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What would the world be like without you? Not so very different, he thinks.
Robbie had a side-part and a sweet smile. He appeared very young, like a little brother you wanted to protect. But there was nothing distinctive about him. He looked like any child, or every one.
Crazy foreshadowing. I almost highlighted this before I even realized what this was insinuating. Genius.
“I go for a cigarette break every hour,” Darren Field (19) told police. “I watched them arrive, and I watched them leave.”
Omggggg
The day that Daniel left for university, John went up to the attic. As he looked around his son’s empty bedroom, he began to cry.
“Liam?” I prompted. “It’s not him,” he said.
Waaahhhhh I knew it
The body’s been in the water awhile, but nowhere near long enough. And it’s a much younger guy.” I stared at him. But he was looking over my shoulder again now. “And apart from anything else,” he said, “he’s wearing a wedding ring.”
Ooo is it Darren?
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I said. Sarah hung her coat over the back of a chair. “What, you mean fuck all?” “Yes.”
And maybe John wants something he can add to the ledger of his own life. All too often, he’s felt little more than a footnote or crossing-out in someone else’s. He thinks: Because I want you to be proud of me too, my son.
it occurred to him that a man who did not give up—a man who kept going—might be able to go beyond what was reasonable.
Maybe it takes someone who hasn’t quite grown out of their own nightmares yet to recognize when they’ve just walked into someone else’s.
So many rites of passage seem to involve staring death in the face. And maybe that’s not so strange, but it also strikes him as a shame that it’s what the world expects of children.
The picture that James Palmer had drawn for his father was visible at the bottom. Three stick figures standing side by side. The smallest one was holding what looked like an orange smudge. And beside the three of them, a Christmas tree, with little colored fairy lights dotted everywhere in the branches.
JAMES PALMER 9 JUNE 1986–AUGUST 2001 WE SEE. WE CARE.
I'm ugly crying and I hate everything
