
I love you entirely,
He missed that, too, and it hadn’t even happened. He missed his imagined future.
You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.
The biggest study of highly gifted children ever undertaken was the brainchild (as it were)
‘This is a really excellent book you’ve written, Mr. Mailer. But no one here in 1948 is going to buy it, because it contains even more F-bombs than it does Regular Bombs.’
