More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
On Friday, June 5th, 1998, five teenagers went into the woods surrounding Highchair Rocks in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Only four of them came out.
we’re just an Uber for our kids at this point.”
through it came the cutting realization that she would be spending a night in the woods, and the last time that happened, they lost a friend, and she did not want to be reminded of that,
Having friends meant not being alone with himself. Because Owen was certainly not his own friend. But they were his friends. They had his back, even when he didn’t have his own.
Owen started with the beer—Coors Light, which made him sad to drink because Coors Light was sadness in a can.
“It’s totally normal to walk up a set of steps in the middle of the woods and appear in some weird fucking hallway with some weird fucking message.”
“We should stick together. Horror movie rules.”
that whole thing about sticks and stones was a lie. Words hurt as bad as a fist. Maybe worse. Because a fist, maybe you excuse that as oh, he couldn’t help it, he’s just an animal, a primate, his blood was up. But someone cuts you with words? Calls you names, tells you how little they think of you? That bypasses all your armor. A razor sliding across the meat of your heart.
Every move in this game was a net fucking loss. A Choose Your Own Adventure book where every page turn led to being eaten, drowned, incinerated, trapped forever.
This place wants us to be alone.
You’re Not Scared of the Dark, You’re Scared of What’s in It
That was the funny thing about a fear of the dark: you weren’t really afraid of it, but rather what lurked within it. A perfect emblem of the fear of the unknown.
Billy Dink was a thirteen-year-old boy whose mother kept him sick on purpose, who told the world he had a number of rare conditions in order to elicit their sympathy, their money, and most of all, their attention. Because his mother, Brenda, was a narcissist monster in the throes of MSP: Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
“Notice none of these things are about Matty. Not really. They’re about his accomplishments.” That’s all Matty was to them, she said. He was like a gold medal they could hang around their necks—a shining example of the family, a human trophy.
